On Friendship

This blog is mostly about singing,  but I have written posts about ageism, sexism, gay marriage, Trump voters, and most likely a few other topics for discussion.

I want to write about friendship because it seems to be something I am not good at (or maybe I am choosing the wrong people).

For most of my life with my partner as a couple, even though I was the "femme" from a sexual and sartorial standpoint, I suppose I was the "man" in that for most of our life together, I had the job and she had the friends.  Her friends became my friends.  This is not to say that I had no social life apart from her.  I seemed to have a talent for finding companies where there was a large social and collegial component, so I had lots of "buddies".  And up until I took my last, gruelling management job, I always was involved with some evening group activity where I met people.

But nothing ever really stuck.  Once I left a setting, I only saw the people intermittently, at the odd annual group get together (or - recently - at a funeral).

I have said numerous times that since about 2007, most of my and my partner's mutual friends, people who became my friends as well as hers, have all either died, moved, or are always traveling.  I have found it very hard to make new friends although it has been at the top of my list of "projects" after earning a living, taking care of my partner, and singing.

I believe I have mentioned a friend whom I have described as "rich and stingy".  Well, sadly, I now have to add "querulous and disagreeable".  The only reason I still see her is that she feels some responsibility toward my partner and sometimes brings her supplies from a big box store (which, needless to say, I pay her for out of my partner's bank account).  She has complained about how "depressing" it is to see my partner and how sad it makes her  and is unable to see that this situation is not about her, it's about my partner.  Yesterday she came for a visit (I thought we would be watching tennis) and went into a rant about how although she attends a synagogue she doesn't "believe all that" and just goes for the social interaction.  I suppose many people do that, although they would not word it so harshly.  I am not Christian, but I continue to attend Lutheran services, not just to sing, but also to be in an environment where people are invested in being kind and supportive of each other (and toward the world at large).  To me that is different from "social".  What keeps me there isn't that I might be able to have dinner with people (I don't - I occasionally have lunch with people usually on the premises), but that people genuinely seem to care about each other and some even offer to help their fellow parishioners in their hour of need.

This friend and I were talking about fasting on Yom Kippur (which we both agreed is physically unhealthy) so I asked her if she did anything "symbolic" (if it were me I would probably spend the day drinking water, tea, and the odd bottle of Ensure) and she said no.  What struck me wasn't so much that she said no, but how hard and cynical she sounded.  Then we went on to other topics, including my distress at the lack of "community" in apartment buildings and neighborhoods, particularly where my partner is living.  It has now become a moot point as far as she is concerned, because she has 24/7 home care, but it offends me in principle.  I mean when there's a snowstorm, for example, anyone with a tv can hear whoever the current mayor is telling people to "check in on their elderly neighbors".  You don't even have to think to do it on your own.  So when I mentioned this she launched into a vitriolic rant about how the building isn't a senior residence, etc. and basically said that if I'm bothered by these things it's my problem.  Hello??? If I am offended by a general societal lack of character that's my problem??

It is really coming to dawn on me that this is someone not only who is stingy with money (she spends thousands upon thousands on luxury cruises but thinks she's being generous if she buys someone a danish), but is stingy in her soul.  I don't know if she has ever read Ayn Rand, but she seems to think everyone should just look out for themselves, and that this is OK, and that that's what she is going to do.  I was truly appalled.  When I got home I felt like I had been in some alternative universe with values that were so alien to me I didn't even know where I was.

What's ironic is that this woman in some ways has had many of the same losses that I have had; it's just that she can distract herself with pots of money (which come from her family; there isn't even the saving grace that she worked hard to earn it).  Most of her friends have either died or moved as well, including someone who just died recently.  Maybe I should have offered her condolences?

Jesus is a Rock

This morning I sang "Jesus is a Rock in a Weary Land" for the offeratory.  The Director of Music Ministries picked it out for me. It was just something in the hymnal but after years of singing spirituals with the choir, I figured out a way to interpolate notes into the second and third verses including a high A flat and a chesty middle C, so I was able to showcase my big dramatic voice. And it got applause.  After sitting through the beginning of the service, I can see why the Director picked that piece: the subject of God (or Jesus) as a Rock was the theme of the morning.

Now I will go back to working on my recital music.  I am continuing to sing better and better (my voice is getting bigger, the top is easier, I have more stamina) but I probably don't practice as often.  I am consumed with issues to do with my partner.  Her dementia is getting worse. She got into a fight with the aide last night thinking the aide was trying to poison her, so she refused to take her pills.  I had to stay on the phone with them for a half hour to get her to take her pills.  I am still really living one day at a time.  I have no idea what the future holds.

But there will be singing in it.

Back to My Fach

Yesterday, I was engaging with someone on Facebook about my blog, after previously, a few days earlier, having read this article about one of my lifelong singing idols, whom if things were different I would move Heaven and earth to study with, and I realized that a post is long overdue.

Things with my partner have stabilized.  I think she will make it to another Thanksgiving and probably Christmas and New Year's as well. She has a hospital bed. She is going to have Moh's surgery next week, and we have an ambulance reserved (it is the only way she can travel).  We continue to enjoy snuggles and tv watching.  Her dementia waxes and wanes.

My 67th birthday passed with pretty much nothing other than my partner "buying" me a Wimbledon towel.  (This means she said I could use her credit card to buy it from their web site.)  It was a lovely present.  To me a "present" should be something you wouldn't buy for yourself.  It doesn't need to be expensive, but it needs to feel like a luxury.  Not business as usual.  A friend sent me a check so I bought two ballet tickets.  If I want entertainment, I go to the ballet.  Going to the opera stirs up too much "compare and despair".

My recital program is set.  I am not singing the Vivaldi aria that I mentioned in an earlier post; it would take too long to learn.  But now that I know I love it, I plan to revisit it.  I am going to sing "In Buddy's Eyes" from Follies.  I will substitute my partner's name (which scans perfectly) for "Buddy".  It is a song that has meaning for me.  I may dedicate it (and "Vanilla Ice Cream") to Barbara Cook, who died this week.

My church solo (suggested by the Minister of Music) is taken from the hymnal: "Jesus is a Rock in a Weary Land".  It looks quite simple, but if I interpolate some high notes and some low notes into the second and third verses (stylistically acceptable) I can sing it with my big dramatic voice.

Because I had been working on this spiritual, I was in a "dramatic mezzo" mode (which I can't be when I sing my recital music which is mostly light) so at my last lesson I took a crack at the dreaded page in Aida: "Chi ti salva sciagurato, etc."  I aced the high B flat.  I aced it at home the next day; with my tendancy to sing sharp when I sing a capella, the note was a B natural. I am singing up to a full voiced C every day.  Maybe I can revisit some of that music, or maybe next year I will look at the French grand opera material I had been thinking of doing.  Whatever is going on in my life, I'm a dramatic mezzo and this material is what I am meant to sing.

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.

A Blessed Time and Some Thoughts on Pride

My partner is still alive, and is feeling better.  She still eats very little, but seems to enjoy food more than she had been.  She is more alert.  I can have conversations with her.  There was a low point when she refused to eat for almost 24 hours and then slept through the Tonys (something we always loved to watch together), but she is better now.

She had a wonderful 83rd birthday.  In total, 5 people showed up on different days, one with decorations.  She is smiling in all the pictures (I am not comfortable posting one here, although I did post some on Facebook, because the person who took them posted them on her Facebook page).

In a funny way I think I may be happier than I have been in almost a decade.  First, knowing, unambivalently, that my main purpose now is to make the end of a loved one's life happy, I no longer excoriate myself for not having a career or looking for a more interesting and stimulating livelihood.  Qualifying for Social Security helped also.  If I am "retired" the focus is less on what I do or did for a living.  And I don't have to feel resentful that I don't travel.  I just can't do that right now.  I don't have to apologize to the universe for it.

I am still singing, and am singing well.  Sometimes sounds come out that leave me stupefied as in "is that really me??" Of course what I always wished for most of all wasn't just to sing well, but to have the sort of diversified existence that one has when one excels at something, particularly in the arts or academia, which leads to travel, public engagements (performing or speaking), meeting new people, costumes, and the unexpected.

I still regret the past.  Saying I "shouldn't" is really not helpful.  When I say regret what I mean is that almost anything I don't like about my life (that I might have had control over at some point) can be tracked back to bad choices I made beginning in high school.  I am learning that there really were people, even people who were adolescents during that train wreck of an era 1964-1972 who did the right things.  I met a woman recently who mentioned how much she enjoyed going to the World's Fair in 1964.  She was there with a school choir.  I remember my mother dragging me there and my being bored witless and cranky about all the mountains of food everywhere when I was trying to diet.  That was the state I was in 99% of the time  during adolescence, wherever I was, so I generally preferred staying home.  Now I am, I guess, "serving a sentence" at home as a freelance copyeditor.  I didn't appreciate chances to have a wider life when they were offered and available for the taking, so I didn't get to have one.

Yesterday was Pride Day.  How different things are now.  We are less of a subculture (life is less titillating and hush hush) but we are also less angry, even with all the collective societal anger at Trump and what the Republican Party is doing to this country.  I meet lots of Lesbians now who are what I would call "wholesome".  They are not in the closet but they look nice and are comfortable around men.  If I were 25 now I doubt anyone would be telling me that I shouldn't "invest my energy in a patriarchal art form like opera".  Through chance Googling I found out that one of the young singers who sang with the choir, whom I was envious of, is gay!  She just got married.  She is a pretty coloratura soprano.

My Heart is Full of Sadness But Yet My Heart is Full of Joy

My partner is home from the hospital, where she was rushed last week after becoming septic, most likely from a cat bite.  Our cat Darby, whom she adores, and who has slept on her bed throughout the latest phase of her decline, bit her when she kicked him in her sleep because he had been playing with her toes.  Twenty-four hours later she had a fever of 103 and was semi-conscious.  The aide called 911.  She was in the ER for almost 48 hours, then in a bed for the next three days.  They gave her about 10 bags of antibiotics plus some pills to take home.

Despite not having a diagnosis (her heart disease is controlled with medication), she is fading.  Basically, all the symptoms she has are those of someone dying of what used to be called "old age". This article, which I found by doing a Google search, bears this out.  I don't know how long she has left.  No doctor has said that she has six months or less, and that therefore she should be in hospice.  On other other hand, pain is not her problem.  Lack of a life force is.  Here is a list of what is happening now.

1. She never gets out of bed.  She refuses all attempts at physical therapy that involve trying to walk, even though she had been able to do this in March in the nursing home.
2. She eats very little.  Every passing week she eats less.  Now mostly she just drinks Ensure, eats ice cream, and drinks milk and water.  She refuses meals that she once liked. (I have told the aides that if she refuses food she has to have a bottle of Ensure.)
3. She sleeps most of the time.
4. She is confused about the time of day, what day it is, and when I am coming, although she knows me and all other people she has contact with.
5. She has lost interest in most things other than snuggling, her own body, ice cream, and cute programs about animals on tv.
6. Her hands are cold.

I can't be with her all the time but I want to be with her more than I used to.  I have to work 20 hours a week and want to sing (more on that later - that's the "optimism" part) but I don't want her to die without me there.  A friend who has watched several people die said that as the actual time approaches I will know.  Then I will take both cats (I couldn't bring Darby back to her house when she came back from the hospital) to her house along with all my blood pressure medicines and just stay there.  I stayed with my mother when I thought she was dying, which was 48 hours before she died.

I don't think she is suffering.

As for the optimism, it is ironic that I keep singing better and better (my voice keeps getting bigger and the high - and low - notes keep getting easier) but am no longer interested in all that heavy 19th Century Italian music.

My teacher and I are going to put on a concert on October 1.  As the piano where it will be is out of tune (or was last year) we are not doing a lot of opera anyhow.  We were going to do the duet from La Gioconda but he said he feels that it is too high for him now, so we will do the duet from Samson et Dalila that precedes "Mon Coeur" and then I will just sing "Mon Coeur".

We also talked about some mezzo and baritone duets from the French repertoire.  I might enjoy doing those so we might do a Shakespeare-themed concert next Spring.  I would love to do the duet with Gertrude and Hamlet from the Ambroise Thomas opera and then we might do the Henry VIII-Anne Boleyn duet from Saint Saens' Henry VIII, which is based on the Shakespeare play.  And we could end with something from West Side Story.

So life goes on.....