You You You

One of the most helpful things that I heard in 12 step programs was "When you point the finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you."  When I was a counselor at the LGBT center in the 1990s, people, even group leaders and counselors, were told to "speak from the 'I'", to begin a sentence "I am uncomfortable hearing....", or "I start to feel angry when the conversation turns to....".  If that was not possible, then we were told to ask a question.  "What do you mean by...?"

However good or bad my writing here is, for the most part it is about me.  I rarely accuse other people, either individually, by implication, or en masse, unless I am extremely angry and upset with someone and have no other outlet for expressing that.

I was made uncomfortable recently reading some blog posts from a writer I have always respected, that had a lot of "you, you, you" in them.  A string of sentences beginning with "you".  I can only assume that this person is addressing numerous people that she finds disappointing, annoying, or what you will.  Of course I wonder if one of those people is me.  I am so thin skinned.  Then I realized, if there is so much "you" in her writing, and not much "I", what exactly is going on?  Or is she, perhaps, addressing herself?  Some of the posts hit such a nerve with me I wondered if they referred to things I had written here, but then I am pretty sure that this woman would not be caught dead reading this, although for some reason she did for a while have another avocational singer's blog publicly listed as one of her "favorites".

In addition to blasting certain Youtube videos she had seen lately (she wrote this not long after I had posted the Habanera video) of course I was wondering if she was referring to me, and then she referred to certain people as "lost" and of course I wondered again if she was referring to me as well.  Am I lost?  I don't know.  I know I do not live in enough "contexts."  I spend too much time alone in the house (doing what I do for a living) and then I brood.  I have done the best I could over the past 9 years to find a place for my talents, such as they are, somewhere.  I found a high level avocational choir that does not pay people, but that provides solo singing opportunities and choral singing opportunities in a group that is small enough that I feel it matters if I am there or not.  I now have found this other group of singers of varying abilities who sing in various genres where I can sing solo art songs in public venues and allow myself to blossom because I am not intimidated by being by far the oldest and by far the least experienced person there.  I have the chutzpah and ingenuity to produce my own concerts.

I am happy with all the positive feedback I got about that video.  And I think people really meant what they said.  One was an opera singer who is having a professional career, and another was a voice teacher who has also performed as a professional opera singer.  Now I have four "likes" and three "dislikes".  And almost 400 views.  What should I make of this?  Some other people's videos that I've looked at had one "like," no "dislikes," and fewer than 100 views, even though they had been up for over a year.

There was also mention of singers as (not) exhibitionistic.  I have mentioned in this post that I know I am at heart an exhibitionist. I think a lot of performers are exhibitionists, the issue is that performing is a healthy outlet for exhibitionism whereas many other things are not.  Everyone has traits that have their positive and negative sides, just not all people have the same traits.

And now it's time to stop brooding, find myself (if I am indeed "lost") and go practice.