Writing Assignment: The Most Important Thing that Happened to Me This Year

To my regular readers: I posted this in response to a "prompt" from the woman who taught the writing class I took this summer.  Much of the "history" here is familiar to you.  It isn't to her, so I needed to include it here.  And I suppose there are always new insights.  So of course I would love you all to read this.

The most important thing that happened to me this past year was finding a mentor.

When I look at people who have achieved excellence (and perhaps renown) in their chosen field, what they all have in common, is that they had a mentor.  It might be a parent (David Brooks once said that it took three generations to make a career), teacher, coach, or even a spouse or lover in a the same or a related field. I never had a mentor for my singing.  My mother wanted me to be a writer, in high school I was steered toward academics, not music (interestingly, students from disadvantaged backgrounds with good voices were more likely to be encouraged to sing than I was), and after I graduated from high school, let’s just euphemistically say I “fell off the map” for a looong time.

I began studying voice seriously (I had had a few informal lessons before that) in my late 20s, and was singing quite well, but at that time I was immersed in Lesbian-separatist political activities where I was discouraged from “giving my energy to a patriarchal art form,” particularly one where I would have lots of interaction with straight men.  So at 30 I stopped singing and enrolled in college to get a degree in – what else? – Women’s studies.

I say that after that I never thought about singing again until well into the millennium, but that is not really true.  If people were gathering around a piano at a party to sing, I would join in (and blow people away) and at least once a week I had a dream (I’m referring to the nocturnal kind) about singing.  And when we played “getting to know you” games at the office, I loved being able to answer the question “What is something nobody knows about you that would surprise them?” with “I used to be an opera singer” which I can say was true, even if I never got paid a penny for it.

Fast forward to 2003, the year of my “discovery” sitting in the back pew of my local Unitarian church, singing from a hymnal.  My partner and I started going to that church because we liked the idea of going to church but didn’t believe in most of the supernatural events that are the bedrock of most religions.  Certainly I didn’t go there to sing.  But one day, a very charismatic figure who looked like a cross between Rudolph Valentino and old drawings of Mephistopheles, whispered in my ear seductively “You’re a professional singer, aren’t you?” and things were off and running.  He led me a merry chase, which I wrote about at length here, but the end result was that I have been singing for ten years now.  He and I had a very ugly falling out (and then made peace five years to the day after that fateful Samson et Dalila duet, when I was singing the "Habanera" at a Valentine's Day concert at the Unitarian church), and I left the Unitarian church both because of that and because they decided to stop using classical music in the services, but I got right back on my feet and now have some solid (or they would be solid if I didn’t live in the most talent-packed ZIP code in the country) accomplishments under my belt.

Looking back, I realize that I would not have been so susceptible to a lot of his silliness (voice lessons, at which I learned a lot, were laced with racy comments – to me flattering, I suppose; I was 54 – and silly New Age blather) if I hadn’t been so starved for a mentor.

And I did not find another one until this year.  I have a good voice teacher, a musically knowledgeable choir director, and several coaches, but no one who was really interested in me.  I mean, really, when you come to think of it, who wants to mentor someone over 60?  Everything is about young, young, young, young talent.

But this year someone materialized.  I had sung with her before, but this year it has been different.  She says I have the perfect voice for Spanish songs.  Which to her includes Carmen.  She is going to help me produce a concert of excerpts from Carmen with someone reading from the novella by Prosper Merimee.  She gave me a big thumbs up for the Youtube video I made, singing the Habanera in the Strand Bookstore (available on request, just send me an email).  She suggested a book of Spanish songs for me to buy, as well as a book about Spanish culture.  And if the weather had been better, she had planned to come to the Lutheran church where I’m singing now to hear me sing a Spanish song about the birth of Jesus at a service conducted entirely in Spanish!

I have had so many disappointments since my 2003 “discovery”.  There are about 10 “community opera groups” (aka they don’t pay people) here and none of them wanted me.  They are filled with professional sounding singers (some even have managers) with conservatory degrees and impressive CVs.  Even a choir that doesn’t pay is now filled with the “stars of tomorrow” from the big conservatories.  I was starting to give up hope.

Now I can believe again.  That someone sees a special spark in me, no matter that I’m over 60, have no music degree, and nothing on my resume except church solos and a few homemade concerts (produced by me or someone else).

And if nothing else, I can still hope that someone turns my blog into a movie.  If it happened to “Julie”, cooking from Julia Child’s book, in obscurity, it can happen to anyone.