I had a series of experiences over the past few days that had me on an emotional roller coaster, and led me to the sense that in addition to being lonely (I am certifiably not depressed), I am extremely jaded.
Most people I know who are happy seem to be people whose lives have exceeded their expectations. Either they grew up poor and surprised themselves by becoming comfortably off, or they were the first (or the only) person in their family to go to college and are impressed by their own knowledge and intelligence (I don't mean in an arrogant way, I mean in truly finding these things a source of pleasure), or they have moved to New York from somewhere else and continue to be amazed by all the possibilities.
Thursday night I went to hear a Skype conversation with a young couple from the church who have moved to Jerusalem to be "missionaries". I put the word in quotes because to me it sounds slightly quaint, or possibly iffy, if "missionary" means trying to convert people. But I was assured that Lutheran missionaries do not try to convert people, they only go where there are already Lutheran churches and try to help. These two young people are good. Truly good. I love them very much. So much that sometimes I want to cry. I didn't grow up with people who were good. I grew up with people who were ethical and generous, but that was always tempered with a good dose of intellectual snark. Almost as if that snark were a mandatory component of being intelligent. Then there were the people who rebelled against that by being touchy feely in a hippie-ish kind of way that I found silly. The media seems to think that this younger generation (is it Gen X or Gen Y? I can't keep track?) invented "irony" but believe me, it was alive and well when my mother was growing up in the 1930s. My mother modeled herself on Dorothy Parker with a dash of Elizabeth Bennett thrown in.
After I came home Thursday night I felt spiritually renewed, feeling that knowing those young people and seeing their joy in doing God's work had changed me somehow. My life would be so much happier and simpler if I wanted to be good instead of wanting to be a star (even in a tiny venue), but I don't.
Then on Friday night I heard Audra McDonald sing Make Someone Happy and thought, "why can't I just be happy with that? All the fighting and friends with benefits aside, I have made one person happy for a long, long time, and she has made me happy. Not everyone has that. Why can't that make me happy? Why can't it be enough?"
Lastly, I saw an interesting post on Facebook, from a woman from the church I am friendly with, who said her life was so rich and varied "beyond my expectations, coming from a small town" and you see that is the problem. How can I be happy with anything when I've been up to my eyeballs in the best of everything since I was 5 years old? My parents were not rich, and in fact after my father died my mother and I were poor, but they/she managed to take me to the ballet, the theater, concerts, museums, etc. so that by the time I was in High School I had seen it all. What was left for me to do that could ever even live up to those standards?
For a while I could be a Lesbian activist. Not many people were doing that, certainly not any women who looked like me, and it was considered edgy, different, pioneerish. Maybe I was my own kind of missionary, now that I think of it. Now that's gone.
Will I ever have the sense of wonder and excitement that people have to whom things are new? I just don't think so.
And it's a two way street. I do not impress anyone and very little impresses me. I suppose the only thing that impresses me is the level of skill, expertise, and ambition that so many very young people have. They start out starring in their chosen endeavor in High School (when I was in High School I was so overwhelmed with eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual conflict and apathy I could barely maintain a B average) and keep it up through prestigious schools. Now it's true that many of them will probably not be any better off at 62 (I will be 63 before you know it) than I am, but what I'm seeing is the beginning of the story not the last chapters.
So now I am off to my choir "gig". (Some people laugh at me for calling it that, as I don't get paid, but that's tough nuggies. I work as hard as any paid choir singer.) This piece has 8 parts and last Wednesday the choir director actually publicly noticed the "second sopranos" and said thank you for staying on a difficult part. That was a first. His specialty is that any compliments or criticisms are always very general. I remember a friend of mine (another late starting classical singer) mentioning how her previous choir director "made a fuss" over her and another singer in that choir with training. Well, I guess if the church is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, good amateur singers don't impress anyone.
ETA: After rereading this I realize that it needs some clarification. Obviously I have not seen and done it all. In fact, I have been to very few places, far fewer than most people I know. There are countries, cultures, animals, scenery, and many many other things here in the United States and abroad that I have not seen. What I meant, was basically two things. First, that having grown up in New York, I have seen and done everything there is to see and do here, the best and the worst, the scariest, the funniest, the most upscale and the most gutter. So 9/11 excepted, there is nothing I have seen here as an adult, on the street, on the subway, or in a theater, that I find surprising, shocking, or astounding, in a good or a bad way. And - and this is more to the point - there is absolutely nothing in my daily life that even approaches the tamer dreams or expectations I had growing up, let alone exceeding them. I do fewer different kinds of things at work or at play than about 95% of the people I grew up with or those I know now. So short of suddenly having the time, money, and freedom to travel, I can't think of anything that is likely to cross my path that will take my breath away, surprise me, or astonish me. Nor is there anything among my meager accomplishments that is likely to amaze or astonish anyone else. Which is very sad.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Vocal Porn, or How Reading an Article about Body Image Gave Me an Insight
I feel somewhat guilty not writing about Oklahoma, on the other hand as I don't know anyone who lives there, it hasn't hit me on a gut level (am I empathy challenged?) other than that the fact that their senator has refused aid unless Congress cuts the budget somewhere else has elicited major anger and disgust.
What I do feel like writing about is how reading an article about women's obsession with their bodies gave me an insight into some of the angst I keep going through about singing.
If anyone's interested, this is the article I am referencing. It's mostly about the difference between a weight at which one feels fit, energized, and alive, and a number on the scale that one obsesses over. True, there is some tangential connection between weight and health (although it may be more related to what one eats than what one weighs, and the jury is still out as to whether there is any connection at all, except among the morbidly obese).
For some reason, I was thinking about the connection between how various women obsess about that last ten (or twenty) pounds, and about how their life will be different if they lose it, and how they lose it and regain it and lose it again, and how I feel about those last few notes in my singing range.
I realized the other day that I really don't enjoy singing anything that goes above a G or at most a G sharp (fast coloratura excepted). It makes me too nervous. I try this, and I try that, and on a good day it sounds great, but if I'm even the teensiest bit tired, or anxious, or if I've been talking too much, the phrase in question turns into a train wreck. And once there's been a train wreck, the phrase is doomed forever, like a fence that a horse balks at. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I panic, I turn to a block of wood, I don't breathe, my larynx rises, I blow it, then I get nervous again. I can't enjoy, for example, how gloriously I can sing Charlotte's "Letter Scene" because I see that page with the high A that you have to hold for 5 counts looming ahead.
Do I need a different teacher? I don't think it would make that much difference. Over the years between my current teacher (who is extremely eclectic) and others, not to mention things I've read in vocal technique blogs, I have tried this and tried that, and these things work for a little while and then they don't. This does not mean I have not made progress. Within my comfortable range, which probably means up to a G for sustained singing and up to an A for fast singing, my voice continues to sound better and better (other people have told me this), I have more stamina, a nicer line, and less of a break in my lower passagio. But really, each successive note above a G gets harder and harder. I can sing the A like gangbusters if I can take my own setup time and don't have to hold it more than 2 counts (e.g. at the end of Amneris's "Judgment Scene") but not if I have to keep singing and singing and singing and breathe on the fly beforehand (or hold it for more than 2 or 3 counts). I can sing a decent B flat if I sing another note first and to do that I must have plenty of rest and setup time (like in the aria from Sapho.) I can sing the B in an arpeggio and hit the note squarely on pitch but can only hold it for one count, and the C is basically touch and go.
One theory that intrigued me was the one mentioned here. I may have too much "armor". Certainly the idea that the problems don't seem to budge with "technique" but manifest as physical limitations, is worth exploring.
If anyone's titillated, the reason why I used the word "porn" in the title of this article, is that I think the obsession with certain notes is not that different from porn's obsession with body parts, or women's obsessions about being able to see a certain (often unrealistic) number on the scale.
The thing that struck me about the weight acceptance article was it asked the question What am I wasting time NOT thinking about that's more important?
Yes, chasing after those last few notes is a challenge I can't resist, but what is it really going to get me? I doubt that having the perfect high B would get me cast in a leading role in a community opera production. I'm obviously over 45 and have, in essence, nothing on my resume.
If what I seem to yearn for most is to "star" in a production, I can star in my own pocket oratorio, the way I did with the Verdi Requiem. I have quite fallen in love with Elijah; the alto soloist is a great role, with all the drama of opera without the scary notes. Knowing that in a few weeks I will be singing "O Rest in the Lord" as a companion to the choir singing "He Watches Over Israel" has lifted my spirits as much as if I were singing an aria with high notes somewhere, and I don't have the jitters and the sweats.
And if my biggest worry is that I will leave this earth without having made a mark on it by doing something creative, there are many many things I can do that are creative, exhibitionistic, flamboyant, and imaginative that I can do with the voice that I comfortably have.
What I do feel like writing about is how reading an article about women's obsession with their bodies gave me an insight into some of the angst I keep going through about singing.
If anyone's interested, this is the article I am referencing. It's mostly about the difference between a weight at which one feels fit, energized, and alive, and a number on the scale that one obsesses over. True, there is some tangential connection between weight and health (although it may be more related to what one eats than what one weighs, and the jury is still out as to whether there is any connection at all, except among the morbidly obese).
For some reason, I was thinking about the connection between how various women obsess about that last ten (or twenty) pounds, and about how their life will be different if they lose it, and how they lose it and regain it and lose it again, and how I feel about those last few notes in my singing range.
I realized the other day that I really don't enjoy singing anything that goes above a G or at most a G sharp (fast coloratura excepted). It makes me too nervous. I try this, and I try that, and on a good day it sounds great, but if I'm even the teensiest bit tired, or anxious, or if I've been talking too much, the phrase in question turns into a train wreck. And once there's been a train wreck, the phrase is doomed forever, like a fence that a horse balks at. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I panic, I turn to a block of wood, I don't breathe, my larynx rises, I blow it, then I get nervous again. I can't enjoy, for example, how gloriously I can sing Charlotte's "Letter Scene" because I see that page with the high A that you have to hold for 5 counts looming ahead.
Do I need a different teacher? I don't think it would make that much difference. Over the years between my current teacher (who is extremely eclectic) and others, not to mention things I've read in vocal technique blogs, I have tried this and tried that, and these things work for a little while and then they don't. This does not mean I have not made progress. Within my comfortable range, which probably means up to a G for sustained singing and up to an A for fast singing, my voice continues to sound better and better (other people have told me this), I have more stamina, a nicer line, and less of a break in my lower passagio. But really, each successive note above a G gets harder and harder. I can sing the A like gangbusters if I can take my own setup time and don't have to hold it more than 2 counts (e.g. at the end of Amneris's "Judgment Scene") but not if I have to keep singing and singing and singing and breathe on the fly beforehand (or hold it for more than 2 or 3 counts). I can sing a decent B flat if I sing another note first and to do that I must have plenty of rest and setup time (like in the aria from Sapho.) I can sing the B in an arpeggio and hit the note squarely on pitch but can only hold it for one count, and the C is basically touch and go.
One theory that intrigued me was the one mentioned here. I may have too much "armor". Certainly the idea that the problems don't seem to budge with "technique" but manifest as physical limitations, is worth exploring.
If anyone's titillated, the reason why I used the word "porn" in the title of this article, is that I think the obsession with certain notes is not that different from porn's obsession with body parts, or women's obsessions about being able to see a certain (often unrealistic) number on the scale.
The thing that struck me about the weight acceptance article was it asked the question What am I wasting time NOT thinking about that's more important?
Yes, chasing after those last few notes is a challenge I can't resist, but what is it really going to get me? I doubt that having the perfect high B would get me cast in a leading role in a community opera production. I'm obviously over 45 and have, in essence, nothing on my resume.
If what I seem to yearn for most is to "star" in a production, I can star in my own pocket oratorio, the way I did with the Verdi Requiem. I have quite fallen in love with Elijah; the alto soloist is a great role, with all the drama of opera without the scary notes. Knowing that in a few weeks I will be singing "O Rest in the Lord" as a companion to the choir singing "He Watches Over Israel" has lifted my spirits as much as if I were singing an aria with high notes somewhere, and I don't have the jitters and the sweats.
And if my biggest worry is that I will leave this earth without having made a mark on it by doing something creative, there are many many things I can do that are creative, exhibitionistic, flamboyant, and imaginative that I can do with the voice that I comfortably have.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Another Survey
As I wrote in this post, apparently I am not depressed.
One sign is that I rarely feel depressed when I am out and about, aka neither in my house nor my partner's.
In today's New York Times I found this article, which may be more to the point. It mentioned - yes, another survey! - this time the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale. The article also mentioned depression, because there is obviously a connection between the two. Lonely people get depressed and depressed people isolate. I never really thought of myself as lonely because I really do love living alone and I enjoy spending time alone. I would more describe myself as "understimulated". On the other hand I felt even more understimulated when I worked in an office sitting at a computer for hours at a time, dealing with metadata and metrics, in a post-Anita Hill environment where no one dared joke, flirt, or even compliment someone on a pretty outfit. Quite frankly I would rather be home in my pajamas if I'm going to be doing something totally unstimulating. At least I can look at my pretty things and sparkly red Christmas lights.
In the interests of full disclosure, my score on the Loneliness Scale was noticeably higher than on the Depression scale. My score on the Depression Scale was extremely low whereas my score on the Loneliness Scale was one tick above the high end of normal, but not yet into the danger zone.
Jane Brody writes about lonely people overeating and indulging in other forms of self-destructive behavior. I don't do that, but I do spend a lot of time online, reading Facebook posts from people with much more exciting lives, or pouring out my heart in these "pages".
Would I be less lonely if I didn't read posts from people who not only have exciting lives as singers and performers, but who obviously wish I would just go away. They are either too nice (or too worried that meanness would tarnish their professional image) to take me off their friends list but they have either blocked me so they don't see my posts (this is a select group of people who have never responded to anything I have posted) and they rarely comment on any comments I make. To be clear, there are some singers and voice teachers who are nice and who do comment on things I post, even things about singing, but these are in the minority.
When I started my new post-Valentine's Day life, I knew it was not just about singing. It was about a lot of things, some of which I don't want to write about here (many of these have improved although mostly on the QT). What I envied so about the Mentor wasn't that he sang (I am already a better singer than he was/is and I have a much more impressive natural instrument) but that he had managed to piece together a life that was about art (mostly another performing art form) and now teaches at a prestigious institution. He did not have any money behind him, and actually as to whether or not he had mentors, I am not sure. And I know other people like that. People who have managed to find something to do for a living (even full time jobs with benefits) that entail doing something different every day and meeting lots of different people.
For whatever reason, that isn't feasible for me right now. I spent a year at career counseling and it yielded nothing except the "low hanging fruit" of being able to do something at home on my own schedule (and the rock and hard place I am stuck between is that if I work more hours I am more depressed, lonely, and understimulated, but if I work fewer hours I won't be able to pay my bills, and there is only so much left in my mother's savings account to tide me over until I can collect my full retirement amount from Social Security in three years). I had thought about taking my laptop to Starbucks (which would mean figuring out how to get it Wifi ready) but have decided that carrying an expensive and fragile - not to mention thief-attracting - item that contains my entire livelihood around unnecessarily would be extremely foolhardy. But maybe I just think that was because I'm old.
Another rock and hard place situation is that I know that my involvement with my partner and her health and money problems (which by extension means that our shared financial means for enjoying ourselves outside the house, which if I'm with her always includes cab fares, is miniscule) is contributing to my loneliness and isolation. On the other hand, if she died I would be heartsick (and lonelier, albeit in a different way) and I could never ever live with myself if I just dumped her. She was the love of my life for almost four decades and still is, in many ways.
One problem is I get so little feedback, good, bad, or indifferent. In a previous post I said that I thought I didn't have anything to offer, but I don't know if that is really true. What I meant, more, is that I am not perceived as having anything to offer to these working singers with music degrees, even if the comments I post are about things I really might know as much about or more about than they do, like health issues, politics, or even the performances of great singers, many of which I saw before they were even born.
So there you have it.
In other news, I think I made a vocal breakthrough working on Werther yesterday, but I don't want to write about it until I see it it holds. I have had so many false hopes to do with various technical tweaks to my upper register that work for a while and then don't. And I ordered the score of Hamlet.
In today's New York Times I found this article, which may be more to the point. It mentioned - yes, another survey! - this time the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale. The article also mentioned depression, because there is obviously a connection between the two. Lonely people get depressed and depressed people isolate. I never really thought of myself as lonely because I really do love living alone and I enjoy spending time alone. I would more describe myself as "understimulated". On the other hand I felt even more understimulated when I worked in an office sitting at a computer for hours at a time, dealing with metadata and metrics, in a post-Anita Hill environment where no one dared joke, flirt, or even compliment someone on a pretty outfit. Quite frankly I would rather be home in my pajamas if I'm going to be doing something totally unstimulating. At least I can look at my pretty things and sparkly red Christmas lights.
In the interests of full disclosure, my score on the Loneliness Scale was noticeably higher than on the Depression scale. My score on the Depression Scale was extremely low whereas my score on the Loneliness Scale was one tick above the high end of normal, but not yet into the danger zone.
Jane Brody writes about lonely people overeating and indulging in other forms of self-destructive behavior. I don't do that, but I do spend a lot of time online, reading Facebook posts from people with much more exciting lives, or pouring out my heart in these "pages".
Would I be less lonely if I didn't read posts from people who not only have exciting lives as singers and performers, but who obviously wish I would just go away. They are either too nice (or too worried that meanness would tarnish their professional image) to take me off their friends list but they have either blocked me so they don't see my posts (this is a select group of people who have never responded to anything I have posted) and they rarely comment on any comments I make. To be clear, there are some singers and voice teachers who are nice and who do comment on things I post, even things about singing, but these are in the minority.
When I started my new post-Valentine's Day life, I knew it was not just about singing. It was about a lot of things, some of which I don't want to write about here (many of these have improved although mostly on the QT). What I envied so about the Mentor wasn't that he sang (I am already a better singer than he was/is and I have a much more impressive natural instrument) but that he had managed to piece together a life that was about art (mostly another performing art form) and now teaches at a prestigious institution. He did not have any money behind him, and actually as to whether or not he had mentors, I am not sure. And I know other people like that. People who have managed to find something to do for a living (even full time jobs with benefits) that entail doing something different every day and meeting lots of different people.
For whatever reason, that isn't feasible for me right now. I spent a year at career counseling and it yielded nothing except the "low hanging fruit" of being able to do something at home on my own schedule (and the rock and hard place I am stuck between is that if I work more hours I am more depressed, lonely, and understimulated, but if I work fewer hours I won't be able to pay my bills, and there is only so much left in my mother's savings account to tide me over until I can collect my full retirement amount from Social Security in three years). I had thought about taking my laptop to Starbucks (which would mean figuring out how to get it Wifi ready) but have decided that carrying an expensive and fragile - not to mention thief-attracting - item that contains my entire livelihood around unnecessarily would be extremely foolhardy. But maybe I just think that was because I'm old.
Another rock and hard place situation is that I know that my involvement with my partner and her health and money problems (which by extension means that our shared financial means for enjoying ourselves outside the house, which if I'm with her always includes cab fares, is miniscule) is contributing to my loneliness and isolation. On the other hand, if she died I would be heartsick (and lonelier, albeit in a different way) and I could never ever live with myself if I just dumped her. She was the love of my life for almost four decades and still is, in many ways.
One problem is I get so little feedback, good, bad, or indifferent. In a previous post I said that I thought I didn't have anything to offer, but I don't know if that is really true. What I meant, more, is that I am not perceived as having anything to offer to these working singers with music degrees, even if the comments I post are about things I really might know as much about or more about than they do, like health issues, politics, or even the performances of great singers, many of which I saw before they were even born.
So there you have it.
In other news, I think I made a vocal breakthrough working on Werther yesterday, but I don't want to write about it until I see it it holds. I have had so many false hopes to do with various technical tweaks to my upper register that work for a while and then don't. And I ordered the score of Hamlet.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Money May Not Matter, but Mentors Do
This blog post was inspired by hearing from two sources recently about the relationship of having money to being able to pursue a career in classical music.
In one instance, a blogger was responding to an online comment from a woman who (I believe) was whining that she could have had an opera career if she had had money, with the purpose of debunking this myth.
In another, a friend of mine mentioned needing money to pursue such a career, as was evidenced by the number of conservatory graduates who can't make a go of a career in music.
I think money helps, certainly in the beginning, and particularly for instrumentalists. A family with money is more likely to buy the child a musical instrument and pay for lessons. With singers I believe this is less important, although it does seem to help if there are musicians in the family (I believe David Brooks wrote that it took three generations to make a career.)
What I do think, and this is my whine, is that you need the right person to come along at the right moment and do or say the right thing, or, more important, for the wrong person not to come along at that moment and do or say the wrong thing. Or for the right person saying the right thing to drown out the wrong person saying the wrong thing. And this doesn't just need to happen once. It needs to happen at various points along the way.
I was a troubled teenager. Almost at the same moment, a music teacher friend of my mother's told me that I had an exceptional voice (it was loud and high - by which I mean secure on Fs, Gs, and As), and I began smoking. The immediate trigger was, actually, my mother, who herself was obese, telling me "have a cigarette, it will curb your appetite". I was 13 and had a BMI of 25. Hardly obese. Then there were the thin girls who smoked. And who hung out in coffee houses in Greenwich Village talking about the meaning of life. Talk and smoke. Suppose that music teacher had been my mother instead?
Suppose someone had said to me "You have a gift and you need to protect it. Leave your weight alone." Suppose I had auditioned for the performing arts high school and developed a different social circle, instead of the beatniks who smoked and talked, and later drank, smoked pot, and took amphetamines.
There's also the issue of screening out distractions. And this has to begin when you're very young. Some people have more discipline than others when it comes to doing this. But then some people also have more distractions than others. And the very age at which you need to be building your talent (I am talking about all the work that has to get done before you get into the music program, not after you leave, which is what the above referenced blog post was discussing) is that age at which most people are most distractable. And of course mentors help here as well. That oh-so-important high school teacher who can tell a young girl to treat her voice gently and stay away not only from smoking and drugs but from trying to scream like Aretha (when she doesn't have the training yet) or Giulietta Simionato (when - well, ditto). Or who can tell her she really needs to re-think the boyfriend who is shooting up or the BFFs (see how with-it I am!) who keep telling her she's fat.
Of course money (or at least education and savvy) can sometimes help with screening out distractions. My coach's daughter, a recent Juilliard graduate who is now studying in Europe (although she did neither of these things on family money - she got grants) was spared getting drawn into all the destructive things teenage girls do by being homeschooled until she left for college. Her family doesn't have a lot of money but they had the savvy to be able to homeschool her. And she is very close with her mother, who has encouraged her dreams rather than laughing at her, as mine did.
Suppose I had been in a kind of time warp and had met the Mentor when I was 14, or even 34, instead of 54? No matter how much he tormented me at the end, he made me believe in myself, and more importantly, he made me realize that God wanted me to sing and that that was what I had to do no matter how many sacrifices I had to make.
There have been so many times I thought I should give up. Or just be a nice choir singer. But just an hour in my bathroom singing arpeggios (yes, that C has been easier this month) and pouring over the score of Werther finding that if I can sing the progression up to the A just the way I sing the progression up to the G flat maybe I can nail it and know that I've nailed it and not panic ever again - maybe, tells me "no, you're not 'done' yet."
If I could just be Benjamin Button! Then in no time at all I could be 45 and who knows what I could accomplish then?
In one instance, a blogger was responding to an online comment from a woman who (I believe) was whining that she could have had an opera career if she had had money, with the purpose of debunking this myth.
In another, a friend of mine mentioned needing money to pursue such a career, as was evidenced by the number of conservatory graduates who can't make a go of a career in music.
I think money helps, certainly in the beginning, and particularly for instrumentalists. A family with money is more likely to buy the child a musical instrument and pay for lessons. With singers I believe this is less important, although it does seem to help if there are musicians in the family (I believe David Brooks wrote that it took three generations to make a career.)
What I do think, and this is my whine, is that you need the right person to come along at the right moment and do or say the right thing, or, more important, for the wrong person not to come along at that moment and do or say the wrong thing. Or for the right person saying the right thing to drown out the wrong person saying the wrong thing. And this doesn't just need to happen once. It needs to happen at various points along the way.
I was a troubled teenager. Almost at the same moment, a music teacher friend of my mother's told me that I had an exceptional voice (it was loud and high - by which I mean secure on Fs, Gs, and As), and I began smoking. The immediate trigger was, actually, my mother, who herself was obese, telling me "have a cigarette, it will curb your appetite". I was 13 and had a BMI of 25. Hardly obese. Then there were the thin girls who smoked. And who hung out in coffee houses in Greenwich Village talking about the meaning of life. Talk and smoke. Suppose that music teacher had been my mother instead?
Suppose someone had said to me "You have a gift and you need to protect it. Leave your weight alone." Suppose I had auditioned for the performing arts high school and developed a different social circle, instead of the beatniks who smoked and talked, and later drank, smoked pot, and took amphetamines.
There's also the issue of screening out distractions. And this has to begin when you're very young. Some people have more discipline than others when it comes to doing this. But then some people also have more distractions than others. And the very age at which you need to be building your talent (I am talking about all the work that has to get done before you get into the music program, not after you leave, which is what the above referenced blog post was discussing) is that age at which most people are most distractable. And of course mentors help here as well. That oh-so-important high school teacher who can tell a young girl to treat her voice gently and stay away not only from smoking and drugs but from trying to scream like Aretha (when she doesn't have the training yet) or Giulietta Simionato (when - well, ditto). Or who can tell her she really needs to re-think the boyfriend who is shooting up or the BFFs (see how with-it I am!) who keep telling her she's fat.
Of course money (or at least education and savvy) can sometimes help with screening out distractions. My coach's daughter, a recent Juilliard graduate who is now studying in Europe (although she did neither of these things on family money - she got grants) was spared getting drawn into all the destructive things teenage girls do by being homeschooled until she left for college. Her family doesn't have a lot of money but they had the savvy to be able to homeschool her. And she is very close with her mother, who has encouraged her dreams rather than laughing at her, as mine did.
Suppose I had been in a kind of time warp and had met the Mentor when I was 14, or even 34, instead of 54? No matter how much he tormented me at the end, he made me believe in myself, and more importantly, he made me realize that God wanted me to sing and that that was what I had to do no matter how many sacrifices I had to make.
There have been so many times I thought I should give up. Or just be a nice choir singer. But just an hour in my bathroom singing arpeggios (yes, that C has been easier this month) and pouring over the score of Werther finding that if I can sing the progression up to the A just the way I sing the progression up to the G flat maybe I can nail it and know that I've nailed it and not panic ever again - maybe, tells me "no, you're not 'done' yet."
If I could just be Benjamin Button! Then in no time at all I could be 45 and who knows what I could accomplish then?
Saturday, May 11, 2013
The Juilliard Effect - And the "Sandbox"
A lot of discussion was generated on Facebook by this article which was posted by a voice teacher whom I "friended".
Although it addressed instrumentalists, not singers, the gist of it was that most people who graduate from Juilliard do not go on to have professional careers in music. But they are stamped by something for the rest of their lives. People who went to Juilliard or the Manhattan School of Music are like people who went to Yale or Harvard. No matter what they do for the rest of their lives they are an elite bunch.
The singer who responded to the post (I wanted to write to her privately and maybe, in accordance with my new vow not to be timid, I will) said something more or less similar about her peers. And in doing so she mentioned that many were satisfied with "sandbox singing". By sandboxes she meant community opera companies - the very ones that were so obviously not interested in me. So there is a trickle down effect. There isn't room in the elite performance organizations for all the elite performers so they trickle down into the amateur venues and for a real amateur like me there is noplace left to go.
On a related subject, I had an insight lately about why I can't shake this bad feeling about myself. OK, it's not clinical depression, and I refuse to say it's a bad attitude (sometimes, believe it or not, I do feel grateful). I think it has to do with location, location, location.
I have lived in this apartment in the "armpit of Lincoln Center" for almost three decades. I moved in here because it was an available rent regulated apartment that I got through a family friend, not because it was near Lincoln Center. I didn't start singing again until I had been living here for almost 20 years. But during most of those years I worked in offices. Each office is its own little world, with manifest hierarchies and subtler ones. The people I worked with lived everywhere from New Jersey to Long Island to some of the less sophisticated neighborhoods in Queens. Very few of them, even at the highest levels, had been to elite schools. So I felt that I held my own quite nicely. People found me interesting, even before I got promoted into management positions, and respected what I had to say about movies, politics, or nutrition. I felt that I mattered. Not to mention that everyone (whatever their position on the subject) thought I had the most ginormous pair of brass ovaries to be going around talking about being a Lesbian while being impeccably dressed and made up. And it was acknowledged that many of the people I worked with, even those ranked above me, were not as intelligent or as well read or as cultured or as sophisticated.
Since I left office work (which I do not regret) the only "worlds" I have been in are the two churches:first the Unitarian church and now this Lutheran one. Ironically, although going to church is supposed to be about Godliness or goodness, the fact that these two churches are on the Upper West Side means that the majority of the congregation is living on the Upper West Side, which means that the majority of them either do something in the arts, or academia, or some other profession that makes them interesting and offbeat (some are financially well off and some not). So I am continually aware of my mediocrity. So whereas my various former coworkers from Queens or New Jersey might have thought I was unusual or offbeat because I sang or twirled a baton in a gold sequinned dress - or even because I went to the opera, no one in these Upper West side churches is going to think that. Why should anyone ask me about myself when there are bona fide Broadway performers, professional musicians, professors of music, art, and English literature, and people with the money to travel all over the world whom they can chat up, interview, or ask to give a talk? I feel that I have absolutely nothing of interest about me to offer anyone. I don't mean that I am unlovable or unlikable (I seem to make friends easily and I know of three people who have said they are in love with me) I just mean that I am not interesting. I am not an authority on anything, a go-to person about anything, or a micropundit (like some of the friends I have on Facebook who opine about everything from racism to the quality of the Tony nominees, who each have a virtual claque that hangs on their every word).
Common wisdom has it that people feel better about themselves when they spend time with people who are less fortunate than they are. I have always thought that was a load of bunk, because I have a significant other who is less fortunate than I am in every way and I am immersed in her problems up to my eyeballs and it makes me sad, but it doesn't particularly make me feel better about myself. I mean as I have said, I do feel grateful when I think of people living in poverty, the homeless, people who are seriously ill or who have lost loved ones in tragedies. But I can't say it does anything for my self-esteem. Maybe I should redefine "less fortunate". Maybe I would feel better about myself if I spent more time with people who were less talented than I am, have more boring jobs than I do, who read less, and who would be fascinated by the things I know (never even mind my singing). But I don't know these people. They don't live on the Upper West Side.
Although it addressed instrumentalists, not singers, the gist of it was that most people who graduate from Juilliard do not go on to have professional careers in music. But they are stamped by something for the rest of their lives. People who went to Juilliard or the Manhattan School of Music are like people who went to Yale or Harvard. No matter what they do for the rest of their lives they are an elite bunch.
The singer who responded to the post (I wanted to write to her privately and maybe, in accordance with my new vow not to be timid, I will) said something more or less similar about her peers. And in doing so she mentioned that many were satisfied with "sandbox singing". By sandboxes she meant community opera companies - the very ones that were so obviously not interested in me. So there is a trickle down effect. There isn't room in the elite performance organizations for all the elite performers so they trickle down into the amateur venues and for a real amateur like me there is noplace left to go.
On a related subject, I had an insight lately about why I can't shake this bad feeling about myself. OK, it's not clinical depression, and I refuse to say it's a bad attitude (sometimes, believe it or not, I do feel grateful). I think it has to do with location, location, location.
I have lived in this apartment in the "armpit of Lincoln Center" for almost three decades. I moved in here because it was an available rent regulated apartment that I got through a family friend, not because it was near Lincoln Center. I didn't start singing again until I had been living here for almost 20 years. But during most of those years I worked in offices. Each office is its own little world, with manifest hierarchies and subtler ones. The people I worked with lived everywhere from New Jersey to Long Island to some of the less sophisticated neighborhoods in Queens. Very few of them, even at the highest levels, had been to elite schools. So I felt that I held my own quite nicely. People found me interesting, even before I got promoted into management positions, and respected what I had to say about movies, politics, or nutrition. I felt that I mattered. Not to mention that everyone (whatever their position on the subject) thought I had the most ginormous pair of brass ovaries to be going around talking about being a Lesbian while being impeccably dressed and made up. And it was acknowledged that many of the people I worked with, even those ranked above me, were not as intelligent or as well read or as cultured or as sophisticated.
Since I left office work (which I do not regret) the only "worlds" I have been in are the two churches:first the Unitarian church and now this Lutheran one. Ironically, although going to church is supposed to be about Godliness or goodness, the fact that these two churches are on the Upper West Side means that the majority of the congregation is living on the Upper West Side, which means that the majority of them either do something in the arts, or academia, or some other profession that makes them interesting and offbeat (some are financially well off and some not). So I am continually aware of my mediocrity. So whereas my various former coworkers from Queens or New Jersey might have thought I was unusual or offbeat because I sang or twirled a baton in a gold sequinned dress - or even because I went to the opera, no one in these Upper West side churches is going to think that. Why should anyone ask me about myself when there are bona fide Broadway performers, professional musicians, professors of music, art, and English literature, and people with the money to travel all over the world whom they can chat up, interview, or ask to give a talk? I feel that I have absolutely nothing of interest about me to offer anyone. I don't mean that I am unlovable or unlikable (I seem to make friends easily and I know of three people who have said they are in love with me) I just mean that I am not interesting. I am not an authority on anything, a go-to person about anything, or a micropundit (like some of the friends I have on Facebook who opine about everything from racism to the quality of the Tony nominees, who each have a virtual claque that hangs on their every word).
Common wisdom has it that people feel better about themselves when they spend time with people who are less fortunate than they are. I have always thought that was a load of bunk, because I have a significant other who is less fortunate than I am in every way and I am immersed in her problems up to my eyeballs and it makes me sad, but it doesn't particularly make me feel better about myself. I mean as I have said, I do feel grateful when I think of people living in poverty, the homeless, people who are seriously ill or who have lost loved ones in tragedies. But I can't say it does anything for my self-esteem. Maybe I should redefine "less fortunate". Maybe I would feel better about myself if I spent more time with people who were less talented than I am, have more boring jobs than I do, who read less, and who would be fascinated by the things I know (never even mind my singing). But I don't know these people. They don't live on the Upper West Side.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
I Will Not Die Anonymous
Two things came to mind recently. First, that as someone 62, whose mother lived to be almost 94, I am now in the last third of my life. I don't want to waste it. I don't want to coast. I want to make my mark.
And this has been compounded by the fact that one of the publications that I edit for a living is about end-of-life issues. What spooks me when I'm working on this publication isn't reading about all the physical suffering that terminal patients endure, but about the existential suffering, or at the very least, the existential thought processes, that they undergo.
So this subject is front and center all the time.
So I have shifted the focus slightly. I still love to sing, and I will continue to learn oratorio and opera arias and scenes until this is no longer physically possible, but the focus has shifted from trying to be noticed for my singing, to trying to be noticed for my story. Surely some journalist, professor, psychologist, or voice teacher with a public platform might be interested in the phenomenon of someone my age who is obsessed with perfecting her craft as a solo classical singer. Or some young Lesbian who wants to know the how and why of my abandoning my dream of singing long ago, when I found it incompatible with being a Lesbian-Feminist pioneer (although if I was ever a real feminist then pigs can fly - I simply wanted the approval of my lover and our friends).
So rather than fruitlessly going to auditions (I still keep my ear to the ground, but will not go back and audition for any of the groups I auditioned for before, except two that gave me a decent reception) I am going to post comments to various blogs and link them back to this one. I try to keep the comments concise and not whiney, but I also try to keep them honest.
So last week I posted a comment on the blog of a woman who wrote a New York Times opinion piece about being bisexual (I mentioned deciding I was bisexual after falling in love with the Mentor, mostly because I wanted someone in my life who was stronger and younger). Neither she nor anyone else commented on it, but I got one hit to this blog from hers. Then a few days ago I posted a question to a blog post on a major music site. (I don't want to link it back here, because I used a pseudonym that I have used for a variety of things, some of which I am not 100% proud of, but that pseudonym is so "me" that I will never change it.) In any event, the woman who writes the blog posted, although she did not answer, my comment, and I got at least one hit back here from her site. Another point of interest is that a neighbor of mine who is a music critic also has a blog on that site. He is quite pleasant but has never ever referred to my singing or even acknowledged that this is a big part of my life, despite it being such a big part of his. You have no idea how much that smarts. And his wife, a former voice and piano major at one of the big conservatories who is in a totally different career now, has the snootiness that all conservatory graduates have, however well they sang or didn't (I have never really heard her sing).
I have vowed to be less timid. There probably isn't much I can do about performance nerves (aka "sustained singing above a G nerves") but I can stop feeling "not entitled". I feel "not entitled" to love the spotlight. I think it's unseemly, I think I'm not entitled to admit to myself that my main reason for singing with this choir is to get solo opportunities and that when I sing church solos I am every bit as much the diva as when I sing opera solos, I just am playing a different character so I wear a different costume and use different facial expressions and gestures. To stop worrying that if I post a comment to someone's blog about who I am and where I'm at with singing (or anything else) people will laugh at me. So what?
In other news, I went over some of the Werther with my teacher. He said he thinks I sing the "Letter Scene" better than anything else he has ever heard, mainly because it is in a comfortable range: from middle C to G at the top of the staff. Of course I got tired in the middle of the big monologue with the high As and now they have become another fence to balk at, but he said I should work on it, and as it's early days yet, I can decide whether I want to sing it or whether I want to end the scene with "Va" and do something else. He thinks I should order the score of Hamlet.
Regarding church, the choir is singing something from Mendelssohn's Elijah, so I asked the choir director if I could sing "O Rest in the Lord" that day at communion and he said yes. That would be for the 9 am service and he said I might be able to sing it at communion at 11 also. Apparently there are not a lot of empty anthem spots because the church has replaced the defunct Praise Choir with a children's choir and a youth choir.
And the violinist and I will coordinate a date to do something together. There aren't that many Sundays left to the choir season so maybe we can do "Laudamus te" in the summer. Even just having one or two choir solos on my calender makes me feel a little more optimistic.
And this has been compounded by the fact that one of the publications that I edit for a living is about end-of-life issues. What spooks me when I'm working on this publication isn't reading about all the physical suffering that terminal patients endure, but about the existential suffering, or at the very least, the existential thought processes, that they undergo.
So this subject is front and center all the time.
So I have shifted the focus slightly. I still love to sing, and I will continue to learn oratorio and opera arias and scenes until this is no longer physically possible, but the focus has shifted from trying to be noticed for my singing, to trying to be noticed for my story. Surely some journalist, professor, psychologist, or voice teacher with a public platform might be interested in the phenomenon of someone my age who is obsessed with perfecting her craft as a solo classical singer. Or some young Lesbian who wants to know the how and why of my abandoning my dream of singing long ago, when I found it incompatible with being a Lesbian-Feminist pioneer (although if I was ever a real feminist then pigs can fly - I simply wanted the approval of my lover and our friends).
So rather than fruitlessly going to auditions (I still keep my ear to the ground, but will not go back and audition for any of the groups I auditioned for before, except two that gave me a decent reception) I am going to post comments to various blogs and link them back to this one. I try to keep the comments concise and not whiney, but I also try to keep them honest.
So last week I posted a comment on the blog of a woman who wrote a New York Times opinion piece about being bisexual (I mentioned deciding I was bisexual after falling in love with the Mentor, mostly because I wanted someone in my life who was stronger and younger). Neither she nor anyone else commented on it, but I got one hit to this blog from hers. Then a few days ago I posted a question to a blog post on a major music site. (I don't want to link it back here, because I used a pseudonym that I have used for a variety of things, some of which I am not 100% proud of, but that pseudonym is so "me" that I will never change it.) In any event, the woman who writes the blog posted, although she did not answer, my comment, and I got at least one hit back here from her site. Another point of interest is that a neighbor of mine who is a music critic also has a blog on that site. He is quite pleasant but has never ever referred to my singing or even acknowledged that this is a big part of my life, despite it being such a big part of his. You have no idea how much that smarts. And his wife, a former voice and piano major at one of the big conservatories who is in a totally different career now, has the snootiness that all conservatory graduates have, however well they sang or didn't (I have never really heard her sing).
I have vowed to be less timid. There probably isn't much I can do about performance nerves (aka "sustained singing above a G nerves") but I can stop feeling "not entitled". I feel "not entitled" to love the spotlight. I think it's unseemly, I think I'm not entitled to admit to myself that my main reason for singing with this choir is to get solo opportunities and that when I sing church solos I am every bit as much the diva as when I sing opera solos, I just am playing a different character so I wear a different costume and use different facial expressions and gestures. To stop worrying that if I post a comment to someone's blog about who I am and where I'm at with singing (or anything else) people will laugh at me. So what?
In other news, I went over some of the Werther with my teacher. He said he thinks I sing the "Letter Scene" better than anything else he has ever heard, mainly because it is in a comfortable range: from middle C to G at the top of the staff. Of course I got tired in the middle of the big monologue with the high As and now they have become another fence to balk at, but he said I should work on it, and as it's early days yet, I can decide whether I want to sing it or whether I want to end the scene with "Va" and do something else. He thinks I should order the score of Hamlet.
Regarding church, the choir is singing something from Mendelssohn's Elijah, so I asked the choir director if I could sing "O Rest in the Lord" that day at communion and he said yes. That would be for the 9 am service and he said I might be able to sing it at communion at 11 also. Apparently there are not a lot of empty anthem spots because the church has replaced the defunct Praise Choir with a children's choir and a youth choir.
And the violinist and I will coordinate a date to do something together. There aren't that many Sundays left to the choir season so maybe we can do "Laudamus te" in the summer. Even just having one or two choir solos on my calender makes me feel a little more optimistic.
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