Positive Thinking, Wishes, and Something Totally New

Sunday's Times had an op ed piece called The Problem with Positive Thinking. This interested me because I try to stay optimistic, but have been beaten down by so many disappointments that it is hard not to sink into despair.  This article stressed that using only positive thinking does not help people achieve goals, but rather, what is most helpful is a combination of positive thinking and "realism", in other words imagining obstacles that stand in the way of your wish.  One sentence in particular stood out:

"When participants have performed mental contrasting with wishes that are not reasonable or attainable, they have disengaged more from those wishes."

Now with me, here's the thing, and I only realized this as I was reading.  I have a very hard time "disengaging" from wishes when I believe that the obstacles are external rather than internal.  If, for example, despite studying voice now for 10 years, I had not made any progress (let's say I had gone to several different teachers to check out what was stalling me), something might ring a bell telling me that it was time to invest my energy in something else.  (And in any event, I don't all that much enjoy doing something if I don't do it well, or see my way clear to doing it well; at least I am not going to invest a lot of time and money in it.)  But I am singing well, and have made exceptional progress this year.

What makes me angry, is that most of the obstacles are external.  First, there's the presence of too many talented people scrambling for too few opportunities (and the yearly influx of more of these people, which makes it impossible to climb the food chain as my skill level increases). Then there's the almost daily availability of every possible sort of musical or theatrical event, at every price range, which siphons off any potential audience I might have,  howevermuch people care about me and want to be supportive.  Some people have large families and circles of friends who are not themselves necessarily all that knowledgeable about classical music, who will sort of function as a claque, but I don't have this.  Which brings me to a topic I had written about in the past: the role of praise versus constructive criticism.  I think the latter is essential coming from teachers, coaches, and directors, but it's nice to get the former from a group of loved ones, you know, the people who think whatever you do is wonderful because they love you and it's not really their area of expertise.  This is what I find lacking, mostly because I have no extended biological family and among my circle of friends, even the ones who are not musicians have been going to concerts or the opera for decades and so even if they don't hear flaws in my actual singing, they know the difference between a homemade performance piece based on Carmen and someone's senior recital at a big conservatory.  Not to mention that I can't go anywhere where there's a group of more than 20 people where at least two of them haven't worked (often for money at a high level) in the performing arts.  So this simply is not the identity I have with these people.

But I can't disengage from these wishes, which have scaled down considerably from doing something "professional" in opera, to doing something high profile in amateur opera, to just being able to get a decent sized audience for something I produce myself.  I have a big operatic voice that is not going to be satisfied doing nothing but singing in a choir where I have to "blend" or even singing the occasional church solo in a limited range both vocal and dynamic.

That being said, I have something new that I am going to look into, that is not like anything else I had ever thought of.  Howevermuch my SO drives me crazy, and however relieved I am that we do not live together or have comingled finances,  making her last years happy is one of the most important things in my life.  Nothing really makes me as happy as seeing her smile, or picking up my phone (she doesn't have or know how to use email) and hearing one of the endearments she calls me.  On several occasions she has mentioned that she misses choral singing.  There is a Unitarian church in her neighborhood (not the one we went to together where I met the Mentor) which I am sure she could go to if she asked someone to escort her (churches do that), but she has not done that.

A few days ago I happened to see a story on tv about an experimental choral group for people with Alzheimers and their caregivers.  So I looked at their web site and sent them an email.  I said that I was a trained classical singer and that my partner, although she did not have Alzheimers, had some memory loss and was elderly and quite frail, and had said she missed choral singing.  So they invited us to come to one of their (free) concerts, and told us when the first rehearsal of the new year would be (on a day in January, so fingers crossed that the streets are not clogged with snow).  They said they decide at that rehearsal whether they think people would be suitable for the chorus.  So I have no idea where this is going, but if we got involved it would mean one weekday afternoon rehearsal each week, and three concerts a year on Saturday afternoons (so it would not interfere with choir, and I could probably still do my spring concert and maybe a few other things).  It would be something my SO and I could share, and it would get her out of the house.  So this is one day at a time.

I don't think it will be "enough"; as long as my big dramatic voice is still throbbing inside me like a bird that needs to soar I can't squelch it, but maybe it will be something.

Elegy for a Lost Narrative

"Don't sell yourself short," a friend told me.

"Why can't you give yourself credit for all that you have accomplished?" my partner has told me on numerous occasions, despite her initially having no understanding of why I was doing all this.

In some ways, things are so exciting, and so exhilarating.  I never ever sounded this good.  Now that I know how to really push my larynx down and stop gagging on high notes, make space, lift my soft palate, and relax my jaw, I sometimes can't believe how I sound.  So, OK, I may never be able to sit on a high B for five counts, but I'm homing in on those notes and everything sounds so much better.  After making some (standard) cuts, and replacing the two Bs with G sharps, I am sailing through the two Giovanna Seymour selections that my teacher wanted me to work on.  And I am working on my Italian pronunciation as well as taking out the dictionary to look up the words I was unfamiliar with. (Although of course I know the import of what she's singing!)

And I am really rocking it at choir rehearsals.  How many people in a "convenience sample" choir can start out singing a highly ornamented alto line in a Bach cantata (in full dramatic mezzo chest voice, or at least a rich mix) and end up floating a high G sharp in the soprano section for a piece for All Saint's Day?

The problem is that my narrative is lost. 

I want to "not sell myself short," and "give myself credit" but it all gets lost in the Babel of Manhattan's Upper West Side, most particularly here in ZIP code 10023.  Who really cares?  People can go to the Met or they can go to see all those low budget opera productions that don't want to use me that are full of the stars of tomorrow (or the working comprimari of today showcased in leading roles), or free chamber music featuring conservatory students, or senior recitals, or edgy groups that use some classical singers with smaller voices in smaller venues.

I had hoped that writing this blog would give meaning to my narrative, but responses are few and far between, other than from one friend I made here with whom I correspond almost daily. (She is another late-starting classical singer in a less talent-packed geographic area.)

My teacher is (surprised and) impressed by my progress, but he knows so many mezzos who sing better (and who if they're anywhere near my age have decades more experience) that this doesn't really translate into any opportunities that I don't have to organize myself.

I know they now say too much praise is bad for kids.  Certainly praise with no constructive criticism isn't going to help a person improve.  I wouldn't be singing this well if my teacher hadn't been at me constantly through every exercise, stopping me when something didn't sound right.

But as I have no venue, so it seems, for regular high profile singing (even a very humble one), I also have no context for my narrative that will make it sparkle and shine.

No one has ever said "It's really amazing that someone your age, who began singing at the age when many singers retire, sounds the way you do now." Or, "It's really extraordinary the amount of time and effort and dogged persistence, against all odds, that you have put into perfecting an art form at your age, with your limited resources, when you could have just said, why bother?"  All I want is to hear those things.  Some time.  Then maybe I would stop selling myself short.

Next Year in_______________

My communist mother used to have a saying: "Don't mourn, organize!" so it is getting to be about that time again.  The time I start thinking about next year's concert.

Each year - I hope - I build on what I learned from the last time.

So what did I learn from Carmen?  I suppose that I have to find a different kind of audience.  I can't rely on my social circle because there are just too many other things they'd rather be doing, no matter how much they care about me.  Which I suppose says something about the nature of my social circle.  I have a significant other who is elderly and disabled, no blood relatives, no bffs, really, or the ones I have don't live in New York or they are up to their eyeballs in family problems, and a large circle of acquaintances who have season tickets to hear the best music there is, or who trawl the city for free concerts.

So what's next?  There's a Salvation Army residence near the church where my teacher's group has sung concert operas.  In fact one of the women in the choir lives there.  They have a performance space, and I don't think I would have to pay to use it.  My choir colleague says that the acoustics are not great, but my teacher says it is a "nice" place to sing and that people are appreciative (my built in audience - and if people don't come no one will give me a "look" the way the woman did when I didn't have a big enough audience for Carmen.)

My teacher said maybe we can sing together.  He is dying to do excerpts from Bolena.  I bought the score and now I'm getting cold feet.  I can probably do the duet with Enrico if we take a cut in it (the last portion has a long repeat, for me in a very high tessitura), but do I really sound all that great up there?  I think I sound better as Amneris, aside from the treacherous duet with the tenor.

Well, when I have my next lesson I will talk to my teacher.  I might be happier if he and I did a reprise of the concert I did with the other bass several years ago. We did the Judgment Scene from Aida, the Vengeance Duet from Samson et Dalila, and the duet from Gioconda which I have now nicknamed the "Domestic Violence Duet".  Then we each sang two arias of our own choosing.  But it's early days yet.  I haven't even contacted them about reserving the space.  I am planning to start the process next week.  It can be in late April (Easter 2015 is early) or early May.

I can hear how much better I sound just at choir practice.  Yesterday I sang the alto part (very low and very florid) in a Bach cantata.  The reasoning behind that is that the soprano part is a chorale that sounds on the recording as if it is being sung by boy sopranos.  Then I switched gears and sang the soprano part (including a limpid high G sharp) for the piece we're doing for All Saints Day.  Well, any mezzo worth her salt should have that kind of complete package. The choir is getting bigger, mostly with experienced choral singers who don't have solo voices, really, which is just fine, so I am enjoying myself more.

And I had another idea for a solo for Advent.  There are several versions of "O Magnum Mysterium" that are written as solos.  I will try to get the sheet music.  We have sung two different choral arrangements of this during Advent.

Another Disappointment

My therapy "homework" for these past two weeks has been identifying when I feel good about myself and when I don't. The premise is that if I felt better about myself I would not be so devastated by various disappointments.  I think this is both true and not true.  I think there can come a tipping point when after you have one disappointment too many it can affect how you feel about yourself.

What came out of this exercise is that most of the time I don't feel anything about myself, good or bad. Probably the biggest pleasant surprise I had this period was how well I sang at my last lesson, and the biggest disappointment (I can't really call it a "surprise") was being turned down for the Handel opera .  Although that disappointment hit me harder than it normally would have because of the watershed-like disappointment of so few people coming to Carmen in the environment of everyone buzzing about "Little Miss Conservatory's" senior recital.

In any event, I don't think I particularly dislike myself (I know people who do - dislike themselves - and whatever it is I feel is not that.)

I think I wasted a large part of my life and made a lot of the wrong choices.  I don't totally blame myself, because most of these stemmed from having squandered my "emerging adulthood" when I was drinking, after which it was in many ways too late to turn around and change course (I needed to earn a living, and chose the option that provided the most short-term financial security, for starters.)  And sometimes I feel I am trapped with dull work because I am a dull person, but I don't dwell on that 24/7.

But these disappointments have made me very angry.

As for the latest one, the woman who produced the September 11 concert spoke about "outreach" events over the holidays.  Last time she did this it was a sort-of concert in a nursing home that had a theater.  There were 5 or 6 women and we each sang one or two solos and then did some caroling and sang some Chanukkah songs.  I sang two songs in Spanish.  Well, it turns out that what she is doing this time is only group songs, with little solos assigned from some of the songs.  I would not mind participating in something like that, on an ad hoc basis (if she asked me about it a few weeks prior, and I came to one or two rehearsals) but there is no way in Hell I am paying to come to a "meetup" to sing group songs!!!  And in point of fact, I think her asking people to pay for sessions to go over group songs shows major chutzpah and quite frankly I don't think she will get very many people who would be willing to do this.  If we are volunteering out of the goodness of our hearts we shouldn't have to pay to do it!!! It's one thing to pay $20 at a meetup so that I can get coaching for a solo that I will be singing somewhere (singing it in an "outreach" venue is fine, even singing it at one of this women's "musicale"s in her living room is fine).  But if there's nothing in it for me, I think it takes a hell of a lot of nerve to ask me to pay!!

So now this means there is nothing on my calendar again.

I am going to order the piano score of Verdi's "Ave Maria with Strings."  It is unlikely that the choir director will want me to excerpt something from it, but who knows?  I also found a Bach solo hymn called "Advent".  It is not all that interesting in that it has four verses that are all the same, but I can offer that as an alternative.  Or go back to something I had sung in the past, maybe Saint Saens' "Patiently I Have Waited for the Lord".

But I am stumped for ways in which I could feel better about myself that would make these disappointments less devastating (well, the second one, involving the holiday events, wasn't really "devastating" it mostly made me angry).

Someone who commented on my last post said "it isn't that people aren't interested in you, it's just that they are more interested in other people."  Well, so how does that translate in real-world terms?  It's not just about ego (basically, I know that living where I'm living - forgive me for inconsistent math, it's not my strong suit - I am like someone who nationwide is in the 88th percentile among classical singers who nonetheless ends up in the 20th percentile here).  It's about being cheated out of a chance to do things that are "fun".  For me, singing opera scenes is fun.  Singing art songs on a program with other people singing art songs, where we all get our chance to shine, is fun.  So I am cheated out of these chances to have "fun" even at the lowest level.  I wouldn't call the singing I do in church "fun", unless I am singing a part where I can stand out (like being one of two second sopranos in a very difficult piece, or singing an alto part with the odd F or G in it that none of the other altos can sing).  Singing church solos is spiritually fulfilling, but rarely "fun" (singing Erfreute Zeit was an exception) because I am singing during communion and always have to choose something quiet and unobtrusive, although I do get compliments.  Getting compliments and applause is fun.  Dressing up because the occasion is "special" is fun.  So in addition to being made to feel mediocre and unimportant, I am deprived of "fun".  And if I try to plan something myself, people don't come (except for a few friends who want to be supportive) because, as this commenter said, there are always things to do that are more fun, where they can hear world class musicians.

So is the only "fun" I'm going to have on a regular basis going to the grocery store in my low cut top and my stage makeup, knowing that people looking at me think I'm some kind of performer?  Or singing opera scenes (sometimes gloriously) in my bathroom for my neighbors, one of whom is a music critic who goes to Lincoln Center three times a week, one of whom is a Juilliard trained coloratura (she actually was quite complimentary to me on several occasions), and many of whom go to the Met once a week when it's in season?

Not a Drop, but a Thud

So I heard back from the woman I sang the Handel for and she wrote back and said "no thank you".  She didn't even offer me a cover.

Why has this upset me so much?  The last two auditions I went to I didn't get anything and I just shrugged it off.  Maybe because these were real live staged productions of big Italian operas and this was just a chance to sing a role in a Handel opera from a book in someone's living room.  So I'm not even good enough to do that?

I just feel so much despair.

I was so happy with how I've been sounding (although I got into perilous waters at last week's choir practice singing a spiritual where the second sopranos end by pounding words on Fs and G flats at the top of the staff) but it's like a big so what.  At the risk of making an inappropriate analogy, I feel the way certain ethnic groups feel about immigrants.  No matter how well they do, a new wave of immigrants comes in and pushes them back to the bottom.  Actually that's a very apt analogy, because no matter how much progress I make, there will be a new wave of people coming here who have a "package" (they sound perfect, look good, and have music degrees).  So I end up on the bottom again.

I just don't know how many disappointments I can sustain.  But apparently it's not enough to make me stop singing (and no, choral singing doesn't do it - I have to have a venue for solo singing, even in someone's living room where I'm just singing for peers, or in church).  I know that the Mentor found me in the back of that church for a reason and I can't give up now. I feel like there's a huge bird beating its wings inside me and it has to fly.  And no, it's not a little sparrow or a little robin but a huge tropical bird with bright colored feathers that wants to take people's breath away when it soars.

I think the last straw was when I produced Carmen, which was something innovative and different, and hardly anyone came.  And that this annoyed the woman helping me produce it, to boot.

Yesterday I looked at the site for a nursing home/social service facility that brings in "performances".  Well, guess what? All the names of scheduled performers were groups I'd heard of, the sort that get reviewed in the TIMES. 

So I'm at a complete loss.  And I don't even have anything on my calendar.  Not one thing.  Well, once the Advent schedule comes out I can chase the choir director around trying to get a spot to sing something (I am going to order the piano vocal score for Verdi's Ave Maria with Strings to see if I can excerpt something; otherwise I found a Bach hymn called "Advent" that is arranged as a solo.)  And maybe the woman who produced the September 11 concert will have a Christmas concert in various outreach venues.  At least she's savvy enough to know that if she wants to get a group of people to do this (last time it was 5 or 6 women) she has to offer us each solo verses in the carols we're doing.

And I will think of something else...

Totally Amazing

All the breakthroughs I have made with my singing have held.  There has been steady progress in 2014 (I began to notice it with Carmen) and there has been no backsliding.

Well, all in all it has taken me 10 years!!! to learn how to

1. Lift my soft palate (this involved also dealing with my mucus and sinus problems)
2. Relax my jaw
3. Keep my larynx down to prevent the "gag" reflex that interfered with my high notes.

Using item 3, and starting with a woofy "h" (which actually effects item 3) I have been singing B flats and B naturals off the cuff without singing a lower note first and without having to force through a barricade of tension.  And I have been able to do this for several weeks now.  This is something I never ever was able to do before.

By singing the lowest notes very low, with a very low larynx, I can now sing arpeggios up to a high C and back almost every day.

And even though I have not jumped on the fitness bandwagon (there were plenty of powerhouse singers before this was all the rage, if people have forgotten) I have defied the odds and get much less tired and have much more stamina at 64 than I did when I started at 54.

I think I may have a handle on those two pages of the Amneris/Radames with the B flats.  (There is no fermata over those B flats; therefore I should sing the progression like an exercise, with no breath in the middle.)

Yesterday I brought the score of Aida to my lesson thinking I was going to work on the Aida/Amneris duet first (which I really might be singing somewhere) and then take a crack at the duet with Radames.  But it turned out that my teacher just got a gig singing Enrico in Anna Bolena on very short notice, so he said "Let's look at the duet between Enrico and Giovanna."  (One of the great things about having him as a teacher is that he is still singing, so sometimes he does things like that.)

Giovanna Seymour is a role that I squeaked and sqwawked my way through  sang 35 years ago.  I have no idea why I was cast in that role as I did not have a usable high B natural.  I had auditioned to sing Smeaton (a trouser role in a lower range, with two nice arias) but that role had gone to a woman who was bigger and taller, with a darker voice.  My teacher (with whom I was studying with back then) said I was probably cast as Giovanna because I was slim and had red hair.  In any event, I did do a good job with the duet with Enrico, so I thought, well, why not give it a go.

To my amazement I sailed through it (it was there somewhere in my phonographic memory bank) despite the high tessitura.  My teacher, who certainly is not usually impressed or amazed, said he was speechless.  He said he had never heard me sing like that.  He also said that the production he was in was double cast and that one of the Giovannas did not sing the B naturals in the last aria but sang G sharps instead, which fit in the chords being played as sounded just fine.  So he told me to buy a copy of the score.

Part of me walked out of that lesson like I was floating on air.  But why ten years?? Why did it take so long?? I'm bloody 64!!! My teacher said among the reasons all this took so long is that muscles and cartilage in older people are not flexible and take longer to train.  Other reasons cited were that I only take two lessons a month, have a lot of stress as a caregiver, and had been singing incorrectly a lot of the time to try to "blend" in the choir (I seem to do less of this now and can sing a real supported pianissimo, at least up to a G.)

So now that I have half of what I've been yearning for all these years, what do I do about the other half (breaking into the huge crowd of mega-talented people who have a stranglehold on the all the opportunities)?