The End of a Decade

I know I owe readers a post (I still seem to have readers, although I have had no new comments for over a year) but I haven't felt much like writing these days.  Oddly, I think it's because whether or not I'm happier, I'm more at peace with myself.

First and most importantly, I have found a singing "home": singing concerts and recitals for seniors at nursing homes and other senior venues. I have given up trying to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies.  I really am too old.  Not from a vocal standpoint, but from the standpoint that not only is my arthritis too limiting for me to run all over a stage (including using stairs and wearing heels), I also don't see myself traveling between the boroughs (or even here in Manhattan) for rehearsals that begin after 7:00 and run as late as 10 pm.  These days I wake up between 6 and 7:30 and can barely keep my eyes open by 9:30.

Also church singing.  I have decided it doesn't matter whether I am or am not Christian.  Church singing is an art form and it's one I am good at.  What's important is conveying a message to an "audience" that is meaningful to them.  A good high church service is a form of liturgical theater.  That is not to say that I am not moved by the spiritual messages (and this church is politically to the far left, so there is a strong social justice message as well).  And I have met a nice group of women my age.  I am not strictly speaking a "member" of the church, but I do give them money.  As I've often said, I feel "too Jewish" to want to be baptised but not "too Jewish" to have a Christmas tree (or to celebrate Christmas in general) or to sing church music.  I mean aside from the "star" soloists, the world is full of non-Christians who sing in the sort of big choruses that put on requiems and masses.

As for how church music measures up compared with opera, it requires the same kind of vocal technique but is not as strenuous (the range is more truncated, for one thing) and if you sing in a church you're basically singing one aria or song and the services are in the morning which is a better chronobiological "fit" for me these days.

Right now the most important thing to me is making the end of my partner's life as sweet as possible.  All the pieces are in place (Medicaid, hospice) so I just have to stay with her on this journey.  I would like to think she will live longer than two months, but I don't know if she will see another Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I am still "orphaned" and can't seem to break through that form of isolation.  I have made a lot of new friends, but I am not a priority with them.  By the time people are my age they have accumulated a multigenerational family that branches all over the globe, so it seems.  My orphan state is the result of 100 years of choices by my forebears.

My father was the only child of an actress who divorced her husband almost immediately after he was born.
My mother had one sister whom she fell out with.
Her sister had one son who isn't interested in "connecting" with me (I made numerous attempts).
His wife is not a "social" being (she is an academic who writes books).
They have one son (he is probably in college by now).
I am an only child.
I have no children.


So I am no one's "obligation".  Last year at this time when I was asked what I wanted that I didn't have, interestingly, I didn't mention singing.  I said "A birthday celebration that I don't have to plan or pay for" and "someone whose name I can put down on a form as an emergency contact".  And both those things are related.  I still don't have either. For many people it's a sibling, an adult child, or an adult niece or nephew.  They may not be close, but there is duty.

I was told I could have my partner's funeral at the church.  If I plan some music, people will come.  I don't know what will happen to me when I die.  Will I really be in a situation where there is no one left but a lawyer?

Ageism is Bad, but Older People *Are* Different

About four years ago I wrote this essay  Now, because of an upsetting incident that led to my receiving some upsetting (along with some helpful) feedback online, I started thinking about a number of age-related issues from a different perspective.  As I've written before, ageism has upset me in ways that sexism or homophobia never did.  But I'm also upset by its absence, or rather the absence of a level of deference and respect that I just assumed I would be getting once I was over a certain age.

On the same site where I posted my query (it was about the infantile man - my age - in the laundry room whom I have come to detest to a degree that is beginning to scare me; I just shouldn't let him rent any space in my head, but then of course he's my "ghost of bad choices past")  a woman posted a question as to whether people become more conservative as they age.  My answer to that is a resounding "yes"!  Although I am not speaking politically.  I'm not even speaking socio-politically; I still feel the same way about reproductive choice and the separation of Church and State, for example. What I mean is that I really really really think the world would be a better place if people behaved more formally in public (which includes treating older people with concern and respect) as well as more formally with each other if they are not close friends.

When I speak of the absence of ageism upsetting me, I mean things like the prevalent idea that if a school age child (one too big to ride the bus for free and sit on one's lap) wants to sit on the bus, everyone else can go to Hell.  And often the worst offenders are "grandmas" my age!!  On several occasions I have seen a woman my age stand up so that her ten-year-old granddaughter can sit.  What is going on there?? And it isn't just a question of abstract politeness.  From the time I was a grade schooler my mother drummed it into my head that people "grandma's age" (this meant over 50 back then) have a lot of "aches and pains" and need to sit down, in fact need to be comfortable generally, and that I , a healthy able-bodied youngster, did not. It didn't matter if I was "tired".  Many of these oldsters had worked hard for their whole lives.  My grandmother had stood on her feet all day in Macy's and my grandfather had been a waiter.  Now I am lucky to get a seat and to do that I have to keep an eagle eye and be relatively fleet of foot.  I remember once trying to board a bus when a woman and her 8-10 year old tried to push ahead of me and I pushed ahead of them and said "Age before Beauty and before 'cuties' too."  I feel perfectly justified in doing that.  On the other hand, if I see someone who looks older than I am (or who is walking with a cane) I will step back and in fact will gladly stand on my arthritic hips for the entire bus trip so that they don't have to.

Then there's language.  I mean if young people are talking to each other that's one thing, but I really don't think it's appropriate to get into an online quarrel with someone twice your age and say things like "tough s**t that you're so butt-hurt".  My oh my, have things deteriorated.  I still might cuss if I dropped hot coffee on myself, or got all the way somewhere suddenly realizing that I left my phone (or my music binder) at home, but that's about it.  Now I hear people using the word "s**t" to mean everything from "belongings" to "life affairs".

Then there's the issue of generation, which is different from age. I suppose since we're the first generation that refused to grow up (remember "Don't trust anyone under 30?") we deserve what we get. If a large number of us don't behave like gracefully aging older adults, I guess the rest of us won't be treated as such.

Someone in the online forum asked me why it mattered that Laundry Room goon didn't "get" that I didn't like him?  A good question.  It isn't that I don't like him really, it's that I don't like the whole hipandcool boomer "gestalt" that he keeps shoving at me trying to make common cause.  An analogy would be if someone Italian-American found out that I was Italian-American and kept shoving Andrea Bocelli at me or kept throwing the odd bit of Italian slang into the conversation thinking it was a "bond" no matter how many times I said I didn't like Bocelli and was not a "paisan" (apologies to my Italian American friends, I'm just using this as an example).  For example, I remember the first time I yelled at him for playing what I later found out was "the Velvet Underground" at an ear splitting volume he asked me with genuine surprise "You don't like the Velvet Underground?" Then I said I mostly listened to classical music, but did like certain popular music like the music from Motown in the 60s.  So he said "so when you hear that you start grooving to the beat, huh?" which made me reflexively want to run to the loo and barf.

Someone on the online discussion board made a nasty comment to me about "pearl clutching".  That is supposed to be a pejorative, I know, but it conjured up a rather nice image.  Yes, I'm going to be 70 so why not? I like the image of myself in a tasteful dress with a string of pearls.  I've earned the right to be offered a seat and be shielded from the worst of the bad language young people use.  I'd rather be a "pearl clutcher" than someone making a fool of himself thinking he's cool (and yes, the people who do this are mostly male; aging female hippies are mostly quiet and sweet, with an interesting fashion sense).

Now I should say that this man is in no way "the norm".  I have a large circle of friends (mostly women and gay men, and a few married couples) who are my age and none of them blast loud music from the 70s (or from anywhere) and very few of them pepper every sentence with profanity.  We go to chamber music concerts, have book discussion groups (mostly about Barbara Pym or Jane Austen) and go to museums.  But we are not stick in the muds. More than half of my friends went to the women's marches wearing "pussy hats" and some even travel to El Salvador or go to the border to help immigrants.

Maytime Take 2 and "Aging Artfully"

Last night I watched Maytime again.  My sense of it was quite different from my sense of it four years ago. First, I realized how dated some of it was.  The girl's young fiance makes her choose between going to New York to study voice and try to have a career, and marrying him.  That wouldn't happen today, certainly not among Millennials of a certain socioeconomic class.  The girl would go to New York, launch her career, then "pair off" with someone she might want to marry with the understanding that the marriage would be a partnership in which instance by instance, they negotiated whose career was more important (that year, that month).  Even after children arrived. 

The first time I realized that we were into new territory in that regard was when a friend's daughter (who was born in 1970, so she's more Gen X) decided to go to graduate school in a different city from where her fiance was living, which was where, eventually, they planned to settle.  That would have been unheard of in my day.  If you were lucky enough to "nail" a partner that you were madly in love with, everything else just sort of fell by the wayside if necessary.  I was thinking, for example, of my giving up singing at 30.  I mean there were a myriad factors, most notably that I wasn't really willing to put in the work to take care of my instrument (although by the end I was singing very well from a technical standpoint).  But in addition to needing to earn a living and get a college degree in my off hours (getting a degree in music never occurred to me; my one exposure to music theory bored me to tears) and the fact that "political dykes" didn't "invest themselves in a patriarchal art form like opera", there was the relationship.  My partner would never have countenanced my doing anything that took me away from her for extended periods.  In fact, I remember one of our ugliest quarrels (during the 20 years of our time together that I recall as "happy") took place when, while I was enrolled in college, taking a course called "Women in the Law", I got a chance to go to a conference on Women in the Law (in Detroit of all places) over a weekend.  She kicked and screamed and yelled and we didn't speak to each other for the days leading up to my departure.  I think the thaw broke when I got back but I never did anything similar again unless it was something required by work.

And getting back to Maytime, of course no doubt today, the older teacher/mentor's attraction to his pupil and his request that she marry him (the subject comes up when she tells him how much he has done for her and asks what she can do in return) would be loosely categorized under the heading of "sexual harrassment" (and "marry" probably wouldn't have been the word used, although it might have been; he seemed more interested in "possessing" her than in a roll in the hay).

On another subject, yesterday I went to a free conference called "Aging Artfully".  It was a series of lectures and panel discussions aimed at showing seniors how engaging with the arts (as a participant, not a passive viewer or listener) can keep a person young and engaged.  I didn't learn much there that would help me with my quest for venues to produce concerts in, but there was much that I identified with: the need to be seen, how being "seen" makes you an artist, the need to feel safe being "seen", the need to feel grounded, the need to feel safe but that "unfamiliar" and "unsafe" are not synonyms (a big one for me), and how listening to music can calm people with dementia.

Actually, I probably learned more techniques that I can use with my partner, many of which I already use: playing music for her on Youtube, showing her paintings and photographs on my iPad, looking through her old art books.

And they addressed ageism.  One man mentioned that people (including older adults!) make stupid and disparaging jokes about "getting old" and "old people" of a sort that no one (at least no civilized person who moves in the circles we move in) would make about a racial or ethnic group.

One disappointment.  I saw clips of a number of senior choruses but no performance classes (free or low fee) for seniors.  That is what I would be most interested in.  Coaching for solo performers ending in a concert (even just for each other and our friends). 

Better Aging Through Practice - NO! - Better Singing Through Practice!

I stumbled upon this article in this morning's TIMES.  I had no idea what it was about, and thought it might help my partner, who is elderly and frail.

Well, lo and behold, to my pleasant surprise, it was about how learning and working to perfect a new skill in late middle age can keep aging at bay.  Who knew?  So I guess singing is keeping me young.  I identified with a lot in the article, but did not identify with all of it.

The author appears to have started playing tennis because he had always loved tennis and was looking for something to do.  My experience was very different.  As long-time readers know, I began singing this time (I had yearned to sing opera since adolescence but had been kept from my personal best by smoking, crash diets, clubbing, the wrong friends, and - at the time - what appeared to be the wrong sexual orientation) because I was "discovered" by a mentor figure.  By the time we were finished with each other, the relationship had become quite toxic, but I was launched on this journey because someone had indelibly imprinted on me that it mattered if I sang or not.

And (fortunately or unfortunately) I don't at all feel that "I am not really concerned about where all this winds up. It’s the getting there I’m enthralled with." I care very very much where this all winds up.

Of course starting at such a late age, I didn't think I would have any kind of serious "career" but I did hope to be one of the "stars" of one of the myriad opera companies in the city that don't pay people.  I sang with companies like that in my 20s when my voice was about one third the size it is now and I had minimal technical expertise, although I did always have perfect intonation and an instinct for "singing on the breath" probably from spending my childhood imitating Julie Andrews.  Back then there were women there who were the age I am now, and sounded about like I do now, who seemed to sing a lot of leading roles, maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

Finding out how far down the food chain I am was a shock, but not enough of one, apparently, to get me to quit.

But singing in the practice room (my bathroom) or at a lesson, or even in a church choir, is not enough.  Unlike athletes, performers are driven by the idea that there is an audience.  I have accepted that it may only be an audience of 10 people, in someone's living room, but that's ok.  I would rather sing two arias or art songs in someone's living room than be lost in a large chorus in Carnegie Hall.

Tomorrow is my performance of Carmen.  I know if I mind my ps and qs I can sing it well.  (Interestingly, the one way in which age has been a handicap is that it is harder to learn music, despite its being easier to sing).

I realize that what I want most, after tomorrow, is to be invited back.  I have never been invited to sing anything, anywhere, not even church solos, at least not since my days at that talent-starved Unitarian church, and that was short lived.

And I hope I get a video and some kind of public thank you.

Not a B**tch

Nothing much is really happening (other than that we had the second biggest snowstorm on record), but I didn't want the last post I made to be the one people see first if they stumble upon my blog.  I want to let it stand, though, because, first of all, the little meme I created is rather funny (and I am proud of my having been able to design it myself), and second, because the list I enumerated below it reflects how I feel a lot of the time.

I think of myself as a jealous b**tch (let's just say that the older I get, the more I understand Amneris, although the prize is not necessarily a man), but when all is said and done, I'm not.

Saturday there was a traffic ban, everything was closed, including all the Broadway shows, and as a consequence, Little Miss's opera performance was also canceled.  As it was in a rather prestigious venue, that I am sure is booked for the next year, there probably won't be a "rain" - or rather "snow" date, and I really did feel sorry.  I just have to say that however screamingly and sobbingly envious I am, I would never wish another person harm or bad luck, certainly not anyone who has never done anything to harm me or anyone else.  It made me feel relieved to realize that, which means I am a nicer person than I think I am. (As an aside, she did get to perform the role once, the previous weekend, hence all the [professional and press] photos on Facebook.)

To me there is a difference between wishing someone ill, and just wishing you didn't have to see them or hear about what they are doing.

Basically what it boils down to is that I am not aging gracefully.  I can't admit that some things will never be, no matter how hard I work, no matter how much native talent I was given.  I would never lie about my age, and don't care how old anyone thinks I look.  I don't even mind that much having to use a cane to get around in the snow (the only thing that makes me angry is the presumed universality of "snow glee", somehow transporting even the oldest geezer back to childhood, and totally ignoring the fact that there are people for whom the prospect of snow is frightening, not exhilarating).

What I mind are all the closed doors.  The assumed ones (like the opera company that told me I was not a "future investment", which to me is different from telling me I looked to old for a part, or that they worried that I was not physically mobile enough for a part), and then the real ones: no one is interested in someone moving toward the cusp of sounding as good as a professional, when she's 65.  It may be an interesting phenomenon (as my teacher has said, and as some of my age peers, who by their own admission do not sing as well now as they did ten years ago, have been astounded by) but that doesn't translate into offers.

When I was younger, if I was not happy with how something was going, there was always hope.  It might have been false hope, or I might not have achieved or received whatever it was I wanted, but I could enjoy the journey, because who knew where it might take me?

Now, sadly, the answer seems to be nowhere that is not of my own making.

That said, it is almost time to dress and go to my voice lesson, where I can work on Carmen - to be performed on May 2.

Age Equals Stage - Not

When I opened up the OpEd page of my TIMES, I found this article, originally titled "What's So Great about Being Young?"

It is talking about writing contests with an age cutoff but of course so much of it speaks to me as a late blooming singer.

It addresses that age and stage are not equivalent, that "emerging" shouldn't automatically mean "young", and that early-blooming talent often requires coming from privilege. Or, as I've written about before, having the right mentor find you at the right time.

OK, so it's true that with certain sports, ballet, and playing certain musical instruments, the older you are when you start the harder it is, and at some point it is more or less too late (to be competitive).  With singing less so.  I mean I can see age as part of the picture in that it took me 10 years of lessons to learn what a younger person might learn in 4, because as my teacher has told me, cartilage and small muscles are stiffer and less flexible in older people.  And most older people cannot afford (and/or do not have time for) the "total immersion" that conservatory students get.

But all I can say is that I will be 65 in three months and I am singing better than I ever did.  And not just for short periods.  I can sing for much longer without getting tired.

I can understand people wanting to cast young people to play young roles.  I mean I've been watching Wolf Hall, and when I first laid eyes on the child playing Jane Seymour, I had to laugh.  No.  I certainly wouldn't do in a costume in a small opera house.  But it still smarts to this day that I was rejected by an opera company looking for "emerging" talent to play La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica because I was not a "future investment".  I was about 59, and it's almost 6 years later and I sound better now than I did then.

I guess this subject was on my mind because this summer Little Miss is doing her YAP stint with that very company.  She is playing Rosina.  Yes, that's as it should be.  But why couldn't I be an emerging talent who specialized in roles where I would look appropriate?

Or oratorio?  Why should the Oratorio Society of New York's solo competition have an age requirement? Why does that need to be part of the picture.  If it turns out that the older contestants don't sound as good as the younger contestants on a given evening, whatever the reason, then they won't win.  But why shut us out???

Whatever the obstacles, I am not giving up now.  I feel strongly that this is my "call".  I wasn't sure before, but I am now.  I had an insight recently that made me feel somewhat better about how I spent my time "then" and how I am spending it "now".  I recently sent some photos of me as a baton twirler to the Lesbian Herstory Archives. That was the kind of diva I was then. That was my call. To be "out and "proud" and "pretty", which was for that time and place, unique.  I realized that instead of being angry that the movement has passed me by and is now taken over by middle class women who want to marry (not my thing), I can say OK, they don't need me now.  What I want to do is sing.  That's my identity now.  And if I want to be the public face of a movement, it can be for older women who discover our passion late in life.

The Age-Related "No" - and Ambivalence

I have been feeling so happy since Good Friday, but now it is time to move on!  I have been continuing to work on my concert repertoire and my vocal technique continues to improve by leaps and bounds, amazing even me.

As for the title of this post, two opportunities have presented themselves, one which I am pretty sure I will finally pass on, with a great deal of regret, the second of which I will pass on because I have no choice.

What upsets me, particularly in the first instance, is that what became a deal-breaker is more or less age related; namely, that the evening audition that I had wanted to go to is in a neighborhood where I do not feel safe either going to, coming from, or being in at night after dark.  This is an up and coming neighborhood in North Manhattan, where all the people who, 30 years ago, would have found tenement apartments on the Upper West Side, are now living.  It was even once laughingly referred to as the Diva ghetto.  On the other hand, much of it is unsavory, it is a fairly high crime area at night, and I do not know my way around.  If I had to live there, I would cope, and would know which streets are safe, which are not, how to navigate my way from point A to point B, and so forth.  But going alone to an audition is another story.  I say this is age related for two reasons. First, my "image" of that neighborhood is probably by now about 20 years out of date (although not entirely; I know people who have moved to the burbs and commute to work rather than live there), and second, I feel especially unsafe as a woman in my 60s with orthopedic challenges who cannot run.

Now, OK, if I thought I really really had a good chance of being chosen for the part (it is a solo part in an oratorio) I would chance it and pay for a car service.  But there are already numerous challenges.  The audition date is now less than two weeks away, the forms are annoying to fill out (you have to send a money order [the fee in and of itself is not a deal breaker, even if I were only doing this for the experience], the forms are complicated, and I don't know if I can use oratorio solos for my "aria list"), and I never heard back from my Don Jose, who works there as a stage director, and should by now have answered either my email or my phone message.  Yes, my teacher told me that this person is busy, but I'm sure if he thought that I would be the perfect person to sing this he would have gotten in touch with me.  So that in and of itself speaks volumes.  I have a voice lesson tomorrow and I will tell my teacher what I have decided.  The upside of all this is that during the brief period when I had thought I was going to audition (and I would have auditioned despite the obstacles if the auditions had been in Chelsea the way they were last time) I reworked "Liber Scriptus" and wow!  what a difference.  All I need to do is not breathe before the word "judicetur" going up to the A flat, and it's a walk in the park.  Yes, all the mezzos I've listened to do breathe there, but for me it's easier not to (the curse of the catch breath).

As for the second "pass", the woman who has readings of operas from books in her living room (the one who was not interested in me for the Handel) seems to be desperate for an Azucena to sing in, again, less than two weeks.  If I had two months notice I would bite, because I would love a chance to sing that role and even think now I could manage the two B flats without cheating on the first one, but the reading is scheduled for a Saturday, which is my regular elder care day, and this particular Saturday is the day after the day I am taking my partner to a new primary care doctor, which means I would not have any rest the day before.  Not to mention that I would not have time to sing the role into my voice applying all the new techniques that I have learned in the past four years (it has already been four years since I sang Act II).  But what irks me is that this is another way in which age is a factor (well, not entirely; if I were in my early 30s and had two young children I probably couldn't jump to sing something - unless it was a paying job - on very little notice).  But many of the people I am competing with don't have children, even the people in their late 30s.  And if they have spouses their spouses are totally on board with their careers (or musical and theatrical obsessions), so I have challenges that they don't have.

Anyhow, this all seems very disappointing.

I need to continue to do things other than just choir singing and church solos, because I need to challenge myself in a variety of settings and contexts, as well as with a variety of repertoire, and overcome my nerves.

In other age-related news, I just submitted an online application for Medicare, for which I will be eligible in three months.

ETA: I wrote to a friend about the Azucena gig, and a lightbulb went off in my head that no doubt all the professionals, emergings, and professional cusp-ers who initially wanted to sing Azucena (there has to have been someone) got a better offer, which is why I strongly believe that if this woman wants to have singthroughs of operas in her living room, she would be better served using people like me, who would be thrilled to sing through a role if we had a decent amount of notice.  She would make as much money regardless.  Contrary to what people think, it's the professionals who leave you in the lurch for a non-paying gig, not the avocationals, for who it may very well be the best gig we can get.  So the professionals should leave these alone.

How My Imagination Atrophied

In a recent post about sexism, which also included quite a bit about generational differences, I spoke of how some of my self-dislike and low spirits around my dull work life, life as a caregiver (despite passionately loving my "care recipient"), and financial and temporal limitations, stemmed from "the conversation" or "the buzz" as you will around the topics of self-actualization through work, postponing coupling (and childbearing, which for me was not relevant), and an extended period of self-exploration.  And more importantly, about how doing those things is a passport to a good life, whereas not doing them, is a passport to poverty and a lesser one.

And now we have this op ed piece, which rehashes some of the same ground.

What I found most compelling, particularly in view of my goal to "jumpstart" my imagination, is the recent belief that postponing "settling" (one of the hallmarks of adulthood) allows the imagination to blossom more fully, and (although this was not mentioned) also allows one to "settle up" (with a more interesting and more lucrative career and a more appropriate spouse) when one does settle.  The article states that the jury is still out on which comes first: the "settled, hardened brain" or the routinized life, but they do seem to be related.

I (and many others of my generation) postponed adulthood, certainly middle-class adulthood, for a period of time, and some never found it, but this was a very different trajectory from that of today's millennials.  First, we got away from our parents at as young an age as possible and never went back.  We did not take money from our parents for living expenses, certainly if we were living in a way that they would not have approved of.  (If there was money, parents paid for college and graduate school - the latter mostly for sons - but nothing beyond.)  We did not become part of the "establishment".  Aborted our education.  Some died of drug overdoses or ended up in jail for misguided "politically motivated" crimes or for God know what that we did when on drugs.  Some managed a complete turnabout and became Yuppies.  The rest (I would include myself here) settled for the lesser life that one ends up in with a tenth rate education, often too little too late, and the need to opt for short-term financial security.

Once I got sober, the first thing I did was find a mate (someone I was madly in love with, with whom I could have sex regularly - let's get real here), then a job.  With nothing but a high school diploma and no work history I was lucky that I was able to get a "career ladder" secretarial job in publishing.  I was making a pittance but had good benefits and a ladder up in an industry that I was familiar with because I had grown up around it.  But that, and my early "marriage" did not do much in the way of allowing my imagination to blossom through novelty seeking.  True, I believed that I was sort of living on the edge of danger being out when sexual orientation was not a protected class with regard to employment discrimination, and when being in big groups of gay people demonstrating (or even going in and out of buildings known to be gay-centered) might have led to an ugly skirmish, but actually my life was pretty dull and predictable.  In the "textbook" time frame my relationship deteriorated from endless lovemaking and fighting (although some of that lasted for 20 years and the fighting continues to this day when I am mainly a caregiver) to discussions about grocery shopping and laundry, and certainly very little that I did at work was interesting at all.  I mostly liked the job because it was easy and I could take an hour and a half for lunch three times a week to go to an AA meeting and talk on the phone with my AA fellows most of the day while I shoved documents into file folders.  And I met interesting people.

I had  hoped that when I stopped working in an office and got out of the routine I could find "something different" but I see that I have settled into another routine that is just as dull, and I don't even sleep that much later!!

It always seems to be a struggle, not just to find venues for singing at my age with so little experience, but just to diversify my life in any way at all!!  I have always felt that my brain and my psyche fight these attempts at diversification much as my soul hungers for it, and at least this article explains why,

This also explains one of my sources of fascination with The Mentor.  I envied how he was free of the two things that made my life feel like a prison: monogamy (which wasn't even that any more, when your partner is physically failing) and an office job.  I can't comfortably address the first issue in a public blog, but although I am now free of the second, and do enjoy being able to mix and match my daytime schedule (do outside errands and make appointments during the day and work at my laptop at night), I seem to have ended up in the type of work that is largely dull and rote.

So how do I get my imagination jumpstarted?? Certainly remembering everything I learned from The Artist's Way has helped.

I would also like to see some articles about how some of the choices people like me made (and I am certainly not unique) can be leveraged as assets, going into the home stretch.  I'm really kind of sick of all the coverage given to young people.

In Praise of Praise

This blog post is prompted by several things.  The fact that, working alone at home, and now, compounded by the dangerous snow and ice conditions outside, I get so little feedback.  The fact that I recently read an article citing a study that showed that happy workers are workers who get regular feedback (which presupposes that at least half of it, or more, will be positive; the rest being instructive).  The fact that when I look at little micro-situations that have made me feel blue and put out, they mostly involve other people getting praise when I got none.

Now praise is very different from a grade or an award.  Praise can be given to each according to her personal accomplishments.

I am not one of those people who think "everyone is a winner".  If a role is being cast, it will only go to one or two people.  Likewise a prize.  Perhaps there will be first, second, third, and honorable mention, but no more.  Think of Olympic medals: gold, silver, and bronze.

But praise is different.  Praise can go to the person who improved the most since the last round of auditions.  Or to the person who sang that particular aria better than she had ever sung it.  Or - and this is the import of this piece - to someone who exceeded expectations of what was possible given the person's age and starting point.

My partner, who occasionally says something really supportive and profound, said she couldn't understand what made me so sad about having this 21 year old conservatory student in the choir.  She said, how can you compare yourself to her?  You're 63!  You can't "do your life over" (which of course made me want to cry).  But it was then that I realize that what I was so envious of was not that this young woman got a solo on Good Friday (which is again approaching; I must fortify myself with lots of planning for my Carmen concert, which will be two weeks after Easter, or - who knows? I may be pleasantly surprised).  It was the fuss that people made over her, all the way from the choir applauding her in rehearsal to the choir director asking people to give her a hand for a solo that she sang that was interpolated into a choir piece.  People have come up to me when I've sung something and said it was "lovely", which is no small thing, as I know.  People don't have to say anything.  But no one has actually said to me "you know it is quite amazing what you have accomplished over these past ten years, considering your age and all the obstacles that entails."  My partner said that to me.  She who almost never compliments me on anything except my cooking and my looks.  She said I should be proud of everything I have accomplished and how hard I have worked.  I laughed and said that I wished I had her in my pocket!  That then I might feel more confident and less despairing.

Actually, I did once get a compliment of that sort, from an unexpected quarter, from a voice teacher, one who is at least as well respected as some of the ones I have had "issues" with over the Internet.  She said I was an "inspiration", sounding like I do at my age not to mention that no one in a million years would guess how old I am.

I just long for some praise, some strokes.  Not instead of constructive criticism.  There have been articles lately about how too much "self esteem" is not good for kids; that if they're told everything is "wonderful" they will never improve or develop any self discipline, which is probably true.  It's important to be told (often) that the wonderful things are wonderful, and also to be told which things need improving and how to improve them.

Lastly, there is a quote that's been circulating, that I would have shared on my Facebook page, but it ends in an obscenity which is so not my style; also it is really not the correct word for my situation.  It reads, more or less:

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, surrounded by [jerks].

If I substituted "superachievers" for "jerks", I would have it, in a nutshell.

I wish all the superachievers could just clear off, so I could really see myself.

The Internal Call and the External Call

I have not been feeling great lately, mostly because of the weather.  Being A. more housebound than usual and B. noticeably more frightened by the idea of walking on snow and ice than younger people are (or than I was 20 years ago - yes, the last rapid succession of snowstorms was in 1993) has not been good for my mental health.

So this afternoon I took a break from work to listen to a tv interview with the (drop dead gorgeous) pastor at the church where I sing.

A lot of the thrust of the discussion had to do with the role of women in the church, the lack of female role models at the time she was ordained, how she dealt with her "call" in the absence of these, and what that call consisted of.  I am not going to post a link to the interview here, mostly because it is almost a half hour long, but one thing she mentioned about her "call" was that in the Lutheran tradition it is considered important for there to be both an internal and an external "call".  That means that not only was it important that she felt called to the ministry, but that other people should perceive her as being suitable for it.

So therein lies the heart of some of my deep sadness about missed opportunities as a singer.  The lack of an external call.  Oh, there were external calls, mostly when I was much younger, but they were few and far between and never loud enough to compete with my generation's exhortation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out", to smoke to stay thin, and to "be" an intellectual, engaged with the issues of the day, not with something as self-absorbed as the pursuit of excellence in classical music.  (Don't get me wrong.  As I've said many times, my mother and her circle adored classical music, but it was meant as something to listen to after a day's work in a classroom or at the typewriter, not as a personal pursuit.)

And the external call mostly petered out by the time I turned 21.  Even though I began studying singing seriously the first time at 26, that was too late for me to matter.  And my whole heart wasn't in it. True, I was no longer smoking, but I was still starving myself to fit into a size 30 jeans and spending long evenings at Lesbian discos.

I am now coming up on the tenth anniversary of my "discovery" by the Mentor.  I think why that was such a cataclysmal event in my life was that it was the first external call to singing that I'd had in a very, very, long time and it was neither elicited nor sought.  I had begun going to that Unitarian church to go to church, not to sing.  If we want to be picky, it is now beyond the date of my "discovery", which probably happened in the summer of 2003, but it was the sumptuous "Mon Coeur" that changed everything.  Which may explain why I am so (inexplicably) sympathetic to Miss Kansas. Maybe singing "Nessun Dorma" badly lit a fire under her that singing "Caro Mio Ben" in a studio with a vocal pedagogue never would. Maybe she will start again and do that now that the fire has been lit.  Would I have continued to be obsessed with singing for a decade if I had been asked to sing "Amazing Grace" instead of being coaxed and seduced with an image of my own lusciousness in a seethrough lace top singing one of the sexiest arias ever written?  Possibly not.

It is the external call that I still crave.  That is why I am happy with the woman who is helping me produce Carmen and sing Spanish songs.  More than half the people who show up at her meetups have never even had a formal voice lesson, so in that milieu I feel special.

I am also facing a choir dilemma.  Last Sunday we sang a piece in 8 parts and, for the first time ever, there were four other second sopranos, including one "ringer" (not a trained singer, but an instrumentalist who can sing pleasantly in tune and can sightread).  Why on earth was she needed in my section.  When I told her I was surprised she wasn't singing alto (where more people are needed) I am not sure she understood but she mentioned two women by name in the first soprano section, saying that their voices are "so strong".  Hello??? I can sing loud enough to drown both of them out any day of the week.  Now I will say with all humility that my voice is in no way as lovely certainly as the 21 year old conservatory student's.  But strong???  I know this sounds idiotic, but I was really hurt.

I just am not all that excited about singing there any more.  If I am not noticed, even as someone with a big, obviously trained, voice who can hold a part with confidence, why am I even doing this?  On the other hand, I don't want to skip rehearsal because of the weather.  That just makes me look old and dilettantish.  I will be there whatever the weather, unless I get a "call" from somewhere else to do something else, which I hope is more often than used to be.  I think the woman who produced the last Sunday concert will be producing another - in March.  I hope I can sing there with my Don Jose.

And now I need to get onto finding a reader.

Concert Went Well - And a Whine about the Weather

I was going to wait to post about Sunday's concert until I got pictures (two people took really nice pictures of me with the producer) but I haven't gotten them yet.  I did take a "selfie" which sort of shows my outfit and also shows a wall hanging I bought in honor of the Mentor (about 5 years ago).  I have gotten better at selfies (remembering not to grimace the way I would if I were just trying to frame a photograph) but I still can't get them to show anything below my shoulders.

I thought I sang well; the only problem was that the silk rose somehow got stuck in my lace sleeve, and flipped backwards instead of out into the audience (also, there was no attractive man or woman I felt that I wanted to honor with the rose!).  Also, although using the chair as a prop was a great idea (I had no trouble sitting down, standing up, or standing with my foot on it), when it came to "toss it aside" gracefully, it was too heavy and I could barely move it.

Plans for the Carmen concert continue.  I now have an accompanist.  I have not gotten a confirmation email back from the tenor, so I will contact him again.  There will be two runthrough rehearsals with the accompanist (I don't know yet if we will have a Micaela and an Escamillo) and before then I will try to go to 4 or 5 meetups with the producer/sponsor.  She posted several for the end of January and the beginning of February, but I want to avoid going out unnecessarily until there is less snow on the ground.  I am figuring I can get to maybe one at the end of February, two in March, and two in April.  

I finally had a lesson yesterday after not having had one for five weeks, and not singing any exercises (or anything) above an A for a week.  I sang through "Chanson Boheme" like a house afire, and today during my practice I sailed comfortably up to a high C on a long arpeggio.  Not a squeak that got stuck in my throat but a real note.  Maybe at some point I will go back to the difficult repertoire (meaning Verdi) that I have taken a break from.  

As for the weather, I am frightened for my safety in this storm.  I had a doctor's appointment this morning, but am in for the rest of the day.  Tomorrow night is choir practice.  The choir director has said the rule is that if the subways are running, we are on.  If I want to stay competitive with all the new talented young people I can't be a sissy and stay home because of a snowstorm, unless an advisory is issued (it has been for tonight).  I mean I now have a whole "old lady" protocol all the way from using a cane, to taking buses not subways, to, now, since my last fall, asking the bus driver to let me exit using the wheelchair platform if the bus has steps (a lot of them don't).  But staying home is not an option, I wouldn't think.  Of course this is an endless source of friction with my SO who would love to keep me in a little box until it's time for me to come do chores for her.  What bothers me is I have lived with inclement weather for over 6 decades and this is the first year I have really been frightened by it.  As a child it was fun, as a teenager it signaled a welcome holiday from school, and as an adult going to work it was a nuisance (I remember waiting for a bus standing in a foot of snow and thinking my legs were going to freeze off, for example, as well as having to clamber over huge snow drifts to cross the street) but  not a hazard.

Well, now it's back to Carmen.  I need to get serious about memorizing the second half of it!

ETA: Here is a photo of me with the woman who produced the concert and will sponsor my Carmen.  Note the stunning view from her window!

I Don't Think This is a Cop Out

As one of the things on my "bucket list" is to be the subject of someone's newspaper or magazine article, I realize what I need to do is write to journalists who have written articles about people like me.  If they've written one, maybe they will write another.

An article that I keep coming back to is this one. I have thought about it a lot, but I realized I had not reread it.

Several thing mentioned in the article explain why, even after 9 years of studying now, with two good teachers (yes, the Mentor was a good voice teacher, he just interspersed a lot of lascivious blather and New Age silliness into the lessons) I don't sound as good as, say, someone who is now in a  Master's of Vocal Performance program.

This article explains that older people learn technique more slowly because older people learn more slowly, and in the case of singing of playing an instrument, we are trying to learn something kinetic at the same time that our bodies are getting weaker, stiffer, and less flexible.  That is one thing my teacher has mentioned (and I don't think this is a cop out on his part either).  Extending one's range (my nemesis) he has told me involves stretching, and if my cartilege and muscles are aging, they don't have as much give in them.  I mean on  the one hand I have studied as long as someone in a Master's program, but on the other hand, I am now past the age when even good singers start to lose both range and stamina.  So while I think my voice sounds better than it did, and I have a nicer line and more beauty to my sound, those outlier notes in a role like, say, Amneris, look scarier now than they did four years ago.

I don't really know where this is going, otherwise than to say that there is a third force at work here, not just how much practice time I put in and how good my teacher is.

In any event, I decided to write to the author of this article.  He writes regularly for the TIMES, and who knows?  If he wants to write another article on this subject, maybe he will interview me.  I hope at least he answers my email.

Now I had better get to bed.  I have to get up and sing a choir piece with numerous high Gs.  Sadly, I don't even care that much.  I don't feel it really matters if I am there or not any more.

The Digital Divide

I realized this morning how many of the things I desperately want and don't have (back to the subject of photographs again) have to do with the fact that I am basically on the wrong side of the digital divide.  Basically now I see two digital divides.  There is of course the big one (which I am on the right side of), which is "do you own a computer or other device that enables you to use email and the Internet" or even "do you regularly have access to such a device by walking to a library".  And this is not nothing.  My partner and several of her friends either don't know how to use email or the Internet, or only use it at the library, therefore email is not their primary mode of communication.  But then there's a new one that involves do you or don't you own or know how to use all kinds of (prohibitively expensive) gadgets that you don't need to earn a living (or at least I don't) or to stay in touch with friends or conduct simple business, but that make life "fun".

For example I am thinking again of the younger people on Facebook who are constantly posting pictures of themselves.  When I mentioned something about this a woman responded thinking I had said I wanted to meet a professional photographer who would take head shots.  But that is not what I meant at all.  I just meant having a friend with a smart phone who was (and these are my exact words) "part of the document your life as you go" culture.  For starters, very few of my friends have smart phones.  Some of them only just got a no frills cell phone last year!!  I have had a cell phone for almost 10 years.  I got it when pay phones were no longer readily available and basically I use it either in lieu of pay phone (to make calls when I am out), so that people can reach me when I'm out, or to make "long distance" calls, which are prohibitively expensive from the land line.  I keep the land line because the cell phone reception in my tiny apartment (which is as deprived of air as a subway station, practically) is very spotty.  I plan to replace it with the simplest, least expensive iphone when it conks out, but not before.  I consider that an unnecessary luxury, as I'm living on less than half of what I made when I was working full time.  If I want to blow money, I'll blow it on producing a concert.

Yes, I can also use it as a camera, but it is not a very good one.

I also have a digital camera, which my partner bought me probably five or six years ago.  To date, any time I have wanted pictures developed I have taken the little thingummy (which usage dates me terribly!) to a camera store and asked them to make prints.

Once a friend did come over and help me install the software, but it turns out it does not interface with Windows 7, which is what I use on this laptop.  Probably I could figure out how to download a new "driver' (I did this with my printer - something I need for work) but with all I have to do this is way down my list of priorities.

Interestingly, photography used to be a hobby of mine, but my interest in it diminished greatly when the onus devolved upon me to handle the technical end of things.  Previously, all I had to do was have a good eye for choosing a subject and framing a picture and drop off the "roll of film" somewhere.  Other people did the rest.

And of course my friends do not have digital cameras or phones that they use as cameras either.  One friend took a picture of me taking a bow after my performance as Dalila and it took her two years to figure out how to "get the picture out of the camera and mail me a print!!"  And the friends I have with smart phones don't take pictures on a daily basis - only if they are traveling or visiting their grandchildren.  As I said on Facebook, if I went out to lunch with one of them and asked her to snap a photo because I was wearing a drop dead sexy looking top, she would think I was crazy.  In fact I only got the new profile picture that I use  here because a friend from out of state (who had a digital camera with her) came for a visit and I begged her to let me "take five" to go in my tiny dressing area and put on my favorite sexy red lace top.  (And this woman actually knew how to dump the picture into her computer and email it to me.  But then she at least is under 50, if not technically part of the "younger crowd" for whom "snap and document" is as natural as breathing.)

Also, one thing that surfaced in my Artist's Way morning pages (not to mention my therapy sessions) is that I both need to work more hours to make more money and get out of the house more to see more people.  The obvious answer, of course, is to take my laptop into a Starbucks or some such place but I would be terrified to carry my livelihood around with me unnecessarily, not to mention that I don't know what to do with the doodat (another great technical term) that would make the laptop wifi ready.

I think what I really need in my life are some young friends (under 40) who are the kind of close friends who will do a quickie favor for you at your house just in the natural course of events, but of course I'm 62 so my friends are all my age more or less or older, because my partner is 78, and most of them started out as her friends.  I have no family.  And there aren't even really any neighbors in that demographic either because a rent regulated building is by definition a NORC aka "Naturally Occurring Retirement Community".

I wish I could find a way to hold auditions for a "nephew".

Further Clarification of My Previous Post

I made a status update on Facebook about how, at this time in my life, I so wished my passion were writing or painting, not singing, because I simply find it almost impossible to muster up the superhuman energy and "bounce" (I can't think of a better word) to nail the big climaxes in my arias, even familiar ones.

This is not an issue of being seriously fatigued.  I have had enough sleep and have eaten healthfully, and have not been talking excessively (BTW my teacher said yes indeed the way New Yorkers naturally speak - harsh, nasal, and down on the cords with a tight throat - is very bad for singing and that yes indeed there are not very many opera singers who were born here).

It is an issue of not having that "something extra".  Athletes need it (I can see this from watching skaters and gymnasts, really the only athletes I follow other than tennis players), normal people don't.  I can't write a good essay (or produce error-free editing) if I have been sleep deprived for several days or am hypoglycemic from hunger, but I certainly can if I am mildly depressed.  Which may be what I am.  (I hesitate to use that word because I think it is overused and that people these days are overdiagnosed and overmedicated.)

Singing (certainly singing big climactic phrases with high notes) is another story.

One thing the Mentor once said to me is that "all singing stems from joy".  This is certainly true.  Either from real joy or from physically being able to replicate the physiognomy of joy - the raised palate, the relaxed throat, the buoyant abdominal muscles.

I know that my technique has improved a great deal in the last few months as is evidenced by how I sound when I vocalize.  Even this past week, that has held.

But I have not been able to nail the ending to "Acerba Volutta" to my liking, and that is an aria that I thought I had a lock on.  If my abdominal muscles are not buoyant, that top A goes "straight".  I know it's not a technical thing because if I isolate that phrase I don't have a problem, but when I try to sing the aria from the beginning, or even from the middle (it has a lot of breaks in it) a lot of old bad habits creep in.  Most of these have to do with somatized anxiety and depression that result in my "core" becoming rigid and my not breathing.  I have said before it is like a horse balking at a fence.  And once I get into that vicious cycle with a phrase I am sunk.  I know it's not a technical thing because once I isolated that phrase and sang it a half step higher (without realizing it) and the B flat sounded as good as the A does when it's good, which would not have been true several months ago.

"Re dell'Abisso" sounds really good.  Whether that's because it's a new piece or because the highest note I have to sustain is a G, I don't know.

The reason I am working on both these arias is that I am supposed to have an audition on October 20.  I say "supposed" because I have not heard back from the woman I sent materials to, which included an audition fee, which didn't bother me, although the fact that it had to be a money order did. Are singers really that irresponsible that they let checks bounce? The only people who use money orders are the destitute; the same people who use check cashing places.  As a point of reference I hadn't bought one in 40 years, not since I've had a checking account.  I sent the package certified mail and in fact I have not even gotten back the slip showing that it was signed for, which is troubling.

The Requiem is not going badly.  I seem to be OK with the phrase in "Liber Scriptus" (it is similar to the phrase in "Acerba Volutta" but is a half step lower) but I have not tried to sing it since my partner was taken to the hospital.  I think I will do well with the Requiem.  It is in a comfortable range and what is at issue is my musicianship.  And it will be sung in the church as an offering for Lent, which will take the focus off me and my performance.  I have a soprano and a bass, and my teacher gave me contact information for a tenor but he hasn't yet answered my email.

I am just so tired (or depressed?)

A week ago I sat with my partner as she was in the throes of delirium and I thought she was going to die.  I have been forced to deal with the idea of her mortality which is like being beaten by a gang of thugs.  Yes, she annoys me and yes, she is not supportive of most of what I want to do with my singing, and yes she is a ridiculous prude, and yes, I am glad I have my own apartment and don't have her underfoot 24/7 but my heart is heavy.  I don't want to lose her.  If she died I don't think I could get up and do anything much more than sit at my laptop and work and read and watch tv and snuggle with my cat for a loooooong time.

She is out of danger now, so I can sleep, but this was a body blow, literally.  I don't feel all bouncy and perk-y.

But the serious question is: probably most singers have things like this in their lives that they go through, but whatever technique they have enables their bodies to go through the motions no matter how they are feeling.  So how many more years will it take?  I am fighting gravity now!

Winding Up with The Artist's Way

As usual, I should be working, not blogging, but this is my "lunch hour" and I felt a blog post coming on...

I am now on Chapter 12, the last chapter, of The Artist's Way. One thing they suggest is that before you bid the workbook au revoir, you reread it. So I am doing that. It is sometimes hard to tear myself away from my latest mystery novel, but I exercise discipline.

I notice that I enjoy life more since beginning this journey.  I don't know that I am on my way to being more "successful" either as a singer or in a new career path that would use my "diva" soul, but I find pleasure in small things.  After all, the book is called The Artist's Way, not The Artist's Career, How to Succeed in the Arts, or How to Excel in the Art Form of Your Choice.  It is about a way of life.  I think the Mentor had that way of life, and that I picked up quite a bit of it through my painfully yearning to emulate him.  In fact, many of the things the book suggests that you do I already did when I was making that painful transition toward art and sensuality: I got rid of a ton of clothing that was too big (not because I had lost weight but because I had dumped the "pc dyke" persona that mandates that you do not show your curves and if you must wear a dress it should be baggy and long or corporate and swimming on you) and a ton of pastel bedding and replaced both with things that signaled Dalila not Miss Marple.

What's interesting is that I find myself feeling more loving toward my partner.  It was her "artist's soul" that attracted her to me in the first place.  If she had $25, she would buy a ticket to an avante garde dance concert and live on saltines.  The place was always a mess but there would be some marvelous colorful object or swath of red somewhere.  I think we both held each other back.  She didn't like my singing opera, I didn't like her avante garde feminist filmmaking.  Interestingly, whatever I feel about her and however that has changed over the years, I pretty much believe that one on one monogamous relationships where the goal is domestic bliss stifle people, full stop.  People are better off "single" and then involving themselves in relationships, physical or otherwise, to varying degrees with people they care about and observing strict boundaries.  Which is why I have zero interest in same sex marriage.  I am more interested in whether or not we can have a single payer health system (marriage as a gateway to a spouse's health benefits is one reason people like being married).  I suppose if you have children you should stay together as a couple for the duration of the children's childhood (and probably be monogamous, too) but that's about 20 years.  Hardly a lifetime these days!

So how has this affected my singing?  I am still holding onto most of the gains with my upper register but unfortunately it has not translated into a surge of confidence.  I just have too much baggage.  Which is why young voice students (or beginners of any age) are told to stay away from the rep I've been singing for years, until their technique is secure.  As I said, I don't think I ever hurt my voice but I created a slew of very bad memories.

Well, I have retooled "Liber Scriptus" which only goes up to an A flat.  Maybe I will try something else next.

I read about an audition for Un Ballo in Maschera.  Ulrica is not a role I would have thought of for my voice (too much singing below middle C) but I will take a look at the score at my teacher's house.  He said he will see how he thinks I sound.  To go to that audition I will need to give them a list of five arias.  I wonder if I should swap out Laura for Cieca?  Cieca is a role I could sing because it does not go very low.  There is a lot of low-ish singing around middle C but that is easy for me.  It is certainly more age appropriate.  And I have always wanted to learn Gertrude's "J'ai Peur" from Hamlet.  I don't think it goes above an A or an A flat.  Maybe I should eventually swap that for Dalila although that would be hard.  That would leave Favorita as the only "young" role represented.  The Principessa in Adriana could be older.  Or maybe something from Dead Man Walking.

I ordered a set of Jake Heggie songs that are based on Sister Helen's poetry. I heard Joyce DiDonato sing one of them in a concert on tv. They are with flute accompaniment and might be suitable for church solos or something else. I am still enjoying the rehearsals from the September 11 concert. I feel more comfortable singing a non-operatic (but still classical) piece in a group of beginner singers of all ages than I did singing opera rep amidst young people with conservatory degrees and managed singers in their 40s. I think the people who showed up for this September concert are more like what I had expected at the opera singer meetups. People who were working on vocal technique who were not professionals, but had the voice and the passion to sing opera. So we will see how I progress after my work with the Artist's Way workbook is finished.  I joined an Artist's Way meetup and will see what comes of that.

And I made a long-range plan to take a short vacation for my partner's 80th birthday, which will be in 2014.  I haven't had a vacation since 2009, when I left my last full time job.  And this doesn't feel like a bone I'm throwing her to make up for all the time and money I spend on singing.  Not everyone gets to have an 80th birthday.

One the The Artist's Way stresses is to keep an open mind.  Maybe I will find a niche for myself singing song literature and sacred music, where I can use the solid technique I do have and let go of my love-hate relationship with big arias with high notes.  Although not quite yet...

And I may come back from tonight's rehearsals with some photos.  The director asked people with smart phone cameras (not me!) to bring them.  So I am going to be sure to wear something diva-ish and hot!

Random Thoughts

I haven't written anything for a while, and I also haven't gotten many hits on my blog lately.  I even posted something to the the Forum a few days ago, which is a place I had promised myself to avoid, just to see if my blog link would attract people. I was also thinking about the movie Julie and Julia, because someone mentioned it, and I remembered that it was that movie that got me blogging in the first place. "Julie" wasn't the world's greatest cook or the world's greatest writer, but her writing about her passion for cooking bought her a ticket to fame.

Yesterday I listened to a playwright talking about a play he had written in which one of the themes was The Road Not Taken which by now is a cliche, even to having been misquoted by the author of the book The Road Less Traveled - as my mother would have said, he missed the "prepositional verb". Robert Frost refers to the "road less traveled by."

So is that all these past 8 years have been?  Scrambling to try to get back to the "Road Not Taken" and feeling angry and bitter?

Or is it about something else?

The Mentor (whom I haven't mentioned in quite a while) took a sensually quiescent middle aged woman and taught her to sing "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix" for a moment of music, magic, and a frisson of eroticism.  Was this just meant to be a one-off?  Then back to business as usual?

Whenever I falter in my journey, I remember that Valentine's Day and have faith that this was not just for nothing. Whatever God I believe in - a Christian one (monogamy is the sticking point there), or a pagan one (a little more attuned to my Dalila soul) - s/he meant that Valentine's Day to mean something.

I am at Week 11 of The Artist's Way. The world looks brighter and I have more hope. The things this process have taught me are not that different from the things I picked up from the Mentor, not just about singing and sexuality, but about colors, textures, and smells. About surrounding myself with beauty. Or what I consider beauty anyhow.  I laughed at one point when I was reading the book.  It mentioned feeling free to add that finishing touch to an outfit, something that is special to you, even if conventional people think you are "ruining" it.  That made me realize that the "trashy" way I love to dress is my form of self-expression.  It is how I signal to myself and the world that I am always a diva, no matter what I am doing.

I believe that some people are hardwired to be divas.  (Many disagree and say that the only people who can use that term about themselves are those who have perfected an art form and are acknowledged to excel in it.)  If you are hardwired to be a diva and you have a talent, nurture it, make the right connections, and find a venue, you are lucky.  Many don't.  I see these all around me: the bank teller with braids that probably cost an entire week's paycheck, flaunting her elaborate "nail art"; the harried pediatrician who buys a different flamboyant gown to wear to each wedding and Bar Mitzvah she is invited to when she really only needed two.

So maybe a venue will present itself.  Meanwhile the Requiem preparations continue.

This morning I sang a piece by a little-known composer, Joseph Raff, called "Great and Wonderful are All Thy Works".  I think I sang well, and the choir director was happy.  I also found a new violinist to perform Bach with.  Very few people said anything to me, even ones who spoke to me (about other things) after the service, so part of me felt the whole thing sort of fell into a black hole, but I guess God heard me, and that's all that should matter, although divas always love applause.

ETA: I realize that in saying I felt my singing "fell into a black hole" I was being insulting to those people who did thank me (I got several thank yous on Facebook after I wrote this, one from a fellow choir member who means a lot to me).  I think the thing I was most peeved about was that I was sitting with a woman who likes me, and who had (out of kindness) chided me for writing on Facebook about being envious.  You would think that she would have said something about my singing, as she was at both services, but she never even mentioned it.  The good news: This oratorio is little known (hasn't been performed in this country in my lifetime in any event) so it might be a good vehicle to try to attract big players to.  (By "big players" I mean getting some of the serious  musicians at the church to look for a venue for it, which is a whole 'nuther thing from putting on a vanity production.)

Fight! for the Right! to Pah-tee

I suppose in some ways, this is going to be a more upbeat reprise of this post. As for the title, it is a song by the the Beastie Boys. I never listened to their music, but their leader, Adam Yauch, was the son of people who were friends of my mother's. (I knew them, but not Adam.) I say I never listened to their music, but the title song was one impossible to avoid. And, yes, in many ways it now describes my life.

First, I want to post a photo from an occasion recently when I had a lot of fun. (For the record, I cropped some people out at the right, partly for privacy concerns, and partly because I wanted to edit the photo so that everyone is wearing red.) I wish I didn't have a spot on my glasses (maybe I should have taken them off?) But I like that I am spread out like an odalisque at the right. (One of my promises to myself has been to try to elicit sexy pictures of myself from people with cameras, whenever possible.)

This photo depicts a group of us "pagans" at a solstice party in Central Park in June.  We were supposed to have another one last night, but got rained out, so we held it in the Unitarian Church where I used to sing, where The Mentor changed my life forever on that fateful Valentine's Day.

Actually, my initial interest in these Moon Circles stemmed from him.  Not that he attended them, as they are for women only, but because I thought attending them would make me more like him: colorful and free, the latter in every sense of the word.  Recently I have found them an escape from the drudgery of work, the otherworldliness of church singing, no matter how much I love it, and the burden of eldercare.

Yesterday, I literally did have to "fight for the right" to attend the gathering.  My partner was frightened that if I went out in the thunderstorm (which actually had ended by the time I went out) I might slip and fall and be unable to take her to her surgery tomorrow.

She continues to be disagreeable, which makes the idea of spending two nights in her apartment with no air conditioning (she refuses to turn it on when the humidity is high) even less appealing.  Is she so disagreeable because she's old?  Or is this a stereotype?  Not all old people are disagreeable, although my mother got more and more disagreeable as she got older, albeit in a different way.  My partner is totally unable to laugh at herself.  She is not mean, or cruel, or unkind: just unpleasant.

I was actually thinking the other day that "unpleasantness" as a trait seems to have increased among the general population of all ages since I was growing up.  (Of course then there's its mirror image: ludicrous "perkiness," which has also increased.)  But I don't move in perky circles, unless I'm in a shop or ordering something on the phone. When I say "unpleasantness" I mean, for example, not understanding that if a group of people go out to celebrate someone's birthday, there should be a moratorium on talking about health problems and financial problems, dietary restrictions, and minor annoyances stemming from the venue.  People should at least try to be "entertaining".  Is that a lost art, I wonder?

So, again, please everyone, send thoughts and prayers tomorrow that my partner's surgery will go smoothly and that I will keep my temper.

P.S. I will post some exciting upbeat news in my next post!

Insights and Reality Checks

I hadn't planned on writing something again so soon, but this post is prompted by a lot of soul searching I did last night and this morning, triggered by a health scare my partner is having.

I also keep coming back to: what do I want and what do I expect out of my involvement with singing?  (This is an endless topic of discussion with the therapist, despite that my manifest reason for having been in therapy all these years is the stress of eldercare and the knowledge that at any moment I could be in the middle of an enormous psychological and logistical crisis.)

After that fateful Valentine's Day, all I really wanted was to take that feeling and bottle it. The rush of singing an aria associated with sex and glamour, in the arms of an ersatz (oh, how ersatz!) lover, in front of an "audience" for whom this was the unexpected highlight of an event. This was quickly followed by my "Habanera" at another dinner fundraiser, and several other arias during church services and fundraising concerts.  This was a tiny venue, the tiniest and most talent-poor of Manhattan churches, certainly in the area of classical singing, but what it lacked in human resources it made up for in imagination.

Then it all fell apart.  Not only did my relationship with the Mentor disintegrate, but the church decided to do away with classical music for the most part, except for a brief nod at Easter and Christmas, and the minister (truly the one of the least empathic, albeit one of the brainiest, people I have ever met) hadn't a clue about (or an interest in) helping me continue to develop myself as a musician in that environment.  She preferred to have me on the Board helping her hire and fire people, which is what I had been doing for a living.

At that time I didn't know any real singers.

That started later.  After I left that church (and the Mentor) I began pseudonymously blogging and fell into some "communities" to do with classical singing. Naively thinking I would meet some people like me (amateurs at a loss how to deal with a talent and a hunger) I actually met working singers.  It actually came as a huge surprise that these sorts of people would even bother with pseudonymous blogging, which I thought was predominately for the bored and the unhappy, but blog they did.  One woman, who sings extensively throughout Europe, even shared juicy details about her sex life!

That was when all the "envies" began.

Soon I began also investigating all the "opportunities" for singers in my hometown (central Manhattan) and was astounded by the mass of talented people, most of them 20 or 30 years younger than I was, who were all jockeying for spots not only at amateur groups, but even at groups where you had to pay to sing.

I was totally out of my element, not just vocally, but in every possible way.  I had no education, no CV, not much mobility (while in a physically weakened state pining for the Mentor, I stumbled over the pavement in a strange city and smashed up my left leg), no confidence, and last but not least, some vocal issues to work out.  I couldn't even elicit much interest at the group get up and sing things that I went to.

So recapturing that Valentine's Day moment seemed beyond elusive.

I did manage to put on a concert version of Samson et Dalila, and sang my personal best that day, but I didn't get the sense that the church (I was now a choir member/soloist at a Lutheran church) would let me put on a sequel.  And speaking of the church, although I felt and still feel blessed to have many solo opportunities (as well as opportunities to improve my musicianship through choral singing) there, it is not a venue for the sort of pastiche events where I could dress to the nines and sing an aria as part of a group "talent show".  They are very formal.

After being raked over the coals by readers of my pseudonymous blog , I deleted it and decided to back off some of my voyeurism re: other singers. They are not a peer group.

I think the issue with pointless comparisons, which I only really just realized, isn't that there's a limit to how well I can sing (although there might be) or anything stopping me from producing any work I want to sing in, it's a question of "ages and stages".  And I'm not talking about being "too old" to have the stamina to sing Verdi (I  have much more stamina for singing on the eve of my 62nd birthday than I did when I met the Mentor or even when I sang Dalila in concert) or of being "too old" to play a sexy character (God knows I have a better figure than many 40-year-olds) but that my life is not structured the way a 20something, 30something, or 40something's life is structured.  And I'm speaking here of women who are childless.  Once you become a mother, and even moreso if you're a single mother, things get complicated and choices have to be made.

However problematic our relationship is, and friends with benefits notwithstanding, my partner is the most important person in my life.  And she is at the end of hers (not necessarily at the very end, we are waiting for test results) and I want to make it as joyful as possible.  And for the foreseeable future I have to earn a living.  The younger people I am so envious of are either earning money singing and teaching, or they work at day jobs and use all their free time running here, there, and yonder to rehearsals and auditions.  Some of them probably don't spend more than one evening a week - if that - at home.  I may have plenty of energy to sing a scene from Il Trovatore, but I don't have that kind of energy, which is why I would refuse any comprimaria role I was offered for no money that involved a heavy rehearsal schedule.

So I come back to "what do I want" and "what is possible"?  Although my teacher doubts I will ever be able to sing above a B flat in public, that still leaves a lot of opera and oratorio, particularly if I cherry pick scenes that I want to sing from the former, for me to sing.  And until I'm proven wrong, there is no limit on the extent to which my singing can improve.  But there are limits to my time and money.  And the point may come when I have to choose between ancillary singing expenses and rehearsal time on the one hand and having that last shared vacation on the other.  But for now I won't go there.

I asked God to bless my Verdi Requiem project and that's all I can do.

I HAD to Repost this from the TIMES

I hadn't expected to post again today, but when I saw this article in the New York Times I had to repost a link to it here.

You can now only access the Times for free for one day (I actually have an account, as I have home delivery, but I lost my password and can't get them to email me a new one), but if you want to save an article, you can grab a "permalink".

There are two things at issue that I want to write about, one substantive and one "meta". First of all, it makes me feel validated to know that the experience I had that Valentine's Day of 2004, where I became "besotted" (a word from the Times article) with singing (and by extension, with a person whose influence has lingered and will linger always, I am sure), is one shared by other people of a similar age. What is odd, then, is that I haven't found more of these people. The oldest people I have regularly seen on the audition/meetup circuit are in their late 40s, I would guess, and they are extremely polished. I have seen a few much older men (probably my age) but they are still singing on the regional circuit (not hard if you're a baritone or a bass). I have not met any "rough diamonds" (that is really the best way to describe myself - I am not a total beginner nor am I someone with a "modest talent") close to my age. The singers who show up for those things who need technical work are all quite young.

As for what's "meta", I see that so far I have gotten no "likes" or any comments when I posted this article on Facebook. I seem to be always bouncing around between the "lesser of two evils" in that there are numerous singers that I know from "around" and although many of them have let me "friend" them on Facebook, they do not comment on anything I post, certainly not anything to do with singing. I dread, however, asking specifically for feedback because the last time I did that (re: my sound clips here) I got those nasty remarks from Peg. I do seem to have gotten help from some of the more experienced people on the Forum when I asked questions about finding people to sing with, which was a pleasant surprise. Speaking of which, although these people were helpful regarding how to put on an opera or other program, or how to start a formal group (that may be a bit ambitious for me at the moment), I still have not been able to solve my problem re: meeting other older people whose level of expertise is not a fit for our age (another good way to describe myself, because as I said, I am not a "beginner" - I probably have the technical vocal proficiency of someone in an academic vocal performance setting, albeit with a big, mature voice).

One thing I learned from this article is that the Juilliard extension division gives group voice lessons to older people. I may try to contact them to find out how to meet some of these students. If they are taking voice lessons in a group they probably are not at my level, but if they are of a similar age and level of "besottedness", it's a place to start.

Why Can't I Bottle It?

Often when I write here, I am writing about a problem I'm having and how to handle it.

Today I'm writing about something positive that I experienced yesterday, and wondering how I can hang onto it.

Yesterday was one of those days, when, singing in my bathroom, everything worked! So why can't I make this happen when I sing in public? I mean I do sing that well in public, but only when I'm singing church solos that don't go above a G.

But when I sing in public (and although my singing keeps improving, my confidence level does not) I at best take breaths where I shouldn't (which actually does not help any subsequent top notes) and at worst panic and turn into a block of wood with no buoyancy in my middle.

Last night I sang through "Stella del Marinar". It had always been an easy aria for me but having that scare last week made me stop taking it for granted. When I first learned it my voice was much smaller and I just sort of crooned through the long legato line and then saved my energy for the high A at the end, which always seemed to be there if I just girded my loins and let it rip. A few months ago I sang it for my teacher and he mentioned how different my voice sounded throughout (bigger and darker) but I still found the ending easy.

Well, yesterday everything was in place and then I went back and sang the duet with Enzo that begins with Laura singing a progression that goes up to a high B flat. And it sounded fabulous.

So the question is - why can't I do the right things all the time when I need to?

I now have fear operating at two levels: the old one about not having secure top notes, and a new one that everything that's wrong is caused by age-related decline, which is pulling me backward as better technique is pushing me forward.

Certainly my best singing is better than it ever was, but it is hard to be consistent with it. It requires more physical stamina and coordination, things that I don't seem to be able to rely on consistently.

Not just making sure I get enough sleep and healthy food (I'm pretty good about that) but also I have been plagued with sinus problems to an extent I never was before. A lot of people seem to be mentioning this, so it could be something in the air. Certainly at least half of my problems in the concert (and the first recording session) had to do with dry air, dry mouth, and sinus problems.

So we will see. My main reason for wanting to go to this January audition isn't that I think I will be cast as anything, but to see if I can do well at an audition - something I was able to do fairly consistently two years ago.