I thought I had done with this subject in my last post of 2013, but I was inspired to be a little more articulate as a result of reading a blog post by one of the most articulate women I know, who is also one of the most creative women I know and one of the best writers, despite living with numerous challenges.
So here are my resolutions, refined.
1. Get off the following merry-go-round: Working at home alone makes me depressed, not working enough hours gives me financial anxiety which makes me more depressed, and the idea of using my pittance of free time to try to find something else to do for a living is the most depressing of all. To do instead: Work as many hours as I have to, admit that I hate doing it, that this is something that it is too late to change, as finding a new livelihood at my age would require a prohibitive amount of time, money, or both, and make the rest of my life as colorful, richly peopled, sensual, and right brain as possible.
2. Do everything I can to jump-start my imagination. My imagination is a muscle, and after 35 years working for large corporations, it has atrophied. Re-read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way, revisit the exercises in the back of the book, find ways to put more sights, sounds, smells, and tastes into my life. Savor and milk every teensy weensy interpersonal interaction I can find. Although I (surprisingly) got a very low score on a depression screening test, I got a high score on a loneliness screening test. Treat my loneliness (which is caused by my livelihood: editing at home on a laptop) as an illness and look for antidotes everywhere.
3. Tell myself every day that yes I am an artist (singer, writer) even if this isn't what I do for a living. I am more creative than probably 90% of women in their 60s with bachelors' degrees, I just don't spend enough time with "ordinary folk".
4. Spend more time with "ordinary folk" (not easy when you live on Manhattan's Upper West side). By this I mean people with boring jobs who try to find pleasure in life where they can. There are more of us than there are working artists and if I do that, my situation looks less pitiable.
5. Stop reading blogs from working performing artists who one way or another, find ways to disparage amateurs, whether it's me or Miss Kansas, and get these people off my Facebook list (mostly done). All this does is make me feel terrible about myself and I don't really learn anything from them that I don't already know. (I still read blogs from voice teachers and coaches who talk about technique, health, and repertoire.)
6. Treasure every minute with my SO. She is almost 80.
7. Always have a solo singing gig in my future. These can be choir solos; or songs and arias to sing with this new Meetup group that I found, at which I am one of the singers with more training (some people who show up have never even had a singing lesson, so the fact that I can sing an art song in a limited range with a nice line garners praise, which I never got at the other meetups full of "real" singers on the opera audition circuit); or material for self-produced concerts.
8. Spend more time working on the non-technical skills I need to sing. These include languages, trying to learn to read key signatures, and maybe learning to sightread (have yet to make myself do this).
9. Write more, even just this blog. Also try to get more readers. Sometimes there are things here that I don't want people to know about, but if I am timid, I will die anonymous, which is something I do not want.
10. Take more risks. There isn't that much time left.
I love this post!!
ReplyDeleteThank you. I really think I finally have a handle on item 1. No, I don't like what I do for a living (edit manuscripts at home on a laptop) and it is bad for my mental health. But I can't seem to find an alternative. I fell into the publishing business (I started as a clerk and ended up supervising 20 people) because it was something familiar and easy, I found companies to work for that had good benefits, and until I reached the very highest level, I didn't have to work too hard. I am disappointed that I spent a year in career counseling and came up empty. On the other hand, if I can work 25-30 hours a week and take some money out of my mother's savings account I can get through the next two and half years, after which I can collect my full retirement amount from Social Security, which means I can work a little less and still have a decent income. I think the issue is that if I had something to do for a living that had fringe benefits, some quality of life issues (like getting to travel and meet people) would be taken care of. I think the key is to make myself work a certain number of hours but acknowledge that it is bad for my mental health and be mindful of finding things to offset it by staying out of my left brain when I'm not working. I think the problem is the media is saturated with blather that if you don't love what you do for a living you a failure. Also I live in a geographic area where I am surrounded not only by professional performing artists, but also by people with advanced degrees who have exciting lives, so what they do seems normative.
ReplyDeleteHi babydramatic,
ReplyDeleteI found your blog this week, and have been reading through your archives. I identify with you a lot because I am a serious avocational singer who struggles with finding performance opportunities. Much of your story resonated with me, even down to feeling unappreciated in my avocational church choir.
I did want to offer one small thought that has helped me: Of course there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who could sing exactly what I sing 25 times better (not in my choir, where I'm the only serious amateur singer left). But I've learned that it's not about better, it about communicating the transcendent through the medium of music in my own special way. Many people have better instruments and are more technically proficient than I am, but only I can sing the song with whatever I have to communicate.Similarly, only YOU can sing YOUR song. This is your infinitely valuable gift to the world.
Also, those people with advanced degrees living exciting lives might be feeling just as bored with their jobs as you do. On the outside, I'm one of them, but 90% of my job is tedious. I really do believe that if I had become a professional singer, I would be doing tedious vocalises, struggling with sight-singing, stressing out about losing my job because critics don't like me....in other words, feeling the exact same way about my job that I do now.
The last thing I want to say is that some thing that come easily to you (coloratura and breath management) have been real nightmares for me to get a handle on. I have really improved over the years, but I'm realizing that these things will always be difficult for me. So in this case, I am jealous of YOU.
Dear Sarah,
ReplyDeleteHow great to meet you! I am always looking for peers, people who are in a similar situation to my own. One big difference though (I clicked on your name and found out a little bit about you) is that you really still are young enough to do something serious with singing . Maybe not as a source of income, but you are certainly young enough to get experience under your belt and perform with an opera or oratorio society that does not pay. Or even to audition for paying gigs. My problem is that I am so old, that no one is going to be interested in my "potential" Probably the most telling thing was when I auditioned for one of these groups, and sang well, and got written feedback saying that I was not a "future investment" and that is what they were looking for. It wasn't even typical ageism because I was auditioning for an "old lady" part.
As for my envy of people with advanced degrees, as well as of professional singers, it boils down to this. If you sing (or work in academia or in other professions) it is part of your job to travel or attend conferences, or make presentations at conferences and meetings, even ones on your own doorstep. Even in the midlevel jobs I had in publishing in the 80s and 90s part of my paid workweek involved meetings, attending functions, going out to lunch, not to mention the little micro-social interactions that could fill up a day. Things began to go sour at my last job about three years before I left, when most of the people I supervised were replaced with an outsourcing service in the Philippines, so instead of taking to real people and handling paper documents that they wrote on (with lovely colored pens, LOL!) I was looking at spreadsheets in Excel trying to write computer programs to get rid of error patterns. Almost every "fun" interpersonal interaction had been wrung out of the job to where I felt that I had the mental equivalent of carpal tunnel syndrome and that my right brain was starving to death. Blessedly, I was able to leave that job through an early retirement buyout where I could stay on their health insurance rolls. I also got a year of free career counseling, but all I seemed to be able to find was editing work to do at home. I am glad I can make my own hours, but I never see anyone, and I get paid by the page or by the hour, so anything interpersonal I want to put into my life has to be on my own time and money, and I have very little of both.
I'm sorry to hear that you are struggling with loneliness in your work. I get anxious about teaching and interacting with colleagues, but I probably would go out of my mind if I had no contact with anyone all day. It's great that you have your own schedule and no commute, though.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked to read about all the age discrimination on your blog. It seems so wrong that people would write you off out of hand, or even specify what age they want in their singers. I listened to a few of your clips, and you do NOT have that "old lady" sound AT ALL.
I'm not sure what I want to do with singing. I love it, and I feel a drive to perform, even though performing gives me huge anxiety. But I don't have much interest in opera, and I suspect that 19th c. arias are far, far out of my reach for the moment. (A performance C? B? Bb? A? ha ha ha ha ha!) I honestly would be happy giving recitals or maybe being a mezzo soloist with an amateur choir, one day.
My issue is that I just don't have enough time! I work six days a week, am about to adopt a baby, and and generally spread pretty thin. At least voice doesn't take nearly as much time as any instrument I've ever played.
Your blog inspired me to start my own. thethinkingsinger.wordpress.com. I'm still putting the finishing touches on the look, and as soon as I can figure out how, I'll put you on my blogroll.
Dear Sarah,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you are really busy!
As for age discrimination, here's what really bothers me. First of all, thank you for your compliments on my not sounding like an "old lady". No, I don't, in fact I sounded much more like an old lady in my 20s when I was smoking and singing Gilbert and Sullivan. Nor do I particularly look like one. I am the same age as Bernadette Peters and Bett Midler, and am, sort of, a Bette Midler type: short and busty and sexy. The issue with most of these opera groups seems to be not so much that they view opera as theater and therefore don't want someone who in any event does not look young playing an ingenue, but that they want people early in their careers. As I have said over and over, there are no more amateur opera groups for amateurs (or theater groups either for that matter) unless you go to towns that are so tiny that they are forced to use a "convenience sample". Amateur opera groups are now training grounds for singers in their 20s to put roles on their resumes or for middle aged (meaning late 30s and early 40s) singers who already have managers and perform for money to sing roles that they are not getting paid for (so someone who gets paid to sing Mama Lucia might use one of those amateur groups to sing Azucena). So these groups are not interested in me because they view me (correctly) as not going anywhere.
How long have you been studying? I identify with your issues with top notes (as you have read). I have a solid A, but that is really it. The notes above that keep getting a teensy weensy bit better but I am nervous about singing them in public. I have sung B flats in public but I can only sing a B flat if I sing a lower note first. I can't open my mouth and hit the pitch. I can do that with an A and that's it. On the other hand I am not a low alto. The best part of my voice is the upper middle, which is why I sing soprano in the choir.
What instruments do you play? That is an interesting observation that you made about voice not taking as much time. That's true, and in fact, if your oversing you can hurt yourself. The thing I find so hard about singing (as compared with writing of visual arts) is that you have to keep your body in top shape all the time and worry about what you eat, how much you sleep, and (the real killer) how much you talk. I suppose that is one advantage to everything being digitized. There was an article in the TIMES in fact about how many people who are self employed go for days sometimes without speaking at all.
I should clarify that performing A-C are laughably out of reach at the moment. The highest note I've sung in a song is a G#/Ab. The highest note I've sung in public is a D5! But that has more to do with choice of repertoire and performance opportunities than ability. I can vocalise to a Eb6 from time to time.
ReplyDeleteI casually studied voice throughout grad school as an escapist diversion, but I wasn't the best student. Also, my teacher was a well-known performer in the East Coast metro area where I lived, but she didn't know much about vocal technique; it was all-intuitive. I could have studied with her for a decade and not gotten anywhere.
After a three year break, I started studying again in 2011, this time in a new metropolis, and my teacher finally, finally, showed me how to get secured, beautiful, non-screamy high notes. And by high, I mean C5-E5; so, not high by your standards. And now, I'm scarily devoted to singing. I really do try to sing everyday.
I play piano, which is the most time-consuming instrument there is. I don't have time to practice all that much, but to really improve at my level, you have to devote two hours a day to it. I played flute in high school, and that requires probably an hour every day.
Yes, speaking is the bane of my existence. I teach, so some days, I speak three hours in a day. It kills my chest voice.
Dear Sarah,
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you say that speaking kills your chest voice. For me it has the opposite effect. My teacher says that my chest voice is overdeveloped because I speak in the typical New York way (although without the hideous New Yawk accent), namely extremely loud and down on the cords. So as a result of that I had no head resonance in my sound. Over the past several years I have begun to have more "shimmer" in my voice but my range has not increased. What sort of repertoire do you sing that does not go above D or E flat (I have never understood, or used, the numbering system nor has my teacher)? I sang two solos this year in which the highest note was a D ("O Rest in the Lord" from Elijah and "Nun Wandre Maria" by Wolf). The beauty of those pieces was that they did not go below middle C either, where my voice has very little volume. Most of the Bach alto solos go to an E natural ("Et Exsulvavit" from the Magnificat in D goes to an F sharp). I sing "Qui Sedes al Dexteram Patris" from the Mass in B Minor and "Erbarme Dich" from the St. Matthew Passion. I would say I have a professional sound between middle C and the G at the top of the staff, but that's really it. Although I do sing in public in the "Wikipedia" mezzo range which is the two octaves from low A to high A.
Unlike you, I have no musical training and seem to be unable to muster up any interest in it. I played the piano as a child and teenager and actually played well enough to be a semifinalist in some competitions, but I can't play "hands together" now, and if I'm singing a piece and you ask me where "do" is I have no idea. Most people don't know that I can't sightread because I have a "phonographic" memory. If I hear something over and over I can sing it back almost note perfect but I know nothing about chord structure, which means if I am singing something other than the top line I have to plunk it out, memorize the sound, and then sing it against a recording until I am not longer distracted by the top line. I can do this so quickly and so well, that, as I said, I can pass as a sightreader, but that's about it. I am trying to improve my language skills, though. I can read French and some Spanish and Italian, and no how to pronounce all those languages perfectly. My German is only for pronunciation. One thing I like about my choir is we sing in numerous languages and work on the pronunciation and translation.