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.