Some Moments of Happiness, and an Angry Rant with Noplace to Go

First, I need to say that my mini-concert at the new senior facility went well.  I nailed the two high As in "The Drinking Song" and everything else went well.  The people seemed to really enjoy it.  Later in the year I will get in touch with the woman who coordinates these things and see if she wants us to come back.

And I loved the name of the program: Engage Life.  In addition to having concerts, they also have outings for the residents where they take them to museums.  Once again, it was reinforced that I have a "calling" to work with seniors that I hope will extend into my future if I am left behind by my angel.

I am also really really trying to love my "little life" which most of the time I do.

As for the rant, I am writing it down here because I don't know what else to do with it.  I wrote a letter to the Times section "Social Qs" but have no idea if it will be answered let alone printed (I didn't even get an automated response, which I found odd, as I did when I wrote to The Ethicist a few years ago.  They answered, but did not print, my question.)

As I've probably mentioned numerous times before, I live in a NYC apartment building in which half of the tenants (all rent regulated) have lived for 20, 30, or more years.  For the most part we are a cohesive and supportive community and are committed to "speaking with one voice" if we have to communicate with the building management.

Unfortunately, I have a neighbor, someone I detest (he is simply a "type" that I detest) mostly because he treats the communal laundry room as his personal "man cave" and any time I go down there to do laundry he is blasting loud music.  I have no idea what it is; once he told me what he was playing was the "Velvet Underground".  There are several issues here.  First, I dislike most of the music he plays.  Second, in this era of technology, he should be using ear buds.  (I suggested this to him but he said he doesn't like them because he wants to be aware of his surroundings! He's kidding, right? He couldn't even hear if someone said "hello".)  Third, no one should be playing music in a public place.  Fourth, no one should be playing music that loud if they don't want to end up deaf.  But fifth and most importantly I see the whole thing as a form of male aggression.

Any time I come down there if he has music on, he does turn it off, saying "I didn't know you were coming down here."  To me that's not enough.  That is making it about me.  That I'm "too sensitive" so he will be "nice".  The typical male/female trope of men taking space (auditory included) and then accommodating to women who don't like it rather than just not doing it in the first place!! 

I am at my wits end about this.  Actually, when the new building manager took over, they circulated a list of do's and dont's (unfortunately they attached it to people's leases, which is illegal) that covered a wide range of topics including (this is legal if posted in a lobby) that people were not allowed to play music in public places.  I mentioned it to my neighbor, who claims he never saw it, which might be true.  I was going to email it to him but decided against it because it also referred to  people not making noise in their apartments.  That's a rats' nest I don't want to stir up.  I have never gotten complaints about my singing, even the ten minutes I spend warming up at 7:45 before leaving to sing in the 9 am service once a month.  And in fairness, I have never complained about noise coming from anyone else's apartment,  which I hear occasionally: everything from loud rock music (never past 9 pm and not as loud as it is when I'm actually standing next to it in the laundry room) to a little girl and her father screaming at each other.

I suppose now with the advent of women speaking out, I have come to see the behavior of this neighbor as assaultive.  He's giving the finger to civilized adult society, like a teenager (he's almost 70).  And what I hate equally is he's always trying to "engage" with me in some way.  Once at a tenants' meeting, for example, he told me I looked like a skinhead because my jeans were rolled up (hello I'm short!!!) and I had on red socks.  What kind of idiotic comment was that? What did he think he was trying to do? All it did was make me feel aggressed against. 

I think why I hate him so much is that he thinks he's hip and cool and has committed the unforgiveable sin of thinking that I will like him because he is hip and cool.  I don't do hip and cool.  I sing Bach.

Who Ever Thought it Would Be So Hard to Give Away Something for Free

As one of my soapbox issues is how much I resent people who belittle those who sing or perform for free, I now have yet another argument.  Unless you have a large living room with a piano, it is really not all that easy to find places to do solo singing for free. 

First, the opera and other groups that don't pay people.  Those are so overrun with semi-pros, emerging pros, and pros who can't get work (or aren't paid to sing roles that they want to sing) that they are off the table for someone like me.  I do sing in a church choir that performs high level music (and I insist on staying in the soprano section to keep my upper register in shape) but choral music just doesn't "do it" for me.  Yes, I love being in that choir and aren't giving it up any time soon, but I would like to be doing more.  I also occasionally get to sing a solo, but solos at this church are not a big priority, so we're talking about maybe four times a year.  The church hosts other events, but needless to say because it's on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the people who perform there are "up and coming" chamber music groups.  They even hosted some of Marilyn Horne's foundation receipients' recitals in the past.  A secular-themed talent show for the choir people? Not happening.  They have poetry slams and "coffee houses" for people who sing and play the guitar, but nothing that I would be interested in doing. 

So here's what I've done so far, since I started singing in 2004.

1. Two talent shows at the Unitarian Church, before they dumped all the classical music.
2. One concert at a cash-strapped church that wanted to raise money.
3. One concert version of Samson et Dalila at the church where I sing now, as part of a series to raise money for the Tiffany windows.
4. A concert at a studio that I had to pay to rent, where the air was so foul (they had an air conditioner that they had not cleaned) that I choked my way through it.
5. A concert version of the Verdi Requiem at the church where I sing. I billed it as a fundraiser for their food pantry.
6. A concert version of Carmen sponsored by a woman who runs a group that puts on various sorts of performances.  I also sang in concerts on September 11 and in her living room, but at some point she either "went off" classical music, or "went off" me, or both.
7. Two abridged concert operas at an LGBT senior center (I might call them again; the only problem is that I had a quarrel with a case worker there; on the other hand, she has nothing to do with the special events staff).
8. Two concerts at a nursing home.

If readers are asking "why now"? The reason is that I have come to two dead ends trying to find a concert venue.  The nursing home where my partner was last year, which has a beautiful room with a piano, had originally said that I could get in contact with the event coordinator, but I left him two voice mail messages and left one message with his assistant (live) but they never called back.  Today I got in touch with a library where my voice teacher will be performing with the pay to sing group he sings with (he doesn't pay anything, as they always need men) and they said they didn't need any more musical events right now and that I would be subject to "extreme vetting" (fine, but I think Hell will freeze over before they get in touch with me).

So I just want to put my head down and sob.  I feel that I have all this huge solo voice that's bursting out of me and nobody is interested.  So OK, I'm not a finished product, I'm not young, and I have no resume other than the above.  But to anyone, even a music lover with an ear, who's not an obsessive opera afficianado or a high level trained classical singer, I have something to offer.  And I'm not ready to throw in the towel.

An Old Hurt

First I want to say that my singing has been going so well lately (with a few setbacks) that there hasn't been much to complain about in that area.  I have also accepted that my primary mission in life right now is to provide love and care to another human being at the end of her life.  I don't have the time or energy to battle the NYC unpaid opera scene, which seems to mostly be a training ground for emerging professionals under 35, or a place for quasi-professionals in their 30s and 40s, or even in some cases 50s to sing roles they aren't getting paid to sing.  I have basically cut it off, the way someone who is made unhappy by a trigger tries to avoid it.  I never go to any of their performances.  I don't even go to the Met.  Tonight I am using some money I was given for my birthday to "treat myself" to something and going to the ballet.

I also had a (mutual) "unfriending frenzy" several years ago with most of the quasi-professional singers (some of whom are professional voice teachers) on Facebook.  I envied them, they had contempt for me (or for people that I perceived as being like me) and there were just too many negative emotions in the mix.  To me a "friend" on Facebook is someone who cares about me and my well-being and these people didn't.  I now only have a small number of professional or quasi-professional singers on my friends list.

Yesterday, I was heartsick to see a post by a woman I genuinely care about, someone who has been to Hell and back and come through it a heroine in blazing armor, containing some musings about the differences between "amateur" and "professional" singers (or musicians in general).  Of course I had a knee-jerk negative reaction to the whole thing, but after cooling off, my point is "Why Dichotomize"?  If a teacher wants to steer a student toward professional behavior, really, all she needs to do is list desirable behaviors.  Why bring in an adversary, the much caricatured amateur (who in people's minds mostly seems to be a lazy version of Hyacinth Bucket) at all. To make generalizations about amateur singers is no different than making generalizations about ethnic groups, blondes, or overweight people.  Some amateur singers are just that.  They sing choral music for fun.  They will absorb a certain amount of knowledge if it's presented to them but that's the extent of their interest.  They probably don't practice between rehearsals other than to plunk out the music if they're unsure of it.

In my choir there are no "professionals".  There are trained and untrained singers.  The untrained singers, yes, are more likely to not make choir rehearsal a priority, so they may be late or have a "conflict" that could have been avoided (like theater tickets - I wouldn't buy a theater ticket for a Thursday, for example). They most likely don't warm up at home; they wouldn't know how.  So they rely on the group warmup.  I doubt they complain about the group warmup, they are not knowledgeable enough.  I have complained about some of the group warmups (and I always warm up at home) obviously not to the choir director but occasionally to my voice teacher, if I find them vocally un-helpful (like singing a-le-lu-ya by attacking the same note four times all the way up to a high B flat and using that as a "test" of how high someone can sing). As for asking to switch parts if a part is uncomfortable (something else this woman mentioned - I am weaving a lot of her comments in and out of this post) again, that is something that a trained singer who understands her instrument might do (I certainly do, since as a mezzo I'm between a rock and a hard place a lot of the time), but an untrained singer probably wouldn't again, because she doesn't understand how her instrument works.  But why is that a "bad" thing? Not everyone has the same level of commitment or interest and if the group is an eclectic one, there are ways to make room for a variety of skill levels.

A number of other things that this woman mentions really have more to do with having a bad attitude or being a narcissist than being an amateur.  Most amateurs I know wouldn't presume to think they know more than the director.  They mostly just follow along - or leave, if they're uncomfortable, which is the prerogative of an amateur.  I know one rule I follow is that as I am not getting paid to sing, if I find myself in a situation that makes me uncomfortable (this only happened once) I will simply leave.  Which is one reason I now exclusively "make my own opportunities".  If I am producing a concert or an opera in a nursing home, I know that I will not be treated disrepectfully by a person in authority.

And I certainly don't think "amateurs think they're already great"!  Most are quite humble and know what they don't know.  If they aren't striving to improve as much as professionals or serious avocationals, it's because the art form for them is a hobby, not a passion, and they aren't willing to put in the extra work, and they know this.

As for "everything is beneath an amateur unless they're starring".  Well, I can only speak for myself.  That is somewhat true for the following reason.  My "biological clock" for doing anything with singing has ticked past the 11th hour.  I am living on borrowed time.  Singing Azucena, for example, in even the humblest of venues, is on my bucket list.  Singing in the chorus of Il Trovatore if I am not getting paid, is not. ETA: I must add here that I would never think of something as being "beneath me", only that it is not something I can afford to spend time on now, since I have so little of it, singing is not my livelihood, and there are roles, scenes, arias, and songs, that I yearn to sing before I physically can't any more.

And ah, if only professionals did not pay to partake!!  If only those people who rant and rave all over the Internet about how demeaning it is to be asked to sing for free would stay away from the opera companies that do not pay not to mention the pay to sings.  But these very people, these people who thought it was shocking that I sang the Habanera in a bookstore for free as a form of fun for me and the onlookers, insinuate themselves into every nook and cranny of the unpaid opera world, pushing the amateurs out.

The last audition I went to involved an opportunity to sing a role in a Handel opera from a book in someone's living room.  This was for a group that has "singthroughs" of operas in a woman's living room.  People pay her for the privilege.  I was apparently turned down because she wanted the opportunity to go to someone who was going to sing that role professionally and wanted a rehearsal.  I personally think that a group like that should be for people, yes, who have to audition to prove that they can sing the role, but whose only opportunity to sing that role or one like it will be in someone's living room.

Lastly, to think that only professionals recognize that a group of any kind is a number of people with different ideas and a person/team to pull it all together is absurd.  Anyone who has ever worked in an office, played a sport, or sung in an amateur glee club should know this. If you want to discourage negative behaviors, think of another word.

On Ageism (2)

Almost exactly two years ago I wrote this article and thought that this would be a good time for a second pass.

The "triggering event" was the posting, by an incredibly troubled gay trans man, of a picture of Heidi Klum in a costume, which, silly out of touch me (!), I thought was a real picture of a woman in her late 70s or 80s.  I do not attribute his being "troubled" to his being trans or gay; I only mention these things because here is someone super-sensitive to his own issues, yet totally clueless about the sting of ageism.  (He posted the picture with a comment saying "this is how I feel if people ask me out after 9 pm.)  Quite frankly, it doesn't matter if this was a real picture of an elderly  woman, or not.  I skimmed the Heidi Klum article to see what her rationale was for choosing this costume for Hallowe'en but couldn't find anything other than that she liked to work hard to make costumes realistic (someone is shown painting varicose veins on her legs).  If she had done this as a teachable moment, to teach people about ageism (similarly to slim women who have put on a "fat suit" to highlight that fat people are treated with less respect than slim people) that would have been fine, and I am not judging her, only questioning the taste and sensitivity shown by the person who posted the picture. (I mean long ago people decided it was offensive for white people to dress up in blackface whether those people themselves were actually racist or not.  Ditto posting photographs of white people dressed up in blackface.) I quite frankly don't see any difference here.) I unfriended him.  I am sick of him anyhow.  He is one of the most self-absorbed, narcissistic people I have ever met.  I gave him a pass on all that because of his own struggles, including that his mother died recently (she was younger than I am), but enough is enough.  Grow up!  Despite having unfriended him, I got a comment to my comment by one of his (female) friends that was insulting, childish, full of coarse language, and basically beside the point.  I should pity these children.  God help them if they ever decide to grow up.

I mean I have spent the past nine months caring for a woman in her 80s who may be near death, fighting bureaucracies that would be just as happy if she died, especially now.  I have become knowledgeable about services that are available to seniors (which I may need to avail myself of as well at some point - I am going to be 67).  I have had serious, real, conversations with people about aging.  These are real problems.

After reading the inane offensive commentary of this young man and his friends I feel that I need a bath.  

With that, I will end with paraphrasing a quote from Law and Order's Jack McCoy (in a far darker, uglier context): "I guess there are some people who don't deserve to grow old."  Growing old is a privilege, young pup, not a joke.

Plus ça Change, Plus C'est la Même Chose

This week I had another disappointment.  My voice teacher bailed from our joint concert.  It's not the end of the world: I can do a solo recital.  Unfortunately it won't be all that different from my birthday concert, but I will be removing four numbers and replacing them with others that I like better.  I am going to drop the Jake Heggie/Sister Helen songs because they don't sound good with just a pianist and a singer (there is a major part written for a flute) and are not "enjoyable" to listen to.  I am also dropping the Barbra Streisand song "Evergreen" because I sang it as a nod to "LC" the hateful woman who dumped me cruelly as a friend.  And I am dropping "Et Exsultavit".  I love singing it, but it's better as a church piece.  Instead, I will be singing the "Drinking Song" from Lucrezia Borgia, and will (as of now) be adding "Cruda Sorte" from L'Italiana in Algeri and an aria from Orlando Furioso about love and courage, which I have heard Marilyn Horne sing.  It is a bravura aria with a lot of ornamentation and I have fallen in love with it.  And I will add the song "Ice Cream" from She Loves Me to the section for my partner (although she can't be there), because at this end stage of her life, what she loves most is eating ice cream.  And I will ask the accompanist to play solos in between the sets so I can have a break.  The sets will be pretty much the same as they were last time: Joy, Love, for [my partner's name], and Home.

The disappointment isn't about having to sing a solo recital, it's about what I see as my teacher's priorities.  He said he doesn't want to sing this concert because 1. he has to go out of the country to see family (I am not totally clear about this because by the time he got to talking about this I had stopped listening but I think the reason there is a date conflict  is because his wife's new job won't allow her to take a vacation sooner than that), 2. he is stressed out because his wife is not happy at her job and 3. he is stressed out because of problems in his building.  What made me mad (to revisit old wounds) is that every year he sings at least one, if not two, concerts with his wife and various other singers.  He has never invited me to sing with them and this now has been 8 years during which I have made enormous technical progress, particularly in the past three or so.  Yes, most of the singers sound better than I do, but there is one mezzo who doesn't and last time when they sang as a quartet this was obvious.  She has a pretty voice and has sung a lot of bel canto roles with the pay to sing outfit that my teacher sometimes sings with (he never pays them anything because they always need men) but her voice is very small and certainly I sound as good as she does singing in the sort of range that we would be singing in in this type of recital.  So the excuses are a moving target.  I don't sound good enough, these people all know each other, this particular mezzo is a close friend of his wife's, the decisions are not totally up to him, blah, blah, blah.  Anyhow at my last lesson when he told me he was bailing from the concert, I really just lost it and yelled at him, which I have never done before.  I don't think it did any permanent damage.  The point is that I think it's a teacher's responsibility to try to provide opportunities for his or her students. A number of teachers have studio recitals.  He has never been that sort of teacher.  He's not what they call these days "a pedagogue".  He's a singer who has a gift for explaining vocal technique to people who need to improve theirs.  Most of his students are already singing somewhere (in the past they mostly came from that pay to sing or someplace similar). So I don't plan to go looking for another teacher.  I suppose what I need to do is simply drop the subject unless he starts flogging one of these concerts and trying to invite me.  I have been to a few of them but have never made getting there a priority.  I think I will just pass on them from now on, similarly to how I don't go to any of these small opera company performances either.  I will just mind my own business.  If he starts flogging one of these concerts (I don't think there's one on the  horizon) I will curtly say "Let's talk about something else" or find another "conversation stopper".

I think I'm also feeling cranky because I haven't had a chance to dig into the two new arias or do any of the administrative work I need to do because I have been busy with caregiving tasks, most notably trying to get my partner a hospital bed.  It is supposed to arrive tomorrow and the delivery people won't move her other bed out, so I have to get the super to do it.  I am hoping to get back to my regular practice schedule next week.

I also have to pick a summer solo.  I gave the music director my preferred dates.  He has two books of church solos in his mail box, so I had the admin photocopy the tables of contents.  So when I get a chance I will listen to the pieces on Youtube and try to match them up with the readings for those Sundays.  I am not that theologically literate, but I will give it my best shot.  Otherwise I can let the music director pick something, which he offered to do.

Lost and Found, and More Musings on Friendship

Well, surprise, surprise!

Yesterday out of the blue I heard from the woman who had deleted my video(s) from her Youtube channel, and attached to her email was a link through which she "shared"  one of the videos with me.  Because of the format it was in, I was able to download it and save it on my computer hard drive and upload it to my own Youtube channel (which is pretty sparse in its offerings).  I thanked her profusely.

Here's the bitter irony.

Over my two years or so of corresponding with LC, always deep from the heart and the gut - at her prompting; she sent me materials from her "Covenant Group" (a UU offshoot) that had word prompts that were supposed to lead to deep reflection and honest sharing - I (thinking she was someone I could trust) shared a lot of anger and resentment that I felt toward people in my life.  With one exception, none of this anger and resentment constituted a deal-breaker, I just wanted to get things off my chest and LC appeared to be a willing listener.  Having been trained as a counselor, I assumed that she could be adroit at changing the course of a "discussion" if something made her uncomfortable (or simply saying that she didn't want to talk about a particular thing, which would have been fine with me).  Never in a million years did I assume that the things I said would make her angrier and angrier until one day she would tell me she never wanted me to communicate with her again.  People with psychological savvy don't do those sorts of things, one would think.  There are so many more subtle and less drastic ways to back off from a relationship that is becoming uncomfortable.

The bitter irony is that I am now back in touch (and happy to be so) with all the people I told LC I was angry with, because I vented about them to her (and perhaps one other friend), to my therapist, and in these "pages", but said little, if anything, to them themselves, although they all knew I was teed off.  Much better than reading someone the riot act, or telling someone you can't tell them why you don't want them to communicate with you because it would be hurtful, which it is the same thing, really.

As I said, because  I'm "talky", forbidding me to "talk" is the cruelest thing anyone can do if I've cared about them at all, or opened up to them the way I did with her.  (It's like someone asking you to strip naked and then telling you how ugly you look, basically.  If she had thought I had an "ugly" soul, wouldn't she have had an inkling of that long before she had to enjoin me from communicating with her?)  I would rather have a screaming match, complete with insults, apologies, hugs, and tears. To me that's what intimacy is.

And as I've said about LC, I am astounded that she managed to raise four children, three of whom she is still in touch with, along with various ancillary relatives.  To do that, you have to either "work through" conflict, or find a tactful way to back off.  You can't just throw someone in the garbage and walk away smugly thinking you smell like a rose.

I have to say here that I don't "miss" her.  All that navel-gazing that these email interchanges elicited was probably very bad for my mental health.  It's that I feel angry and ripped off and I think "how dare someone do that to me?" And because she isn't part of the fabric of my life I have no one to commiserate with as in "oh, she'a a bitch.  She behaved like that with me [or with so and so]; just write her off and get on with your life."  I know she is estranged from one of her sons, and when she told me the circumstances, quoting herself, I can see why. He was talking during her grandson's (his nephew's) funeral and instead of just saying "shhh" and looking stern - what I would have done - she said in that smarmy way she has "Now would be a good time to be silent".  So he was silent.  He has never spoken to her again.  I almost felt like writing to him (he has a Facebook account) but decided against it because I find his political views so odious.  Of course her daughter is still a "friend" on Facebook but they live together, so I don't want to get into it with the daughter.  But I have considered unfriending her (or at least unfollowing her) several times because every time she types something about "Mom" I want to either scream or throw up.

So as I said, the irony is that all the people I was angry at (mostly over last year's birthday) are now back in my life as friends, no hard feelings, even the woman whom I thought had deliberately deleted my video, and the woman I used as a confidante has dumped me.

I really wish I could just forget her.  At the last Moon Circle we were each given an egg to smash on the ground and were told to have it symbolize something we wanted to let go of.  So I imagined LC's smirking face.  Wish it had worked, but it didn't.

Oh well, time heals all wounds.

And at my last lesson, I ended Trovatore on the best B flat I have ever sung.

An Open Letter to LC: How Did We End Up No Better Than Our Mothers?

LC (the person - I hesitate now to call her a "friend" - who never wants to hear from me again) and I go way back, as do our mothers.

Here's the short version.  Our mothers met at a job and became friends.  About 20 years later, when LC was married and a mother, and I was a teenager, LC's mother decided to live in Greece.  It was during the time that there was a Fascist government there.  My mother (always politically conscious) considered it morally outrageous that LC's mother spoke about Greece never acknowledging the political situation there.  My mother called LC's mother "ridiculous" (I don't know the specifics, but know that that word was used).  LC's mother stopped speaking to my mother.

About 40 years later, after LC's having had friendships (they were quite separate) with me and my mother, which consisted of our seeing each other once a year in Maine (where LC lived) and talking a blue streak because we had so much in common (again, my seeing LC took place at a different time from my mother's seeing her), LC and I had a falling out over my talking to her on the phone endlessly (she has a degree in counseling so she is exactly the sort of person with whom one wants to talk endlessly about one's problems) about my crush on the Mentor, my general randiness, his abuse of me, and my feeling trapped. After the fifth (or the tenth) go around about this, she told me I would feel better if I went and did volunteer work.  To me at the time, that sounded rather puritanical, sort of like telling someone to take a cold shower.  So I said "F.U." to her, something I think I have said fewer than five times in my life, probably.  I just was at my wits end.  She wrote to me and said she couldn't "deal with me" any more, or some such thing.  I suppose that was understandable.  I had crossed some kind of line.

A few years later, she stopped speaking to my mother, for a totally different reason.  She had adopted a dog with whom she claimed to be madly in love (sending endless postcards with photos), but when the dog peed on the floor once too often, she gave it back to the shelter, probably to certain euthanasia.  My mother was horrified and told her that she needed to "do penance".  She probably meant it as a joke, and in fact she isn't even a dog person, but nonetheless would have found it morally objectionable to value clean floors over a life, even a dog's.  LC could have at least waited until she could find a home for the dog - someplace where people were less squeamish.

My mother never heard from her again, but I did.  Shortly after my mother died she apparently had seen this on Google and sent me a handwritten condolence letter.  Since she didn't have email, we were only in touch rarely by phone, but once she got email we began writing to each other daily.  We were both housebound more or less (she for health reasons and I because my employment is from a laptop in my apartment).

Ever the counselor, she is, yes, the sort of person to whom one is prompted to pour out one's heart, and often what's there is not pretty.  Or it's not grateful or it's not optimistic or it's selfish or it's petty.

But that she would shut me up (my mother in fact once told me that "hanging up" - or doing what LC did by enjoining me not to communicate with her - is, basically saying "F.U." to someone) is beyond comprehension.  So I am kicking and screaming and yelling with rage, hurt, and confusion.

If she had even written to me and said "I simply can't continue our correspondence because the fact that you [_______________] is so objectionable to me that I have to say goodbye" I would have understood it.  I still can't believe that my asking  her advice about something personal when a tragedy had happened a half a continent away was so egregious that she never wants to hear from me again. Taking a timeout, yes, I could see that. Or saying "Let's back off some of these intense topics for a while". (Of course the irony is that she once said that she didn't like casual friendships where people "kept it light".  I say "irony" because "keeping it light" is one of the best ways to avoid quarrels.)  But to throw me away like a Kleenex?  That's what it feels like.

Do I "miss" her?  Sort of but not really.  I desperately need friends, but to me that means people who are here who are available to do things, celebrate my birthday and I theirs, be available to help with something occasionally and vice versa.  LC was simply a kind of epistolary therapist, although she asked me for my advice as often as I asked her for hers.  It's more that I am hurt and angry that our friendship, whatever it was, meant so little to her.  We were just in the middle of a nice "conversation" about a novel by Barbara Pym.

Everyone can be annoying, if you get to know them.  People have opinions you disagree with, preoccupations you think are trivial, bad moods.  Is it really worth throwing the baby out with the bath water?  Was my perceived petty self-absorption on the wrong day so beyond the pale that it was worth shutting the door on our talks about books and politics, or our shared memories going back 65 years?

I think what bothers me the most is the hypocrisy of it all.  This is someone who sees herself as saintly (despite being a militant atheist).  She thinks you should never be angry at anyone unless they did or said something to be deliberately unkind.  She also said her nickname is "LC let's talk about it" because she is willing to try to talk through any conflict.  So what happened to that person?  Or did she never exist to begin with?

When Family is Not Supportive (2nd Reprise)

This is the third time this leitmotiv has occurred in this blog and it won't be the last. For more, you can read here which will lead you back to an entry that is earlier still.

The good news is that I think I may have prodded my teacher into being proactive with me about planning this fall concert. He wrote to me about changing my lesson time and I wrote back asking if he'd gotten my email about the concert venue and how to visit it and then I said as tactfully as I could that I was upset about not being able to find a peer group, as I wrote here. He wrote back to me (I think this had never occurred to him - he only knew that I was ticked off that he asked another mezzo to sub for his wife, not me)and said he would think seriously about this and try to introduce me to some people he knows from the pay to sing outfit (I can't be the only person on the planet who developed a passion for classical singing at a later age and has the skill of an emerging pro, the enthusiasm of a kid, and the healthy, fit, body of someone in prime middle age). Then, more miraculously, he started talking about the concert as if he were really going to participate in it!

OK, so that's the good news.

The bad news is how my partner reacted when I mentioned this. Now remember. We're talking about one concert, planned five months from now, not in conflict with anything existing on my calendar, of music I know, that might take at most two or three rehearsals. I won't be spending a ton of money on coaching, nor will I be rehearsing once a week.

So guess what my partner had to say. "I don't know why you're doing this. Weren't you just complaining that you don't work enough hours?" Well guess why I don't work enough hours??? Because I spend all day Saturday shopping for her and doing her laundry, she calls me four or five times a day to discuss her financial and health problems not to mention gossiping about her friends. Then I accompany her to various appointments, not routine ones, thank goodness she's now well enough to go by herself, but I spend enough time "doing for" her that her problems are front and center on my screen for at least five or six hours a week that I could be working (I'm not counting the pleasant happy family times we have together).

No one knows how hard it is to have to overcome all my own fears and insecurities, not just about am I good enough (and yes, I know I'm good enough to sing a concert of excerpts from Verdi etc.....I've heard my teachers' pals and students from the pay to sing outfit and I would say I fall somewhere in the middle in terms of how good I sound) but also about why am I doing this when I'm 60 and have so little money and so many family responsibilities. So then to have not just no one supportive in my life, but someone who actively does everything she can to discourage me and argue with me - no one knows how devastating that is.

So why am I doing this, exactly? I guess because I feel I'm being led. The fact that The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed found me in a House of Worship and got me to sing at the age of 54 was not an accident. Long after the weak-kneed passion I had for him has passed, my passion for singing has remained. I know I have this big dramatic Verdi mezzo voice in me that needs to get out. Doing nothing but singing church music where I have to keep the volume down is like keeping a lion in a cage. Don't get me wrong. I love that music not to mention that as a result of singing it I have better pianissimo skills than most singers in my fach even famous ones.

But if you knew someone who could run a marathon, maybe only a few more times before she's too old, would you keep her cooped up?

Normally I call my partner every morning to see how she is. Well, last night I hung up on her in the middle of her telling me why I shouldn't be planning that concert. It's very hard not to pick up the phone and call her (she doesn't own or know how to use a computer) but I won't.

Still Can't Find a Peer Group

I have a few minutes to kill before meeting my partner at a museum to commemorate my first Mother's Day without my mom, and probably should be working, but there didn't seem to be enough time, so I'm writing about a major concern here. In a way it's like throwing something out into the great unknown, because I don't get that many comments, but I'm just not up for using the Forum any more - because I couldn't find a peer group there either and just ended up envying everyone.

What do I mean by a peer group?

Classically trained singers who are older (40 plus or better yet 50 plus), who are studying seriously and singing better and better. Singers who, as the esteemed Cindy Sadler tactfully has said "still have work that needs to be done", but who are on an upswing, not a downswing.

So, for example, even though at 60 I don't sound as polished as 90% of the people I sing with at a Meetup, I sing better than I did at 55 or 57.

People who are hungry to sing opera rep in front of people but don't have $300 to plunk down to sing with a pay-to-sing group (or the time to rehearse several nights a week). People who would be eager to help me plan a concert of operatic scenes and arias at a reasonably-priced venue because it's not likely they'll get to sing this rep in public anywhere else but it's rep that they can sing, maybe not with 100% technically perfect sound all the time, but certainly well enough that it's not "cringeworthy".

Who Have I Met So Far?

1. Young people (under 40) who still think they can have careers.
2. People over 40 who are in demand on the high level amateur full-length opera production circuit and who occasionally sing in D houses. Many of these have managers or agents. These people have all known each other for years.
3. People over 50 who are winding down, who don't think they sing as well as they used to. These people have all known each other for years also.
4. Amateurs who are just really amateurs and wouldn't be able to sing the kind of opera rep I can sing even if they've had a few lessons.

I think I'm really angry at my teacher. He got all excited when I told him about the concert venue and now he's backing out. I know he sings one or two concerts a year with friends of his who are all his age (they mostly fit criteria 2 or 3). He has never invited me even though he admitted I sounded better than one of the mezzos he did invite to replace his wife when she was ill.

Now he says he doesn't know if he wants to do this concert because he doesn't know how he'll be sounding. Well why doesn't he just sing some of the things he sang in his last concert a few months ago?

So now it's all on me again and I really would like it if someone else would plan something for a change.

I am also, I guess, angry at the man who reached out and offered to help me, which I suppose is ungrateful. I believe he really will help me market the concert if I pull it together but all I wanted was for him to invite me to sing something in one of his concerts.

I feel like such a wallflower. I know that I sing well enough to be on the program at one of these kinds of things but no one invites me.

I went to those meetups at people's suggestion but I didn't meet anyone who was interested in doing anything with me.

I feel like a girl (I'm dating myself here I guess) who keeps asking people to dance and they say "ok" or "maybe" but no one asks her.

A Kick in the Pants

I woke up this morning, rather embarrassed about having done a status update on Facebook that I needed a kick in the pants to get my "diva self" going again, and was going to delete it, but when I saw that the esteemed Susan Eichhorn-Young "liked" it, I decided to leave it and really try to address the problem.

Ever since the following things happened I have lost the will and energy to put myself out there (I have not lost the will and energy to sing every day or learn new music):

1.I was trashed for mysterious reasons by the Carmelites director in a setting where almost all the singers were half my age.

2.The new hotshot coloratura showed up at choir and has been given one flashy descant after another to sing in various anthems (the solo spots are still pretty much evenly distributed).

3.My mother died.

4.I have been seriously worried about whether or not I can make enough money freelancing and hence have been doing all I can to focus my organizing skills on time management.

What kept me going for so long, certainly through the planning stages of my concert version of Samson et Dalila was anger, mostly at The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed, but also at the other people from the Unitarian Church where I had been "discovered", who had so raised my hopes up, made me feel special, and then dropped me like a hot potato. I was going to prove that yes, I could do something, even something small, and yes I really was a diva, not just someone you could stick in the back of an untrained choir singing bloody "Imagine"!!! But back then I had my mother, whom I rarely miss, and who was hardly supportive of me most of the time, but who stood with me if I wanted to go out and sing and leave my (mostly ex) partner to scream her head off. But now my partner is frail and unable to care for herself, our little dog



is probably going to leave us soon, and I'm worried about my financial security.

None of this stops me from singing, but it does seem to stop me from taking myself seriously enough to make plans, other than asking the choir director about solos (speaking of which the brouhaha about my being asked to sing for the Tiffany dedication continues and I'm not sure where I stand there).

So OK, what's on the table:

1. I have given the violinist at the church five Bach solo arias to look at and I will soon have "Ich Habe Genug" to give him. So if he will be my champion, maybe we can get a spot on the church concert roster that I don't have to pay for (I was told if I wanted to produce another opera I would have to pay them to use the space.)

2. Maybe I can revive my teacher's interest in a concert. If we have to sing at the nursing home, maybe that's ok. I heard him sing in a concert at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the Lincoln Center Library and the audience was just one step away from what one would find at the home. He sounded fabulous so maybe he would like to showcase some Verdi?

3. Try to find out how I can get an event into the Bruno Walter, so that I can revisit the idea of my pocket version of Carmen.

4. Bring "Condotta" to one of those coaching classes. I'm supposed to do the Aida/Amneris duet but haven't heard back from the soprano.

It would help if I got a few rah rahs here, but I noticed no one has commented here since before the New Year!