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.