Lent is Better Than New Year's

Even though I don't consider myself Christian (I do consider myself partially Christian as Unitarianism is a blend of everything), I like the idea of observing Lent.  As I jokingly said, observing one or more spiritual disciplines for 40 days definitely beats the Jewish alternative of making yourself sick for 24 hours by not eating or drinking water.

This year there was an article circulating on Facebook about 10 ways to observe Lent, and I have picked four, the last one being the most relevant here.

The first two have to do with not acquiring and getting rid of "stuff", which is always a good thing to do, and the third said "no gossiping".  I am not always sure what constitutes "gossiping", but I will try not to pass along stories I have heard about people that sound "juicy" but that come from a third party and may not even be true.  I suppose "gossiping" can also be construed to mean repeating things told to one in confidence, which of course I would never do, unless I found a way to tell the story anonymously if I thought it was necessary in a particular context, to help other people.

The fourth observance that I really plan to stick to is "no complaining".  For me that means in writing as well as out loud.  Who knows?  Maybe it will make me feel better.  I feel that I am constantly working at feeling grateful, which sometimes feels as hard as working out.  I know that a lot of my bad feelings come from what my therapist calls "affluenza" (in my case the issue has less to do with money than with artistic and professional success), that is, being surrounded by extremely successful people all the time because of where I live.

So I will focus on positive things.  We got the choir schedule running from Lent through Easter so my task now (in addition to learning all that music) is to look around for an occasion to sing an appropriate solo, either at the regular service when there is no choir or at one of the Spanish services.  The "sexy Agnus Dei" is too long, but it might be OK for the Spanish Good Friday service, or I could make a cut in it.  I would also love to do the Bach "Qui Sedes" again. Maybe on the Sunday when the choir is not singing (I think the informal choir sings on that day) I could sing it during communion.  (I have already sung it in the Spanish service, on Good Friday two years ago.)  Or there are two other settings of the "Qui Sedes" text, both by Vivaldi.  On Good Friday the choir will be singing the Dvorak Requiem.  I am going to see if there is a mezzo solo.  If so, I will see what the politic thing to do would be a propos of finding a place to sing it.  Or I could look at the Inflammatus from the Dvorak Stabat Mater.  This is a favorite with some contraltos I know, but it is not terribly low (in a similar range to "O Rest in the  Lord").

Lastly, the issue of Classical Singer for which I was interviewed has come out. The article was about singers who started late.  From reading it, I can see that we run the gamut from people who began in their mid 30s who are singing either professionally or in high level amateur productions, to people like me, who really didn't develop our voices fully until we were much older.  If there was a takeaway from the article for me, it had less to do with singing per se than with he fact that people (because everyone is living longer) are starting all sorts of things when we're older and it's stupid to write us off.  I mean there's the issue of looks, but there's all sorts of classical singing going on where looks shouldn't matter.  As I said in my quote about ageism, if it's about looks, that's one thing, but to write people in their 50s and 60s off because we are probably on a downward trajectory is very wrong-headed nowadays.

Of Lent, Benefits, and Other Things

I haven't written much lately, mostly because I am drowning in work. Today is Ash Wednesday. To me Lent is mostly about singing (my choir sings more during Lent than at any other time) and sometimes about trying to be a better person.

Growing up Marxist, needless to say I was not raised with Lent, but I certainly was expected to live a life of penance, at least on some level. I went to an expensive private school but wore old second hand clothes, went to the theater but owned little jewelry, and of course was discouraged from fussing with my hair or using cosmetics (my rebellion was neither to become a Weatherperson nor a Conservative but simply to stuff my bathroom cabinet with lipsticks, nail polish, and hair products of every possible type and variety, the more the merrier). I was also made to feel guilty about any personal vanity. The triggering event (I think) to the brouhaha surrounding the pseudonymous blog that I deleted involved my asking the universe whether or not singers in general were self-involved. This was prompted mainly by my envy of the number of photos of themselves these people have (and post everywhere). I was not making a moralistic value judgment. I was probably mostly expressing envy not only that I didn't know people who would take these sorts of photos of me unless I made a big deal of asking them (hence my new profile picture here) and that I don't have the kind of smart phone that makes it easy for me to photograph myself, but that I also think I shouldn't want these sorts of photos. There was a time in my life (before the digital age) when I had a camera with me on every vacation, as did the friends I went with or visited. But the purpose of that was to photograph the larger world, and if people appeared in the picture it was incidental, and we hardly primped ourselves beforehand.

To be honest, I am extremely self-involved regarding my appearance, I just don't move in the right circles to milk this aspect of myself.

In any event, I feel that so much of my behavior and life is "Lenten" that I am not much in the mood to do anything to honor the season other than stick to my promise not to pick fights with my partner. She is mostly an ex partner, we don't live together, I can do what I please when work allows (and this covers quite a lot of territory that I don't discuss here), so I should be agreeable and kind during the weekend days when I cook, do laundry, shop, and sometimes even have an enjoyable outing with her.

Otherwise I am mostly focused on what solo oratorio piece I will be singing. The choir director said that "Lux Aeterna" would not work as a solo (well, yes...I wanted to sing it as a trio but couldn't get two men from the choir to sing the other parts) so I might do "Buss und Reu" from the St. Matthew Passion as it's a "Matthew" liturgical year and the choir will be singing some of the choral sections on Good Friday. Or I may sing "Fac ut Portem" again, which I love.

As for the other subject of this post, benefits, I saw a Facebook posting from a "real" singer (she is not one of my envy targets because she is a different voice type and is actually not one of the women who posts lots of pictures of herself) saying that she finally had health insurance. She said she mostly sings for a living but has had to take some other work as well, to feel more financially secure.

So how did I get where I am now. I was never unemployed, not even for one day, since 1977, until I left my last full-time job in 2009. And I have never not had benefits, full stop. When I left that job in 2009 it was with a "retirement package" that allows me to stay on their health insurance rolls. Now I am working freelance 30 hours a week.

I have a singer friend (another late bloomer, like me) who said that she probably wouldn't have wanted a career as a singer because of the cutthroat competition. For me, the issue was not that, but rather, among other things, the idea of financial insecurity.

I also almost cried when I heard from my teacher how little he is getting from Social Security. I am going to claim it when I am 62, and it won't be much, but it will be almost 5 times what he is getting.

Was all this worth 35 years of boredom and counting? I don't know. I made the choices I made.

On another subject, on Monday I saw Aida at the Met. I don't have time to write a review here now, but might do so another time.