I have had a very stressful few days, emotionally. Right now I feel like I've been through a wringer.
Just as I was really feeling happy for the first time in a long time, one of my Facebook friends reposted a blog entry by the woman I refer to as "Miss Blowhard" (a singer with a minor career - albeit a gorgeous voice - who is also a teacher and writer) about the whole issue of should you/shouldn't you sing for free, which went back and re-hashed the whole bookstore singing gig, which I really thought had been put to bed.
I am not even sure where her post was going, because first she said singers shouldn't sing for free, then she said yes, there were avocational singers and that that was an esteemable thing. She did rehash in great detail a conversation she had with the woman from the publisher stating that she would not let her students (I have no idea what level they are at) sing something like that for free nor would she let them sing at a church for free. In the process of all this she referred to me as "a dedicated avocational singer who appeared to have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the experience". Part of me feels lucky to have escaped the barbs of her sharp tongue, and that that description of me was "charitable enough". Later, though, I felt that there was something "booby-prizeish" about it and that my considering it a compliment shows how little self esteem I have. I think if that posting had a "point" it was that people were entitled to use avocational singers but that they needed to be "educated" that they then were using a "lower tier of service". So that's what I am then? The Wal-Mart version?
Reading these sorts of things is really not helpful and just makes me unhappy. So, I'm the Wal-Mart version. Can't I have break from being reminded of that? How can being told that possibly help me have a happier life using my talents as best I can?
Then I ended up really losing my temper (figuratively speaking) on Facebook about another perceived diss (I don't want to say who, what, because I learned my lesson about being tactless) and had a tiff with someone that did not do me any favors. We hugged and made up without endless palaver, which is a good thing. It was yet another incident involving Little Miss getting more than her fair share of attention.
Here's what I think bothers me so much, and it really ties all these themes together.
No, I don't think grieving is a good metaphor for whatever it is I'm feeling. It's more like yearning. An enormous yearning that nothing can assuage, that hurts more than anyone will ever know. Yearning for recognition, for attention, for applause (not for nothing, but for all the hard work I've done, and how much better I sound each year than I did the year before, particularly now). And then I realized that this is not the first time I've yearned and yearned and yearned for something I don't or maybe can't have. But this is the first time that I've yearned and yearned and yearned for something for so long and not eventually found a viable substitute, which would then enable me to move on. In high school if I yearned after Charlie and he wouldn't give me a second look, I could date Timmy, and eventually, I would be happy with Timmy. If Beth made me feel fat and coarse, I could stop spending time with her and find a few other friends who thought I was glamorous and interesting. But there is noplace I seem to be able to go with the talents and abilities I have now where they matter all that much. I am not a masochist. At some point I realized I would be happier if I cut myself off from the world of professional singers (or emergings, or semi-pros), stopped reading their posts and stopped going to see performances given by the opera groups that have rejected me. I "unsubscribed" to emails from those groups, finally, so that I would not know what they are doing. But you see, "Little Miss" has brought that world right into what I thought was a "safe haven" where I could be special - a choir that doesn't pay people. And the whole tone has changed, which is why I lost my temper over something basically pretty trivial.
Well, today was Transfiguration Sunday, so maybe I will be transfigured. And soon it will be Lent, so maybe I can meditate on my sins, of which envy is absolutely the biggest.
I actually had a nice day today. I sang "Et Exsultavit" from the Magnificat in D at the Spanish service and everyone loved it. Someone told me I should sing there more often. And I may get a video. And my Spanish is improving. I understood at least half of the sermon. In the Fall I plan to audit a course in Spanish at Hunter College. People over 60 can audit courses there for $65 a semester.
Hi Babydramatic,
ReplyDeleteI read the blog post in question last week, and I didn't interpret it the way you have. She specifically says that some avocational singers are every bit as good as the professionals and that there is nothing that professional singers can do if avocational singers undercut them.
I think her point is not "don't sing for free" but "don't sing for nothing." In other words, if there's not something in it for you (fun, money, publicity, etc.) or if the benefits to you do not meet the cost (time, transportation costs, opportunity cost), don't do it. And I really read her as saying that professionals have a responsibility not to undercut each other--not that avocational singers have that responsibility to professionals; she specifically says that we do not.
As far as being "the Walmart" of singers, I'm not sure that's what she meant by a lower tier of service. If I asked someone to sing for my wedding for free, they might decide, on the day of the wedding, that there's something else they'd rather do. If it's a friend of mine (my voice teacher sang for free at my wedding as her gift to me), then I would trust them not to do that, but if it's a random person, I wouldn't trust them. (I would trust you, but only because I know you from reading your blog.) A professional singer would compromise her reputation if she flaked out on a performance. So to me, lower tier of service isn't necessarily about quality of singing, but these other assurances that people seek when deciding whom to hire for their gigs.
That's an interesting point you make about people flaking out at the last minute. I think there are really three tiers of service: professionals, obsessed (or at least dedicated) avocationals, and "amateurs" for whom it really is only a hobby. I see that with my choir. Almost everyone there belongs in the category of dedicated avocationals, but there are a handful of people who, yes, don't show up if they have theater tickets or house guests, something I would never do. Although at least these people let the choir director know ahead of time. I have found that it's the professionals who agree to sing for free who are the most likely to cancel close to the date of. Avocational singers who are doing it for "exposure" for whom this is the best opportunity they are going to get are much less likely to back out. What bothers me the most about the whole singing for free debate is the hypocrisy about it and the blurring of the lines. People complain about being asked to sing for free and then flood these opera companies that don't pay people. I was turned down for a role in a Handel opera that would have involved singing from a book in someone's living room so the role could go to someone professional who might want to use that as a rehearsal. If would be simpler if classical music were more like sports and there were "leagues" stratified by age and ability and whether or not you are an amateur or a professional. So there should be places where, say, older singers who are not professionals can put on a concert where professionals and younger or more polished people with impressive CVs are not welcome. Of course there will be finagling, just the way there is with sports, but you would get more opportunities. I don't think I sing as well as most professionals certainly not here, and definitely not the professionals who sing full length operas, although I certainly think I could be a paid (or at least more frequently used unpaid) church soloist if I didn't live in the middle of Manhattan. I am complaining more about the lack of opportunities to sing for free where I am not competing with professionals who can't find work (who then turn around and complain about being asked to sing for free). As for that bookstore gig, I don't think it should have been pitched to professionals in the first place. It was basically just a lark. It could have been done by anyone who could carry a tune, put on a costume, and shake their booty, even someone who didn't sing as well as I do.
ReplyDeleteI did it so that I could have a video (and look? even though I felt chewed up and spat out on some level, at least it got a lot of publicity). And reading the novella gave me the idea for the performance piece I created, which I am by no means done with. Yes, I absolutely wouldn't sing for "nothing". For example I would never ever ever sing in the chorus of one of these no-pay opera groups nor would I sing what someone calls a "che avenne" role. I would only sing a role that I wanted. Otherwise I can produce something myself.
Basically I am just tired of all this "opinionating" which just feeds into all my self-deprecation and unhappiness. I certainly don't learn anything from it that will help me achieve any of my goals.