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...