The Tragedy of Lost Creativity

I am taking a break from work, which I had intended to use marking up the score of Werther, but which I also now would like to use to write a blog post on this article , which really moved me.

So much of what the author says is true. Why is is it, as he says, that "We seem to have evolved into a society of mourned and misplaced creativity"?

Children are encouraged to be creative.  Certainly I was.  But I soon learned that having and fostering an imagination was "childish" (and this by about age 11).  I went to school with two types of girls: those who talked about boys and clothes all the time and those who did nothing but study.  There were a handful of kids I grew up with who really excelled at playing a musical instrument, or at art or writing, for example, but "really excel" meant just that.  If you were not Juilliard or Pratt material, it was like, "enough already".  Be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant.  (I don't think anyone was encouraged to go into banking - the author of the cited article mentions working in "the City", London's equivalent of Wall Street.  That, at least, was too crass.)

And women were not encouraged, really, to do anything at all.  Yes, we were supposed to be educated, because educated women are interesting.  But jobs were something you did until you married, or after you got divorced, or, like my mother, widowed.  It's sort of hard to imagine, as I was encouraged to be brainy, not decorative, but I never thought about having a "career", and just ended up doing what most of the "bookish" women I knew did: get a secretarial job in publishing and then become an editor.

And if you were female, even a Lesbian like me, the most important thing was "the relationship".  Don't pursue activities that will take time away from "the relationship".  That, and the fact that I was told that Lesbians shouldn't be involved in a "patriarchal art form" like opera, put a premature end to my hope of a singing life, if not a singing career.

So what do you do if you've found what you love but are too old to do it in any way that other people care about?  Not because you don't have talent and ability, but because too many people in too close proximity to where you live, have more talent and ability.  My problem with singing isn't that different from the general problem with the middle class.  It isn't really that people have gotten poorer, but rather that the rich have gotten so much richer and so much more numerous that everyone else is poor or  might as well be.

Being older, the issue isn't just ageism or lost time, it's that what I'm competing with now are at least three generations (is a generation a decade, I wonder?) of people, most specifically women, who have been encouraged to pursue dreams of some kind.  And are doing interesting things.  When I was only looking at my own generation, very few women had high powered careers that they enjoyed and the ones who did were considered odd (many never married or found a satisfactory life with a significant other), and there were only a tiny handful of highly trained professional singers, so as I've said 100 times if I've said it once, the community opera groups, such as there were, were for amateurs with day jobs whose singing was less than perfect but who loved doing it.  Now almost every school in the country seems to offer a degree in vocal performance and they vomit out their graduates in the five boroughs of the Big Apple (not to  mention the three conservatories that are right here).

I think however sad it is that there is so much lost creativity, there is less than there used to be.  An awful lot of people, particularly women, are doing interesting creative things, if not successfully in a monetary sense, successfully enough that their picture is in the newspaper or they get a spot talking on tv.

So I've found something I love and it's killing me, to paraphrase the author of this article.  But it hasn't killed me yet, and I am going to go down fighting.

Falling in Love

Here's a big surprise!  I am totally falling in love with Werther, or rather with Charlotte.  Who would have believed it?  I have been listening to that opera for about five years, and it always left me cold.  Seemed a bit vanilla when compared with Carmen, Dalila, Amneris, and Azucena.

I think the part of me that has fallen in love with Charlotte and that sweet (but terribly sad - what a waste!) domestic story is the part of me that loves and cherishes my partner and my pets (my Siamese cat is named Charlotte - for Charlotte Bronte - by the way).

The fact that when Werther first meets Charlotte she is fixing dinner for her younger siblings is very touching, as is the fact that when the curtain comes up on her big scene she is reading letters.  Letters!  How civilized! And no doubt they were written by hand.  And I love the children singing.  If I can organize a concert version of the opera maybe some of the children from the church would like to sing.

Or maybe trying to do the whole opera is too ambitious.  I have to see if I have the stamina for all those high As.  When I was singing Azucena the As were like nothing.  All I was worried about was that B flat.  And I have sung the Judgment Scene from Aida.  I suppose if I just did that one scene it would make the most sense to have the opening scene from Faust precede it (which I wouldn't sing in).  Then there could be a "Goethe" theme of some kind.

In other news, because I was bored out of my skull,  I took a look at the Forum, which I had sworn I would not do, as I always end up feeling bad about myself when I post things (usually) because either people ignore me, or someone says something that makes me feel inferior and inadequate. But surprise! I actually found something helpful. A woman who helps musicians write mission statements. So I contacted her. I was pleasantly surprised that she wrote back to me and gave me a link to a tool that I could use to write a mission statement. The mission statement is for a group I would like to start, if I can only find the right people. I had posted something on the Forum about looking for these types of people, but no one understood really what I meant. They thought I just meant people to sing with, but that's not the issue. The issue is to find people my age at my level (preferably a little less skilled and less experienced) so that I won't feel at the bottom of the food chain, but people who have big enough voices (and egos) to want to perform solo arias or opera scenes or even art songs in a concert, not just choral music.

So for what it's worth, here's the statement:

My mission is to provide singing opportunities for late-starting nontraditionally trained classical solo singers age 50 and older through having performance classes that will culminate in an annual (or more frequent) concert.  As a result, I will feel empowered and will be able to provide performance opportunities for singers ignored in conventional settings. 

 So I will wait to see what feedback I get about it.

Homework

One of the things my therapist has been doing is giving me homework, which stimulates my imagination in much the same way as the exercises in the back of The Artist's Way did.

Because I spend so much of my life (really all of my work life) in one dimension, looking at text on a screen, and making left brain microchoices, and the rest of my life dealing with an elderly person's pedestrian needs, I really sometimes think my imagination has atrophied.  I mean it didn't happen overnight.  Thirty-five years working in highly regimented environments (whether I was at the bottom or the top of the hierarchy didn't seem to matter much) contributed to this also.

Most of the homework involved making lists of things I enjoy, things I feel passionate about, things that have made me feel elated and optimistic, etc.

Today I came up with something of my own, which I actually put into a spreadsheet (but it does not contain any numbers!!)

It is a list of "Things I Yearn For", with columns going across labeled, "The Last Time I Had That Thing," "Roadblocks to Having That Thing Again," and "How to Have That Thing." Surprisingly, the last column had fewer blanks than I had feared.

Just because, I will precis some of this here, with some of the less than G rated items expunged.

So the first thing on the list was

Star in a performance.  OK, so this I did as recently as last month.  Why don't I do it more often?  Mostly lack of money and lack of access to venues.  I already handle the money issue by not spending money on other things (vacations, clothes, things for the house, entertainment).  As for finding venues, I just need to do more networking.

Be perceived as a star in a group, no matter how small.  This is one of the places I came up empty.  There simply isn't anyplace small enough. I suppose the last time I felt like that was the first few years I was a soloist at the Lutheran church, but the place is now crawling with young conservatory students/graduates.  I am not going to move.  It just is not feasible.  I have ties here, my family has lived here for three generations (I'm the only one left, but it's an urban lifestyle that has been passed down), and I have a rent controlled apartment.

Dress up and attract attention.  This is something I love, love, love, love to do and have never had enough opportunities to do.  Coming from a New York secular Marxist family we didn't have weddings (if people got married it was so that they could start families - they certainly didn't wear expensive white gowns or have bridesmaids), bat mitzvahs, sweet 16 parties, or even proms.  If my high school had a prom no one I socialized with went to it.  I wasn't a wallflower, but the crowd I hung out with was too bohemian for stuff like that.  Then of course there were my years in the Lesbian community where getting dressed up was anathema.  I suppose I had my delayed "prom experience" the last time I went to the Lesbian Pride dance (probably in the early 90s) and was one of three women out of 100 wearing a dress.  It was a long dress that my partner had bought for me and displayed quite a bit of frontage.  So what reason do I have to get dressed up now?  Practically zip.  Something I may do is go to Ricky's and buy some wigs (I have a gypsyish one that I wear for my Habanera turns).  They cost about $15 apiece. If I got a long platinum blonde one I could dress up as Dolly Parton.  I have the same type physique and hey, she's about three years older than I am, so there! Maybe I can throw together an outfit and wear a wig with it.  But go where??? I can't go to parties at night for no reason and the handful of parties I do go to wouldn't be for that type of thing.  What's interesting is a woman I know online who is quite ill, and a lot more housebound than I am is having a party themed around a movie and made herself a dress.  I just don't know people who do those things.

Have an online photographic presence.  Maybe I should design myself a web site or a Facebook fan page (I actually looked for instructions for how to do that and couldn't find any).  It's sort of like the Wizard of Oz.  I don't need a big opera contract, I just have to promote myself as if I had one. In this era of the Kardashians maybe I'm trying to do things wrong way round.  I can just be in people's face because I've got chutzpah.

To have "work" that involves deconstructing personalities and personal relationships; especially if you're talking about sexual and romantic relationships.  This took me by surprise.  One of the exercises my therapist had me do was make a list of things I'd done at jobs that I'd actually enjoyed and they all had to do with people: reading and vetting resumes, hiring and training people, having brainstorming sessions with my bosses or other managers about what people were like and what tasks they were best suited for, doing performance evaluations.  I also did quite a bit of this when I counseled at that LGBT center.  People would talk about relationships they were in, dating, lust, longing, limerence, identity, etc.  I remember dressing up and giving a workshop with another woman about being butch and being femme.  I don't get to do any of that now.  Any problem solving I do for a living has to do with language, punctuation, or type fonts.  One of things that I know I envy working singers for is all the time they put in deconstructing characters and their relationships to each other (which often seem to involve a lot of flirting, if not groping!), and playing around with costumes (mentioned earlier).  If I didn't have to take care of my partner (or worry that she would disapprove) I might try to get a job in a store that sold cosmetics or lingerie so I could be around pretty things, and some frivolity and silliness, even if I were only making a minimum wage.  If I only did it 8-10 hours a week I could still do my other work and it might be a nice change.

And last but not least....

The "Wow" factor.  That is, doing something in a group of people and having them respond "YOU can do that???"  That was the response I got when I sang a few bars of "Mon Coeur" in the dressing room at the Port Aransas Community Theater when my play was produced.  And I probably got a reaction like that from the people at the Unitarian Church the first few times I sang something there.  This is the reaction that any soprano who walks into my current choir gets if she can sing above an A.  Alas, there's nothing mezzos can do that seems to elicit that.  No one seems to care how loud I can sing, how many measures I can sing without taking a breath, or how fast I can sing. The last column for this entry came up a total blank. I need to find something...

A Bit at Loose Ends

Well, it turns out that asking to use the venue that I had wanted to use for my concert probably isn't a good idea.

The Spanish woman I have written about has done something that put me off a bit (although I don't for a minute blame her for doing it - I think it's a great idea).  She has kicked off a fundraising campaign asking everyone she knows to promote her one woman show and ask people to contribute.  This is a great idea.  If you want to fundraise you need to cast a wide net.  On the other hand I can't get caught up in it.  I earn less than $40k a year and any money I spend on altruism goes to taking care of my partner or making small donations to outfits that will help the needy.  If I spend any money on art, it's gonna be in my own backyard.

So I would feel a bit funny asking her to sponsor me (this doesn't cost money - she just has to think a concert or performance I'm putting on is worth her putting her name behind) if I am not participating in this campaign.  If all she wanted was a letter of reference of some kind, I would be happy to write one (in fact I did, last year), but  money, or asking friends for money, no.  In all likelihood the day may come when I will have to ask friends for money to help my partner pay her rent.  So I will save my cajoling and persuading talents for that eventuality.

I do want to stay on good terms with her, though, and hope to get to her one woman show and sing in another of her September 11 or Christmas concerts if she has them.

So the only other venue I can think of is that space I used for the Verdi concert over a year ago, where the air quality was so poor I felt I was choking.  On the other hand, that happened only after someone turned on the air conditioner, which probably hadn't been cleaned. So if I want to sing there I can make it a stipulation that they clean it, I guess.

The good news is I am coming along with Werther. The big high As are mostly in the middle of arpeggio-like passages which for me are the easiest.  And I really love the "Letter Scene"!

Maybe I will try to do a concert version of Werther.  I don't really see this scene being in a pastiche type concert.  And I can do the opera with only three other people.

I Don't Think This is a Cop Out

As one of the things on my "bucket list" is to be the subject of someone's newspaper or magazine article, I realize what I need to do is write to journalists who have written articles about people like me.  If they've written one, maybe they will write another.

An article that I keep coming back to is this one. I have thought about it a lot, but I realized I had not reread it.

Several thing mentioned in the article explain why, even after 9 years of studying now, with two good teachers (yes, the Mentor was a good voice teacher, he just interspersed a lot of lascivious blather and New Age silliness into the lessons) I don't sound as good as, say, someone who is now in a  Master's of Vocal Performance program.

This article explains that older people learn technique more slowly because older people learn more slowly, and in the case of singing of playing an instrument, we are trying to learn something kinetic at the same time that our bodies are getting weaker, stiffer, and less flexible.  That is one thing my teacher has mentioned (and I don't think this is a cop out on his part either).  Extending one's range (my nemesis) he has told me involves stretching, and if my cartilege and muscles are aging, they don't have as much give in them.  I mean on  the one hand I have studied as long as someone in a Master's program, but on the other hand, I am now past the age when even good singers start to lose both range and stamina.  So while I think my voice sounds better than it did, and I have a nicer line and more beauty to my sound, those outlier notes in a role like, say, Amneris, look scarier now than they did four years ago.

I don't really know where this is going, otherwise than to say that there is a third force at work here, not just how much practice time I put in and how good my teacher is.

In any event, I decided to write to the author of this article.  He writes regularly for the TIMES, and who knows?  If he wants to write another article on this subject, maybe he will interview me.  I hope at least he answers my email.

Now I had better get to bed.  I have to get up and sing a choir piece with numerous high Gs.  Sadly, I don't even care that much.  I don't feel it really matters if I am there or not any more.

Making Plans

So happy to be writing about this rather than about being unhappy.

I asked my teacher what to work on next, and we decided to go with French opera excerpts.  That repertoire doesn't take as much oomph as Verdi, but I can still use a big sound.  So it's sort of in between the sound I use for church solos and the sound I used for Azucena.

I will look at the scene from Werther and the scene from Hamlet. I am not sure if I will have the stamina to do both, but that depends upon which part of the scene from Werther I decide to do.  The part after "Va" is what is difficult because there are at least four or five sustained high As.  The earlier part is easier.  I could do the earlier part of the scene, with Sophie (that's the part with the two arias), and the scene with Hamlet (a bit more dramatic than the scene with Werther but not as high), and finish off with the duet from Samson et Dalila that ends with "Mon Coeur".  If I cut it off before the screaming match with the high B flat it's easy sailing and I can have fun.

I need to be less "wimpy".  The problem is I have limited energy, so I really have to pace myself.  It really is a tug of war.  My vocal technique continues to improve but I am getting older and weaker (if nothing else, I am definitely getting shorter, and the fact that my spine is compressing means I have less strength around the midsection).

Well, I have about a year to decide what to do about this concert - or whatever.  I think there's a venue I can use if the Spanish woman (it's a small performance space in her apartment building) is willing to "sponsor" me.  So this means that she has to like what I am doing.

As for other things, I got the Bach aria transposed down and it is easy to sing in the lower key.  I made the mistake of telling the filmmaker that it cost $45, so she thought I was hitting her up for money.  I hope I cleared things up.  I explained that I would only ask her to pay for it if she got a grant to make the film.  I needed to get it transposed so that I could see if I could sing it.

As for church solos, I am in a bit of a quandary because the choir director just had a baby so I don't want to bother him about solos.  I gave the music for "Domine Deus" and "Laudamus te" to the violinist and suggested two dates (for the "Domine Deus" - the "Laudamus te" would be for the summer).  I will check back with him at the end of the month.  By then the choir director will be settled down a bit.  In other news at the church, they apparently disbanded the other choir (for people who like to sing but don't have much training, some of whom don't read music at all) because not enough people were showing up.  But they have not increased our choir's schedule (we sing three Sundays a month and at all the holiday services).  So I wonder what is happening to all those empty anthem spots?  A call for soloists hasn't gone out, the way it does in the summer when there is no choir.  When I get a chance to talk to the choir director I may ask about this.

I just can't lose faith in myself.

Pop Psych B**ls**t

You know I am very angry if I am using profanity.  It's not my style.

Particularly in the wake of what happened in Boston, I have thought it important to adjust my attitude a little and try (this is as big a battle as trying to make my life more interesting) to just stop the whining for a moment and be grateful for the things I have.

Then I see this

and feel that I am right back where I started.

This image and the stupid simplistic idea that this is something everyone can do is as toxic as all those pictures of skinny women in beautiful clothes and the articles about the latest diet saying anyone can have a perfect body if they only try hard enough (or the perfect job, the perfect mate, the best behaved children, you name it).

Much of life is about choosing the lesser of two evils, or doing what seems best at a given time, and then before you know it you are well over 50 and a lot of dies have been cast.

So I bought myself (in a very small way) the freedom to "do it later".  That is not what I was thinking at the time, what I was thinking at the time was that I had seen a lot of very poor people who had made bad employment choices (or made none) and I didn't really want to be living the way they were living in old age.  

All I have to do is look at my partner.  Or my voice teacher.  He would be up a creek if his wife didn't have a good job with benefits.

I feel as if this idiotic piece of crap has undone about 10 hours of talking in therapy trying to make peace with my life as it is.  Not that I can't make it better, but I can't undo 35 years of deadly dull work  (which yielded me health insurance for life and two 401ks) and re-live them going to various graduate schools, participating in artistic internships, pursuing a dream. What I bought myself is that I know I will never starve, be homeless, or have so little money that I have to choose between buying medicine and seeing an occasional movie.

In less than 4 years when I can collect my full retirement amount from Social Security if I add that to my income I can have a comfortable life, and when I'm 80 I can stop working and annuitize the money in my 401ks - and travel anywhere I want to. My mother was healthy as a horse more or less until she was 93.

A lot of the people who post these idiocies are in their 30s or 40s.  The jury is still out about what they will choose as the clock ticks.

A Conundrum

Because I work as a medical editor, I have access to a lot of medical resources. So the other day I took the Beck Depression Inventory. Astoundingly, I got a score of 5, which isn't even anywhere near depressed.  To be depressed you have to have a score of at least 11.  True, two of the questions were worded in such a way as to make me answer them in such a way as to yield a score of 0, but even if I'd answered them differently, my total score would only have been a 7.

For example I answered "I feel I have failed more than the average person" "No", but then, I don't see myself as a demographically average person.  Do I feel I have failed more than someone from my original sociodemographic background?  Or do I feel I have failed more than most of the people my age that I would be socializing with?  The answer to both of those questions would have been "yes".

Then there's "I get as much satisfaction out of things as I used to."  I answered that question "yes", which yields a score of 0, but for me that is not the question.  For me the question is do I spend as much time doing things I get satisfaction out of, and the answer to that is "no".  I have neither the money, the time, or the family structure (either single, or with a partner who is as healthy and solvent as I am) to do them.

So I am not depressed.  My therapist says she agrees.  But says I am "unhappy" most of the time.  Actually that is not true.  I talk to her about the things I am unhappy about, by way of trying to change them.  And I suppose I write here about the things I am unhappy about.  Most people I socialize with would not describe me as unhappy, and in fact I enjoy most aspects of life in the world other than pursuing my livelihood alone at my laptop, and engaging with my partner about her housework issues, medical issues, and money problems.  The source of my unhappiness is that these things that are unhappy making take up most of my time.  But I can't see myself spending my tiny rind of free time doing the kind of phony networking you have to do to find other sorts of work and I don't really believe that there is any other source of work that would be this readily available that I would like that much more.  And I am not going to abandon my partner, even though she really isn't that any more: more like a child that I cherish and care for because she can't take care of herself.

The "conundrum" is that being bored makes me unhappy and being unhappy makes me boring.  What do I have to talk about that would interest anyone?  My immediate enivrons are stuffed with people who do all kinds of interesting things.

Here's an example.  Yesterday the church had a panel discussion about "faith and the performing arts".  Probably that is not something anyone would ask me to talk about but in point of fact no one there (or anywhere) has ever asked me to talk about anything.  Nor have very many people that I know expressed even the slightest interest in me, other than as a human being (which is important) with a life that has ups and downs (people were very kind to me when my mother died, when my pets died, and during various times when my partner has been ill and things have been stressful).

Something interesting that, actually, two people said at that talk was how much they hated "self-promotion" and the press.  I can understand about hating self-promotion: there's something tacky about it.  But the press is another story.  I would love to get someone from the press interested in me.  The question is how to do it?  You don't have to be a celebrity, politician, or serial killer.  At least half the articles in the New York Times Magazine, for example, are about relatively ordinary people who belong to a demographic that someone wants to write about.  So how are these people found?  I probably belong to at least five demographics that someone would love to write about.  Are ads placed somewhere?  (I guess now it would be done online.)

For example, I would have been a perfect person to be interviewed for This article. So where did the author find his subjects?

One thing I miss about 12 step programs is that everyone is allowed to tell their story and every story is deemed equally interesting.  I think the reason I am hesitant to go back there is it doesn't seem a good use of my time.  I have to sit and listen to someone talk for a half hour and then may or may not get called on if I raise my hand, once I start speaking they set a timer, and no one is allowed to refer to anything I said during the meeting because that is considered "cross talk".  If I were going to get involved with a group of some kind I would want something small, where everyone gets an equal share of the talking time.

I think a lot of my being unhappy is being situated in the wrong peer group.  Not just about singing, but about a lot of things.  Most people I know have interesting careers (or did), travel, and come to the table (literally and figuratively) with things to talk about.

And the more bored and boring I feel, the unhappier I get, and the unhappier I get, the more boring I am, and so on and so forth.

I might feel completely different about myself if f I knew and spent time with more "average" people: women my age with high school diplomas who have had a spotty employment and marital history and would be bowled over by all the literature I've read, the art I've seen, and the music I've sung, however well or badly I've sung it.  But people like that are as rare as hen's teeth where I live.

Why I Started Going to Church in the First Place. Oh, and Paging Dr. Who

I realize that with all I've written here about the Mentor, the Unitarian church, my current involvement (mostly, but not entirely musical) with the Lutheran church, and my atheistic family, I have never really explained why I started going to church in the first place.

I should say that despite my parents being atheistic Marxists and my mother being ethnically Jewish, we lived in Brooklyn Heights, which was an extremely WASPy neighborhood.  At that time it was not, however, an expensive neighborhood, the way it is today.  There were Old Money WASPs there and poor WASPs (not to be confused with poor whites). These poor WASPs were people who had somewhere long ago been connected by blood to Old Money but had severed all connections with their families either because they were gay, were or had been active alcoholics, lived a bohemian lifestyle of some sort, or their parents or grandparents had been crazy and had given most of the family money to charity.  And most of these people attended the local Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Unitarian churches (in those days Unitarian churches were not that different from Protestant churches except that they didn't call Jesus "Christ" and didn't mention the Resurrection or the afterlife; but there was classical music and people got dressed up to attend services).  So this was the culture I was immersed in.  Not to mention my total immersion in Brit Lit, where the local village church and its vicar were regular stock characters.

As I grew older, when I wasn't seeing myself as a femme fatale, I saw myself more and more as a character in one of these books.

An essay that changed my life was an essay on the subject of Christianity and the Victorians written by Gertrude Himmelfarb. I hesitate to mention her because her husband and son are rather loathesome right-wing ideologues, but Gertrude has mostly confined herself to writing about the social sphere and has equally condemned the "feel good" revolution from the left and the "greed is good" message from the right as being responsible for fraying the fabric of society.

This essay mentioned that after the ideas of Darwin gained a foothold, very few British intellectuals believed in things like the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or the afterlife (although they continued to mythologize the latter), but that hey still considered themselves "Christians", most notably "Anglicans" which was part of having a British identity.  Even Jews, such as Disraeli, considered it not oxymoronic to be both Jewish and members of the Church of England.

So this led me to think that it was "OK" for me to want to go to church even if I didn't believe a lot of the doctrine.  Having had fond memories of my childhood visits to the Unitarian church in Brooklyn, including singing in the choir, I decided to go (with my partner) to the local Unitarian church on the Upper West Side.  Well, the rest is history.  When I started attending services I had no intention of singing, but, well, the hymnals were there, so I sang.  And I met The Mentor.  And then I developed a faith in God, which I had not had before, even after 28 years of sobriety in AA.  If my voice returned, better than it had ever been, after 23 years, when I was in God's house, then s/he must really be there.

After I met the Mentor my identity shifted from "nice churchlady" who watched Masterpiece Theater, to  "occasional femme fatale", but I thought I had a niche.  I could sing solos on the big holidays (really the only other trained singers were a coloratura soprano pursuing a career, and The Mentor himself) and once in a while sing an aria in one of their annual "talent shows", which consisted of a little singing in various genres, a little poetry reading, a little dance, and some silliness - very English village.  But that did not happen.  I fell in love with Mentor, he fell out of love with me (that might have happened anyhow; I think he would have gotten bored with me in any event), and the congregation decided it didn't want to hear operatic style singing or "Christian" oratorio pieces.

Where I am now is a lot more formal, and has in recent years, despite that there is no pay for singing, become a magnet for serious talent, not to mention that it is smack between Juilliard, Mannes, and the Manhattan School of Music.  And, oh, did I mention that Marilyn Horne has made an arrangement for her proteges to give recitals there?

When I was thinking of scaling back (not giving up singing, just giving up opera singing other than the occasional aria or scene) I was imagining myself somewhere where I could do what I did at that Unitarian church: be one of a tiny handful of acknowledged "stars" in a struggling choir, sing solos at the big holidays, and sing an aria or two at special events.

If I shut my eyes tight I can imagine myself, in the late 1940s or 1950s, in a tiny church in St. Mary Mead, listening to the choir struggling through a hymn with gusto, my voice soaring above them. Oh, Dr. Who, could you please take me there?

Confidence?

This morning was actually the second time I had seen my therapist since she came to my concert, but I guess we were talking about other things, because today was the first time she gave me feedback.  What she said was that I had so much talent, but so little confidence.  She said there were moments when I owned the stage (singing "Liber Scriptus") but then other moments when I looked shy and unsure of myself (interestingly, she said most of these were when I was not singing).  I was not offended by this comment any more than I was offended by my teacher saying I was singing too softly and that this disappointed him.  The question is what to do with such feedback.

Which brings me back to what I said in earlier posts about not having had the advantages that conservatory students have, even though by now I have studied voice as long as someone with a Masters in Vocal Performance.  Those people are in performance classes where they get feedback on a regular basis about everything from how they look to how they pronounce languages.  I have not had that experience.  My teacher gives me feedback about my singing and about the style of what I am singing (mostly if it's Italian opera).  The choir director mostly just wants me to sing "pretty".  The choir does sing things in different languages so we get drilled in how to pronounce words in German, for example, and the Spanish woman helped me with my Spanish (although I felt most of what she had to say about vocal production was wrong, so I did some of it but didn't incorporate it into my singing when I was not singing for her).  But that is not the same as having to get up in front of my peers (what peers???) every week and sing something, starting with the Italian songbook, and ending, maybe six years later, with some dramatic arias.  As I've said, the two groups I went to that were supposed to serve that purpose were filled with people younger and more confident, so I just felt depressed and irrelevant.

I was telling my therapist that the issue of confidence is in some ways a feedback loop.  I felt more confident in the beginning when I was working with the Mentor and everyone was bowled over by how I sounded because the choir was so talent starved.  And I felt reasonably confident when I started out in this avocational choir and was one of the, oh, let's say three best singers there.  But the more I see how I don't measure up, even as an avocational opera singer, certainly in Manhattan (or the outer boroughs - people will travel there to sing a leading role, i.e. nothing is just for the local talent any more) the less confidence I have.  And I have been trained to be make myself look humble and self-effacing when I sing choir solos.  I have never really been encouraged, except briefly by the Mentor, to strut my stuff in any way.  If it isn't the choir director telling me to sing softly (even when I'm singing a solo) it's my partner telling me to cover up my cleavage and dress like a "mature professional woman" (barf).

I also think (insane as this sounds) that I underrated the extent to which seeing all those equality signs everywhere made me feel ripped off.  That was my private bit of daring 30 years ago and now it's a litmus test for how "with it" the stodgy urban middle classes are?

Which is not that afield from how I feel about singing.  Is there no little patch of ground I can stand on that isn't occupied by a bajillion people?

It would be so much easier if I were "from" somewhere else and I could just "go home" where there was less competition, fewer singers with large operatic voices, fewer pretty Lesbians who were "out". But I am in fact a third generation apartment dwelling, subway riding, non-driving New Yorker.  And so much of what once was "metropolitan and cosmopolitan" has now moved out to smaller cities and larger towns that I would have to go somewhere very very very small indeed to feel special.

I want to run away to Ogunquit.  Sometimes that's what I really really want to do.  With my partner.  Away from all the people who swallow me up and make me feel invisible, anonymous, and irrelevant.

Another Disappointment

If my previous post was humorous, this one is not.

And the weird thing is that I'm not even that upset.

At today's voice lesson my teacher gave me a lecture.  He has never done this, certainly not on this global a scale.

He said that I was "undersinging" during the Requiem, not so much in Liber Scriptus, which I was really happy with, but throughout the rest of it, and also during "Lux Aeterna" and that I sounded weak and did not "match" with the other singers.  He didn't see the concert but got this from a neighbor of his (an opera buff) who came to hear it, and also from the CD.  He told me he thought I sounded better in the concert I did a year and a half ago where I thought I sounded awful. He said in that concert some of my high notes were ugly but the rest of my singing was better.  That in this I sort of "crooned" my way through it to save my energy for a few things (if I was saving energy - since Liber Scriptus would have been over - it was to get a nice "spin" on my voice for "Lux Aeterna" and not choke on that G at the end).

I feel like I've been spending the past 8 years going back and forth between two less than ideal scenarios.  I mean each time I come back to one I sound a little better than I did before, so it's not as if I'm going around in a circle (more like a spiral, where I'm never quite at the same place) but it is still disheartening.  Either I sing with my whole voice (which is actually very big) and I get tired and have trouble with the higher notes, even ones that are really part of my range like an A and an A flat, or I sing with part of my voice so that I can keep that buzz and have an easier time with the higher notes (which aren't even that high - I've never made a decent sound on anything above a B flat).

The problem is I have so few opportunities to perform that I don't take risks, or try new things.  So whatever I have learned this time will not be put to use for a long, long time.  I don't have the advantages younger people have to sing in performance classes and get feedback over and over and over and get rid of their fears and try new things.  When I tried doing that everyone was at such a higher level (and were much younger) that I was totally intimidated and didn't even sing my best.  The only thing I get to sing regularly (and even then we are talking about every two months or so) are church solos, and basically the message I have gotten is it has to be pretty or it's not acceptable.  So breathy and pretty is OK, and croony and pretty is OK, and singing things that don't go above an F sharp is probably the best choice so I don't get obnoxiously loud.

If I were younger and not enmeshed in a life I might try new things, new people, new ideas, but everything is such a struggle, between lack of money, lack of time, eldercare, no peer group (people pooh poohed this and said all I have to do is organize something and get people interested, but that is not the same as having a peer group of people who are close to my own age but singing at my level that I feel safe trying new things with and being in it together with).

I feel like I just am not getting anywhere.  I know that I sound better than I used to, but still not good enough for the environment that I'm in.  And every time I feel I am making some progress there's a tidal wave of talented people (e.g. the young conservatory students at the church) pushing me down to the bottom again. It isn't just that I started late.  It's that I started late and have limited resources.  Very few people over a certain age can just follow their dream, like a 20 year old.  Maybe in some very unusual circumstances: a divorcee with no children, no living elderly relatives, and a financial safety net.  I mean my disappointment with the career counseling program was very similar.  I didn't have the resources for endless self-exploration and pursuing a dream, I had to find something to do for a living where I could take time off during the day to take at that time two elderly people to appointments.

So getting back to singing, I started late, but have not progressed over these 8 or 9 years at the rate that a conservatory student would have progressed because I cannot afford "total immersion", either in terms or time, or money, or lack of other responsibilities.

But I don't seem to be willing to give it up.

My SO said I should do something like buy myself a pretty period costume and sing things like "After the Ball is Over" where I can use my legit voice and not overstress myself, and entertain people.  So I suppose singing these second soprano, low soprano, or high alto church solos with a limited range is the same kind of thing.

I just don't know....

A Passing Thought for The Mentor

I have been thinking a lot about him this week for some reason.  Not with lust or too much envy (albeit a bit of the latter), but, well, just thinking because he was the one who got me on this road that began with so much hope, has taken me through so much disappointment, and yet has become totally obsessive.

First of all: I know there are some gay men who read this blog, so tell me this.  How could a man who is gay, just be so all over women in a way that telegraphs hotness, and not of the male on male kind?

No, he did not put an "equality" sign on Facebook, but then again, I can't imagine him interested in anything as bourgeois as marriage.  He is over 50 and has never even had a steady relationship!  When I knew him he was (boastfully) juggling three (male) friends with benefits who did not know about each other.

Actually, it was because of him that not only am I singing now, but also I have publicly declared myself to be nonmonogamous on principle, whatever that means.  (Well, when your "mate" is elderly and ill, it means something different than it means if your mate is healthy and willing and you're "cheating".)

I remember noticing when I used to take voice lessons in his apartment that the picture he had as his computer wallpaper were of him with a woman in her 90s, a dancer he had met in a nursing home.  Most of his pictures on Facebook show him in a sea of women, flirting with them - or with the camera. The latest crop show him with various burlesque performers, and in one he has his hand on her breast?

Is anyone surprised I thought he represented that Freudian paradigm in reverse: the latent heterosexual?

As I have posted photos here of myself, former roommates, and singers I am envious of, I feel like having a giggle, after so many years of writing about him.  You know you're dying to see....(I am withholding his name and the name of the school where he teaches, but that's it)

Neither one of us was the world's greatest opera singer, but he ended up doing something fun and sexy for a living and I ended up, well, here at my laptop.

But if I hadn't had you I wouldn't have had this

So what's next?