Lend Me a Plumber

Well, yesterday I stayed in (did I mention that bad weather just compounds all the things that put me in a bad mood - feeling hemmed in by a lack of money, lack of free time, and caregiving?) and spoke to my therapist on the phone.  I had emailed her my New Year's resolutions, as well as answers to some questions that I found in the New York Times about making a Mission Statement.  Well, the latter went belly up, but we had an interesting discussion about the former.  Then today I found an article online called "The Seven Myths about Habits", which I won't repost here, but which did have a few nuggets that I identified with.  It used as an example that if you are constantly tempted by, say, chocolate chip cookies, the issue isn't that you need will power, it's that you need to create an environment that is mostly cookie-free.  They certainly tell you that in 12 step meetings.

So to extrapolate, if my negative thinking is a bad habit, I need to change my environment, but how?  I mostly toggle back and forth between my apartment, where I am alone working or practicing, except for interactions that I choose to engage in with people online or on Facebook (my partner is the only person I speak with on the phone), my partner's house, where we are pretty much alone together, choir rehearsals, church, voice lessons, Pilates classes, the grocery store, and the laundry room where I see and chat with neighbors.  So as I've been saying for some time (see Resolution 7) it is  my environment that is making me sick, in the sense of spiritual sickness.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I had a very interesting interaction, one that I wish I could have more of, if only I knew where to find them.

I needed a plumber because there was no heat in my bathroom.  After he finished looking at the pipe, he had to wait for the super so I invited him to sit at my dining table and asked him if he wanted a glass of water.  He said yes, so while he sat there, we talked.  He noticed that my electronic keyboard was on the table (shows how often I have people over for a meal, at least one where we sit at a table) and asked me if I played the piano.  I told him, not really (I took piano lessons as a kid, but by now can only play with the right hand, which is enough to learn music I am singing), but that I sang.  He then mentioned that his 5 year old daughter had a toy keyboard, and that he wanted her to have real piano lessons, because he knew that you had to start kids early.  I asked him where he lived and he said Harlem, so I told him about the Manhattan School of Music.  Imagine!!  Me telling someone about the Manhattan School of Music, that institution whose graduates are part and parcel of the tsunami of talent that I have so often mentioned that makes me feel like I am drowning.  (Even their graduates from decades past who never sang, like the wife of my neighbor the music critic, have their noses in the air around me.)  Then I also mentioned Harlem School of the Arts, which he said he had heard of.  I said I didn't know where there were free music lessons for children but I said there must be somewhere.   He also mentioned hoping to get his daughter into a magnet school (I don't think that was the term he used; he was from Ecuador and his English, while totally understandable, was not that good), so I told him that when he was at the school for an interview he could ask about their music programs.  In any case, this was the kind of interchange that I have oh so rarely, and that I treasure.  Imagine!  Appearing in someone else's eyes as someone with knowledge.

As he was leaving, he told me how "pretty" everything in my apartment looked.  Again, this is not an experience that I have very often.  I have been told this from time to time by a few people as I have a lot of artwork on my walls and some antique furniture, but to most people (did I say that probably one third of the people I know own two places of residence and at least another third own a coop that is three times the size of this studio apartment?) it is just a dump, sort of like an older woman's version of a college dormitory filled with books, CDs, and with no light.

I'm sure the city is filled with people who were never in a high school orchestra or school play, who did not go to college (or have technical degrees from community colleges), and who "think they might like" classical music but are not so immersed in it up to their eyeballs that the best reaction they will ever have to something I produce and sing in is a polite attempt to search for a compliment (that is if they even show up at all).  So why don't I know these people?  Why am I always around people who make me feel "less than"?  Not on purpose, of course.

So for me it's not the cookies or the beer or the lottery tickets, it's the blogs of working singers, the idle banter of fellow choir members about their years at conservatories, in college theater programs, even high school bands.  It's the little bios of the performers in all the nooks and crannies all over the city that showcase classical music.

I really really want to break this habit of negative thinking; but first I need an environment in which to shine, sparkle, and, yes sometimes, lead.

Sunday I went to my partner's house and brought the Gay 90s Songbook, as I had promised, so that she could sing some of the songs preferatory to (maybe) going to try out for that Alzheimers chorus in the Spring.  She is very musical, and singing some of the songs brought back happy memories for her.  Of course with her COPD she has no range really.  But she was smiling and swaying in time to the music and if she faltered, I sang for her.  And when we got to something unfamiliar, I attempted to "solfege" it: something I didn't even think I could do!! (Maybe that's how I need to learn to sight-sing, not with a textbook!).

Maybe I should just try to start small?