How Can I Compete with Total Immersion? (Reprise)

Well, yesterday was a day of "the Bitter and the Sweet" (another oft-used blog post title).

I have been spared playing backup to Little Miss; the choir director scrapped the Moses Hogan spiritual for this Sunday because we don't have enough people.  We are singing a lovely arrangement of  "Precious Lord" instead.

And I got to really rock the Argento "Gloria".  It's so nice to be able to really sing; that is, not have to either be singing soprano and trying to keep the volume down (if there are two soprano parts this is less of a problem, and I can really sing when I'm on second, also) or singing alto and barely getting to sing a D once every few pages.

So I am determined to be letter perfect with the notes next week.

But also, I was disappointed that my partner decided to opt out of going to the try outs for the Alzheimer chorus.  The weather is bad, she doesn't feel well, and she said she hasn't sung for a while.  The good news is that the director of the chorus said that the chorus year is divided into three seasons, each culminating in a concert, so we can come in in April and try out for the next concert. As for trying to get my partner to sing, as she seems to have "lost" the old Lutheran hymnal that I brought her, I will bring a book of Gay 90s songs that I have, and we can try singing those.  She loves them.

At Tuesday's therapy session I came in angry; mostly anticipating the dreaded Moses Hogan experience, Little Miss showing off (that's not fair, really, she would just be singing while the women with lower voices were grunting out notes), and the response she would get.  So my therapist said if I was that angry that much of the time (mostly about what I've called the tsunami of talented people that I feel is pushing me further and further toward the ocean floor, no matter how much technical progress I make, not to mention all the thoughtless 20 and 30 somethings who take up more than their fair share of the space in subway cars and elevators if not with their backpacks then with their loud conversations and high jinks) I need to write down every time I feel angry and what else I feel as well.  She said I probably also felt sad or hurt.  So I have been doing that.  It is an interesting exercise, because of course as soon as I stop to write something down I no longer feel angry.

She also asked me why I was still singing if it made me unhappy.  I told her that singing didn't make me feel unhappy and that in fact nothing made me happier than singing well.  Nothing! And I feel that I have made so much technical progress that it amazes me.  It's the closed doors that make me angry.  Being written off because I am old and don't have a music degree.  Because I don't move in a community of musicians.  Because I don't live on the periphery of the people who sing at the Met and perform in orchestras at Avery Fisher Hall.  The people I am talking about all do.  I have nothing except how well I sing at any given moment (and yes, my personal charisma, which is huge).  I have no resume, no names to drop, no past, and, therefore, in people's eyes, no future.

So this morning I woke up feeling really good about last night's rehearsal (I am much more appreciated in the alto section because there, you see, I am the "Little Miss", the one who can always sing that F that makes everyone else nervous, the way in the soprano section she can ace that A.)

Then I read a Facebook post by a woman in the congregation who is a lovely person, but she exemplifies who I am up against.  She is probably in her late 30s (she can't be all that young based on how long she says she has been married) and has put together a pastiche of things to do for a living in the arts, both visual and performing, as well as teaching, both for pay and as a volunteer.  Her husband has a paying job in the theater.  Now she has enrolled in all kinds of classes at prestigious institutions (I have no idea who is paying for this).  So she lives and breathes art, all day long.  And there are many of these people all around.

So it comes back, to some extent, to the Wizard of Oz, who told the Scarecrow that he didn't need a brain, he needed a diploma.  There are no signifiers in my life that I am a performer.  Lots of people sing in church choirs.  So I sing Donizetti in the bathroom.  Big deal.  Not even the neighbors care, because they go to the Met all the time.  It's around the corner after all.

That's one reason I write this blog.  It is about singing and very little else.  Occasionally I make reference to something else, but to me, other than caring for my partner, these things are not important.

I mean I think if God took away my voice (through some kind of health challenge) I would not fall apart.  I would find something else to do.  But as long as this huge voice is beating its wings inside me, wanting to soar and take people's breath away, wanting to be heard, wanting to put me front and center somewhere, no matter how tiny, I will never, never, never, stop.