Even though I don't consider myself Christian (I do consider myself partially Christian as Unitarianism is a blend of everything), I like the idea of observing Lent. As I jokingly said, observing one or more spiritual disciplines for 40 days definitely beats the Jewish alternative of making yourself sick for 24 hours by not eating or drinking water.
This year there was an article circulating on Facebook about 10 ways to observe Lent, and I have picked four, the last one being the most relevant here.
The first two have to do with not acquiring and getting rid of "stuff", which is always a good thing to do, and the third said "no gossiping". I am not always sure what constitutes "gossiping", but I will try not to pass along stories I have heard about people that sound "juicy" but that come from a third party and may not even be true. I suppose "gossiping" can also be construed to mean repeating things told to one in confidence, which of course I would never do, unless I found a way to tell the story anonymously if I thought it was necessary in a particular context, to help other people.
The fourth observance that I really plan to stick to is "no complaining". For me that means in writing as well as out loud. Who knows? Maybe it will make me feel better. I feel that I am constantly working at feeling grateful, which sometimes feels as hard as working out. I know that a lot of my bad feelings come from what my therapist calls "affluenza" (in my case the issue has less to do with money than with artistic and professional success), that is, being surrounded by extremely successful people all the time because of where I live.
So I will focus on positive things. We got the choir schedule running from Lent through Easter so my task now (in addition to learning all that music) is to look around for an occasion to sing an appropriate solo, either at the regular service when there is no choir or at one of the Spanish services. The "sexy Agnus Dei" is too long, but it might be OK for the Spanish Good Friday service, or I could make a cut in it. I would also love to do the Bach "Qui Sedes" again. Maybe on the Sunday when the choir is not singing (I think the informal choir sings on that day) I could sing it during communion. (I have already sung it in the Spanish service, on Good Friday two years ago.) Or there are two other settings of the "Qui Sedes" text, both by Vivaldi. On Good Friday the choir will be singing the Dvorak Requiem. I am going to see if there is a mezzo solo. If so, I will see what the politic thing to do would be a propos of finding a place to sing it. Or I could look at the Inflammatus from the Dvorak Stabat Mater. This is a favorite with some contraltos I know, but it is not terribly low (in a similar range to "O Rest in the Lord").
Lastly, the issue of Classical Singer for which I was interviewed has come out. The article was about singers who started late. From reading it, I can see that we run the gamut from people who began in their mid 30s who are singing either professionally or in high level amateur productions, to people like me, who really didn't develop our voices fully until we were much older. If there was a takeaway from the article for me, it had less to do with singing per se than with he fact that people (because everyone is living longer) are starting all sorts of things when we're older and it's stupid to write us off. I mean there's the issue of looks, but there's all sorts of classical singing going on where looks shouldn't matter. As I said in my quote about ageism, if it's about looks, that's one thing, but to write people in their 50s and 60s off because we are probably on a downward trajectory is very wrong-headed nowadays.
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