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.

A Feast or a Famine

Well!  After totally giving up on the nursing home where my partner had stayed, which I had contacted numerous times over six months, I heard from the recreation director.  He wanted me to sing on May 5.  I told him it was too short notice, but that I could sing on June 2 (another date he offered).  Unfortunately my regular pianist is not available, so I had to find someone else.  I found someone, but he lives in Washington Heights.  I guess a lot of musicians live there now.  I think I should be OK if I go there to rehearse during the day.  The subways are probably full of people during those hours. I have never been up there so I don't know how scary it will look to me.  My voice teacher will have to come to one of the rehearsals (he is singing with me in both recitals, if I forgot to mention) and maybe I can get him to come to both.  I would rather not be wandering around there alone since I'm not familiar with anything up there.

My other bad news is that I was really sick.  The flu?   I was coughing my head off and for two days I had a fever of 100.  I also felt very tired and had no appetite.  I just thought I had a bad cold, so although I canceled my Sunday sing (it was at 9 and I had not been able to sleep because I was coughing so much) I went to stay with my partner.  She wanted me there.  I stayed Sunday and Monday and then went home, and Tuesday morning the aide called me to say that she had called 911 because my partner was having trouble breathing.  She was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with the flu.  They gave her Tamiflu and iv fluids (they sent her home after 48 hours because by that point she no longer had a fever). I called my doctor, who said that because I had waited four days, Tamiflu would not do any good, and that whatever it was would pass out of my system. It has now been two weeks and I am able to sing and my cough has finally tapered off.  I have not tried to sing "Tanti Affettti" again.  I sang it fabulously at my lesson two weeks ago and at home the next day, and it was the following day that I got sick.  I had a lesson Tuesday and sang a few light pieces, "Had I Jubal's Lyre" (without having to take extra breaths!!) and the "Drinking Song".  My main concern is having enough stamina but the first runthrough rehearsal isn't until May 8, so I am hoping to have my strength back.  I had lost five pounds but am now eating normally, so I will probably put it back, which is OK.  I need that few extra inches around the waist to sing.  And the good news is that if I did have the flu I can't get it again (my partner and I both had gotten flu shots but apparently that hadn't helped) so I am hoping to be healthy for both recitals.

It's Not What You Know, It's Who(m) You Know

(As for the title, there was a long discussion thread in one of my copyeditor online groups about whether to use the m.  It was decided that using it is correct grammar, and that not using it is idiomatic, in that "It's not what you know it's who you know" has become a little jingle.)

Despite my having had a pleasant time at choir practice and trying to work on anger management, yesterday I had a huge meltdown.  It had to do with my partner's having a minor health problem that she allowed to get out of hand, with repercussions (I don't want to go into these here; I do respect her privacy in some regards) that led to my having to drop everything and run over there yesterday.  I had promised not to be "mad" at her, which I wasn't, although when I got there and saw the state the apartment was in I burst into tears.  Then things just went from bad to worse.  The problem is that I am awash up to my neck in people who went to Ivy League schools, have multiple graduate degrees, have music or theater degrees, have fellowships, are going to school in early middle age because they have "connections" (more on that in a minute, as that is what prompted the title of this post) and then what I have to contend with is my dreary dull work, and someone else's mega dysfunction, which is very wearing no matter how much I love her.  The contrast between my life and these people's (considering that we all started out in the same place socioeconomically, more or less) is just sometimes more than I can bear.

As I was leaving yesterday, after we had patched things up, my partner said something so profound, it shook me to my core.  She said "take care of 'us'.  'Us' is real.  All the things you want are not real, are they, if you don't have them?"  I wish so very very much that I could believe this.  I mean really believe it.  But you see I don't, because the things I want are being lived out by 90% of the people I know every hour of every day.  These are not things that I see on tv or read about in the newspaper.  Lincoln Center is not someplace I heard of and want to visit someday (something a relative of my partner's said recently).  I have to pass it every single day when I go to the grocery store, the drug store, the bank, or the subway.  That mega marker of my my failure and irrelevance, towering over me never letting me forget how insignificant and pathetic I am.

Then I saw this picture

on Facebook, liked it, and shared it.  And thought I was grounded.

No sooner than I did that, than I found out that the woman I referred to in the previous post, who is getting a multi-art degree, is getting this free of charge because her husband teaches theater at the university in question.  So there you have it.  I don't begrudge her this, she is a good person.  But that is why she is doing what she is doing, and I am (not) doing what I am (not) doing.  It does matter whom you know.  Yes, you need talent, and you need hard work.  People aren't handed something for nothing.  But you need to be in that milieu.  If you weren't born into it,  you need to go to school for it when you are young, meet people, and maybe marry one of them.  And then that network is there.  

So how can I get past this?  How can I stop sobbing and screaming that I have all this talent (which I have been told by other people) that no one cares about?  That I want to be somebody?  Maybe it would be easier if I were Christian.  Christians believe that the last is first and the least is best.  But do they really? The church I sing at does many many many good works (which is why I give them a charitable donation) but it is the Ivy Leaguers, the conservatory graduates, and the people working on and off Broadway who are the "stars" there, not the health aides and the people who work in the food pantry.

Erfreute Zeit!

Yesterday morning I sang one of my all-time favorite church solos: the Bach alto cantata "Erfreute Zeit" (loosely translated as "A Happy Time").

I love singing this piece for a variety of reasons.  First, it has a virtuoso violin accompaniment and is, in fact, more of a duet for voice and violin than a solo.  I sang it in the summer of 2011, sans violinist, because that was the summer that my beloved violinist friend began his rapid decline (he was 88) and was no longer able to see the music (or remember it from one day to the next).  Second, it is an object lesson in the fact that you don't have to have a high voice to sing something flashy (something that triggers a gut level "wow"! reaction from listeners).  (Here is a link to the version by Angelika Kirchschlager.)http://youtu.be/Dpj5N9lTnHM  Finally, I love the piece because it is happy.

I had a really happy day yesterday.  It is the kind of day I wish I could have more of.  Singing, in a situation where I don't feel I'm competing with anyone, and in which, in that moment, I can excel on my own merits.  Getting acknowledgment (I got compliments, Facebook posts, and even applause, which is almost unheard of for a church anthem.)  And then, when my inner diva is satisfied, enjoying other people for their gifts and their friendship, and letting the day wind down by doing something cozy with my SO, or even at home in my bed with my little Siamese cat (yesterday I did both).

I find these moments of happiness very hard to come by (the glorious ones, not the quiet ones; the latter for me are much easier to find).  So should I be damned for this?

After the suicide of Robin Williams there has been a lot of talk about depression.  People, at least in the circles in which I move, understand depression the way they understand cancer or diabetes.  Unfortunately, according to both my therapist and on online screening test, I am not depressed, so people write me off as having a bad attitude.  I don't think that is true either.  I think (this was a term my therapist used) I am suffering from "affluenza", in other words, as I wrote here I am in a "toxic environment".

So I need a way to find more "Erfreute Zeit" moments.

On September 11 I will be singing Handel's "O Had I Jubal's Lyre".  That can be one of them.  And then there will probably be a Christmas concert.

Self Referential

I very rarely make a blog post that simply refers back to another blog post, but this so says everything that I am feeling right now, and needs no updating, that I had to simply refer back to it.

A friend from the church where I sing who often chides me for being sad, or self-deprecating, is one of the people I referred to here as being surprised and astounded by things.  In fact, she made a post on Facebook yesterday quoting Hugh Jackman as having said "the wonderful thing about living in New York is that when you walk outside your building, everything you see is a surprise."  (Then people did a riff on the word "building" about how strange it seemed to them or their families.)

I just never have those feelings.

I wish I did.

I suppose the language of "immigrants" (that's all I can think of calling them because to me, most of the rest of America that is not a major metropolitan center with public transportation is more foreign than many foreign countries) continues to be - well, foreign, to me.

I so so so so desperately need a change.

New Year's Resolutions: Check In

Pursuant to the conversation I had with my therapist last Friday about "depression", she told me to listen to "the smartest person in the room".  When I disingenuously asked her who that was (assuming she meant me), she said "the BabyD who wrote the New Year's Resolutions" (which I had shown her).

So I thought maybe it is time for a check in, to see how I am doing.

1. Get off the following merry-go-round: Working at home alone makes me depressed, not working enough hours gives me financial anxiety which makes me more depressed, and the idea of using my pittance of free time to try to find something else to do for a living is the most depressing of all.  To do instead: Work as many hours as I have to, admit that I hate doing it, that this is something that it is too late to change, as finding a new livelihood at my age would require a prohibitive amount of time, money, or both, and make the rest of my life as colorful, richly peopled, sensual, and right brain as possible.
I have held to my decision to take "how to earn a living" off the table as a topic.  When I had my taxes done in April, I saw that I had earned $1000 more last year than the previous year and guess what?  It all went back to the tax man.  This year on the whole, I have been happier, and guess what? I am working less and earning less than I did the year before.  Sometimes I think I would rather sleep in a shelter and sing in the subway (if I had to) than spend any more hours moving punctuation around, but I may be exaggerating.  Well, I can continue to spend my mother's savings (I still have two 401ks in addition) and remind myself it is only a little more than two years until I can collect Social Security.  As for making the rest of my life as colorful, etc. as possible, yes, I was doing that when I was working on Carmen.  So now what? [Let's say for this I get a grade of B.]

2. Do everything I can to jump-start my imagination.  I am finding small ways to do this, even just looking for pictures for "Throwback  Thursday" on Facebook. [Let's say for this I get a grade of B plus.  At least it's something I am mindful of most of the time.]

3. Tell myself every day that yes I am an artist (singer, writer) even if this isn't what I do for a living.  This is hard, because I am surrounded by people who do do this, if not for a living, then as an almost full-time activity.  I did a head count and see that half the people in my choir perform or have performed regularly somewhere else or have a degree in theater or music.  I would guess that more than 20% of the other people in the congregation do something in the performing arts either in administration or pedagogy even if they don't perform.  And I live on Manhattan's Upper West Side - because I have a rent regulated apartment.  If I could choose where to live, I would probably move to Murray Hill, which is a lot more vanilla and where I would stand out more. The fact that my Carmen had, in essence, to compete with someone's senior recital at a conservatory for conversational attention never mind for attendees, says it all. [Definitely a grade of D for this one.]

4. Spend more time with "ordinary folk" (not easy when you live on Manhattan's Upper West side).  See item 3.  Where are these people???? [A grade of F.]

5. Stop reading blogs from working performing artists who one way or another, find ways to disparage amateurs, whether it's me or Miss Kansas, and get these people off my Facebook list (mostly done).  This is done. I have also reorganized my Facebook friends list so that the singers I friended because I admired them, who mostly did not care about me at all, are not listed as "close friends" so I see their postings less often. [A big thumbs up!  This gets a grade of A.]

6. Treasure every minute with my SO.  She is almost 80. I am doing this.  One of the main reasons I am working less isn't (sigh) that I am singing more; it's that I am spending more time with my SO.  Even it it's just doing laundry.  Every time I look at her I know that any day I could lose her: she has heart disease and COPD.  I am taking her to Ogunquit for her 80th birthday and screw all the money it will cost.  That's what the money is there for, isn't it? [This also gets a grade of A.]

7. Always have a solo singing gig in my future.  So far I am staying on top of this, even it it's not a definite date written in stone.  [I will give myself a grade of B.]

8. Spend more time working on the non-technical skills I need to sing.  I have been doing more of this.  Carmen was the first thing I did requiring staging in 35 years.  And I am working on my Spanish diction, and as a byproduct, am acquainting myself with the IPA.  I still can't bring myself to study the solfege book, though. Part of the problem with this, though, is time.  If it's a choice between studying a language or doing vocal exercises and studying music, the latter wins out. [So I'll give myself a grade of C plus, but I'm ok with that.]

9. Write more, even just this blog.  I have not really done this at all, unless you consider the work I did creating a script from the novella of Carmen.  But, per item 8, time is the issue. [So I'll give myself a grade of C minus, but I'm ok with that.]

10. Take more risks. I really don't know if I have done this or not.  I certainly feel like I am playing Russian Roulette with my finances.  On the other hand part of me regrets bitterly that I chose short term financial security over a career (even if not in the performing arts) that I would really find fulfilling. I suppose that performance of Carmen was taking a risk.  And I am reacquainting myself with Amneris and Azucena. [So I suppose this gets a grade of C plus.]

So.  Looking at this I see - again - that my Achilles heel is the environment that I'm in.  It is very very hard to feel good about myself and my accomplishments when I am drowning in a tsunami of talent and become, therefore, invisible.  I have the odd personal friend here and there who gives me encouragement but that is not the same as being perceived as a performer or an artist by the people I meet in my daily life.  I really am at a total impasse about this.  I can't move.  First of all I am from here so there is noplace to go "back to" where the standards are lower and the talent pool is smaller. Ironically, there is noplace I could live more cheaply than in this apartment.  I don't know how to drive.  It really is a sad bit of irony.  I'm sure I would be in Seventh Heaven if I lived, say, in Leonardtown, Maryland (where a friend of mine from Maine moved to be near her daughter, and for the "quiet").  I could take a bus into Baltimore once a month for a singing lesson and put together local "talent shows" where I would get to sing an aria for people who may never have heard one, be the go-to soloist at a local church, and educate people about classical music.  I mean I know there are people in New York who are not performers (and therefore would see me as one even for the small things I do) but I haven't a clue where to find a group of these people all in one place, nor do I have time for any more "activities".

Jaded

I had a series of experiences over the past few days that had me on an emotional roller coaster, and led me to the sense that in addition to being lonely (I am certifiably not depressed), I am extremely jaded.

Most people I know who are happy seem to be people whose lives have exceeded their expectations.  Either they grew up poor and surprised themselves by becoming comfortably off, or they were the first (or the only) person in their family to go to college and are impressed by their own knowledge and intelligence (I don't mean in an arrogant way, I mean in truly finding these things a source of pleasure), or they have moved to New York from somewhere else and continue to be amazed by all the possibilities.

Thursday night I went to hear a Skype conversation with a young couple from the church who have moved to Jerusalem to be "missionaries".  I put the word in quotes because to me it sounds slightly quaint, or possibly iffy, if "missionary" means trying to convert people.  But I was assured that Lutheran missionaries do not try to convert people, they only go where there are already Lutheran churches and try to help.  These two young people are good.  Truly good.  I love them very much.  So much that sometimes I want to cry.  I didn't grow up with people who were good.  I grew up with people who were ethical and generous, but that was always tempered with a good dose of intellectual snark.  Almost as if that snark were a mandatory component of being intelligent.  Then there were the people who rebelled against that by being touchy feely in a hippie-ish kind of way that I found silly.  The media seems to think that this younger generation (is it Gen X or Gen Y?  I can't keep track?)  invented "irony" but believe me, it was alive and well when my mother was growing up in the 1930s.  My mother modeled herself on Dorothy Parker with a dash of Elizabeth Bennett thrown in.

After I came home Thursday night I felt spiritually renewed, feeling that knowing those young people and seeing their joy in doing God's work had changed me somehow.  My life would be so much happier and simpler if I wanted to be good  instead of wanting to be a star (even in a tiny venue), but I don't.

Then on Friday night I heard Audra McDonald sing Make Someone Happy and thought, "why can't I just be happy with that?  All the fighting and friends with benefits aside, I have made one person happy for a long, long time, and she has made me happy.  Not everyone has that.  Why can't that make me happy?  Why can't it be enough?"

Lastly, I saw an interesting post on Facebook, from a woman from the church I am friendly with, who said her life was so rich and varied "beyond my expectations, coming from a small town" and you see that is the problem.  How can I be happy with anything when I've been up to my eyeballs in the best of everything since I was 5 years old?  My parents were not rich, and in fact after my father died my mother and I were poor, but they/she managed to take me to the ballet, the theater, concerts, museums, etc. so that by the time I was in High School I had seen it all.  What was left for me to do that could ever even live up to those standards?

For a while I could be a Lesbian activist.  Not many people were doing that, certainly not any women who looked like me, and it was considered edgy, different, pioneerish.  Maybe I was my own kind of missionary, now that I think of it.  Now that's gone.

Will I ever have the sense of wonder and excitement that people have to whom things are new?  I just don't think so.

And it's a two way street.  I do not impress anyone and very little impresses me.  I suppose the only thing that impresses me is the level of skill, expertise, and ambition that so many very young people have.  They start out starring in their chosen endeavor in High School (when I was in High School I was so overwhelmed with eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual conflict and apathy I could barely maintain a B average) and keep it up through prestigious schools.  Now it's true that many of them will probably not be any better off at 62 (I will be 63 before you know it) than I am, but what I'm seeing is the beginning of the story not the last chapters.

So now I am off to my choir "gig".  (Some people laugh at me for calling it that, as I don't get paid, but that's tough nuggies.  I work as hard as any paid choir singer.)  This piece has 8 parts and last Wednesday the choir director actually publicly noticed the "second sopranos" and said thank you for staying on a difficult part.  That was a first.  His specialty is that any compliments or criticisms are always very general.  I remember a friend of mine (another late starting classical singer) mentioning  how her previous choir director "made a fuss" over her and another singer in that choir with training. Well, I guess if the church is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, good amateur singers don't impress anyone.

ETA: After rereading this I realize that it needs some clarification.  Obviously I have not seen and done it all.  In fact, I have been to very few places, far fewer than most people I know.  There are countries, cultures, animals, scenery, and many many other things here in the United States and abroad that I have not seen.  What I meant, was basically two things.  First, that having grown up in New York, I have seen and done everything there is to see and do here, the best and the worst, the scariest, the funniest, the most upscale and the most gutter.  So 9/11 excepted, there is nothing I have seen here as an adult, on the street, on the subway, or in a theater, that I find surprising, shocking, or astounding, in a good or a bad way.  And - and this is more to the point - there is absolutely nothing in my daily life that even approaches the tamer dreams or expectations I had growing up, let alone exceeding them.  I do fewer different kinds of things at work or at play than about 95% of the people I grew up with or those I know now.  So short of suddenly having the time, money, and freedom to travel, I can't think of anything that is likely to cross my path that will take my breath away, surprise me, or astonish me.  Nor is there anything among my meager accomplishments that is likely to amaze or astonish anyone else.  Which is very sad.

The Juilliard Effect - And the "Sandbox"

A lot of discussion was generated on Facebook by this article which was posted by a voice teacher whom I "friended".

Although it addressed instrumentalists, not singers, the gist of it was that most people who graduate from Juilliard do not go on to have professional careers in music.  But they are stamped by something for the rest of their lives.  People who went to Juilliard or the Manhattan School of Music are like people who went to Yale or Harvard.  No matter what they do for the rest of their lives they are an elite bunch.

The singer who responded to the post (I wanted to write to her privately and maybe, in accordance with my new vow not to be timid, I will) said something more or less similar about her peers.  And in doing so she mentioned that many were satisfied with "sandbox singing".  By sandboxes she meant community opera companies - the very ones that were so obviously not interested in me.  So there is a trickle down  effect.  There isn't room in the elite performance organizations for all the elite performers so they trickle down into the amateur venues and for a real amateur like me there is noplace left to go.

On a related subject, I had an insight lately about why I can't shake this bad feeling about myself.  OK,  it's not clinical depression, and I refuse to say it's a bad attitude (sometimes, believe it or not, I do feel grateful).  I think it has to do with location, location, location.

I have lived in this apartment in the "armpit of Lincoln Center" for almost three decades.  I moved in here because it was an available rent regulated apartment that I got through a family friend, not because it was near Lincoln Center.  I didn't start singing again until I had been living here for almost 20 years.  But during most of those years I worked in offices.  Each office is its own little world, with manifest hierarchies and subtler ones.  The people I worked with lived everywhere from New Jersey to Long Island to some of the less sophisticated neighborhoods in Queens.  Very few of them, even at the highest levels, had been to elite schools.  So I felt that I held my own quite nicely.  People found me interesting, even before I got promoted into management positions, and respected what I had to say about movies, politics, or nutrition. I felt that I mattered. Not to mention that everyone (whatever their position on the subject) thought I had the most ginormous pair of brass ovaries to be going around talking about being a Lesbian while being impeccably dressed and made up.   And it was acknowledged that many of the people I worked with, even those ranked above me, were not as intelligent or as well read or as cultured or as sophisticated.

Since I left office work (which I do not regret) the only "worlds" I have been in are the two churches:first the Unitarian church and now this Lutheran one.  Ironically, although going to church is supposed to be about Godliness or goodness, the fact that these two churches are on the Upper West Side means that the majority of the congregation is living on the Upper West Side, which means that the majority of them either do something in the arts, or academia, or some other profession that makes them interesting and offbeat (some are financially well off and some not).  So I am continually aware of my mediocrity.  So whereas my various former coworkers from Queens or New Jersey might have thought I was unusual or offbeat because I sang or twirled a baton in a gold sequinned dress - or even because I went to the opera, no one in these Upper West side churches is going to think that.  Why should anyone ask me about myself when there are bona fide Broadway performers, professional musicians, professors of music, art, and English literature, and people with the money to travel all over the world whom they can chat up, interview, or ask to give a talk?  I feel that I have absolutely nothing of interest about me to offer anyone.  I don't mean that I am unlovable or unlikable (I seem to make friends easily and I know of three people who have said they are in love with me) I just mean that I am not interesting.  I am not an authority on anything, a go-to person about anything, or a micropundit (like some of the friends I have on Facebook who opine about everything from racism to the quality of the Tony nominees, who each have a virtual claque that hangs on their every word).

Common wisdom has it that people feel better about themselves when they spend time with people who are less fortunate than they are.  I have always thought that was a load of bunk, because I have a significant other who is less fortunate than I am in every way and I am immersed in her problems up to my eyeballs and it makes me sad, but it doesn't particularly make me feel better about myself.  I mean as I have said, I do feel grateful when I think of people living in poverty, the homeless, people who are seriously ill or who have lost loved ones in tragedies.  But I can't say it does anything for my self-esteem. Maybe I should redefine "less fortunate".  Maybe I would feel better about myself if I spent more time with people who were less talented than I am, have more boring jobs than I do, who read less, and who would be fascinated by the things I know (never even mind my singing).  But I don't know these people.  They don't live on the Upper West Side.

The Tragedy of Lost Creativity

I am taking a break from work, which I had intended to use marking up the score of Werther, but which I also now would like to use to write a blog post on this article , which really moved me.

So much of what the author says is true. Why is is it, as he says, that "We seem to have evolved into a society of mourned and misplaced creativity"?

Children are encouraged to be creative.  Certainly I was.  But I soon learned that having and fostering an imagination was "childish" (and this by about age 11).  I went to school with two types of girls: those who talked about boys and clothes all the time and those who did nothing but study.  There were a handful of kids I grew up with who really excelled at playing a musical instrument, or at art or writing, for example, but "really excel" meant just that.  If you were not Juilliard or Pratt material, it was like, "enough already".  Be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant.  (I don't think anyone was encouraged to go into banking - the author of the cited article mentions working in "the City", London's equivalent of Wall Street.  That, at least, was too crass.)

And women were not encouraged, really, to do anything at all.  Yes, we were supposed to be educated, because educated women are interesting.  But jobs were something you did until you married, or after you got divorced, or, like my mother, widowed.  It's sort of hard to imagine, as I was encouraged to be brainy, not decorative, but I never thought about having a "career", and just ended up doing what most of the "bookish" women I knew did: get a secretarial job in publishing and then become an editor.

And if you were female, even a Lesbian like me, the most important thing was "the relationship".  Don't pursue activities that will take time away from "the relationship".  That, and the fact that I was told that Lesbians shouldn't be involved in a "patriarchal art form" like opera, put a premature end to my hope of a singing life, if not a singing career.

So what do you do if you've found what you love but are too old to do it in any way that other people care about?  Not because you don't have talent and ability, but because too many people in too close proximity to where you live, have more talent and ability.  My problem with singing isn't that different from the general problem with the middle class.  It isn't really that people have gotten poorer, but rather that the rich have gotten so much richer and so much more numerous that everyone else is poor or  might as well be.

Being older, the issue isn't just ageism or lost time, it's that what I'm competing with now are at least three generations (is a generation a decade, I wonder?) of people, most specifically women, who have been encouraged to pursue dreams of some kind.  And are doing interesting things.  When I was only looking at my own generation, very few women had high powered careers that they enjoyed and the ones who did were considered odd (many never married or found a satisfactory life with a significant other), and there were only a tiny handful of highly trained professional singers, so as I've said 100 times if I've said it once, the community opera groups, such as there were, were for amateurs with day jobs whose singing was less than perfect but who loved doing it.  Now almost every school in the country seems to offer a degree in vocal performance and they vomit out their graduates in the five boroughs of the Big Apple (not to  mention the three conservatories that are right here).

I think however sad it is that there is so much lost creativity, there is less than there used to be.  An awful lot of people, particularly women, are doing interesting creative things, if not successfully in a monetary sense, successfully enough that their picture is in the newspaper or they get a spot talking on tv.

So I've found something I love and it's killing me, to paraphrase the author of this article.  But it hasn't killed me yet, and I am going to go down fighting.

Confidence?

This morning was actually the second time I had seen my therapist since she came to my concert, but I guess we were talking about other things, because today was the first time she gave me feedback.  What she said was that I had so much talent, but so little confidence.  She said there were moments when I owned the stage (singing "Liber Scriptus") but then other moments when I looked shy and unsure of myself (interestingly, she said most of these were when I was not singing).  I was not offended by this comment any more than I was offended by my teacher saying I was singing too softly and that this disappointed him.  The question is what to do with such feedback.

Which brings me back to what I said in earlier posts about not having had the advantages that conservatory students have, even though by now I have studied voice as long as someone with a Masters in Vocal Performance.  Those people are in performance classes where they get feedback on a regular basis about everything from how they look to how they pronounce languages.  I have not had that experience.  My teacher gives me feedback about my singing and about the style of what I am singing (mostly if it's Italian opera).  The choir director mostly just wants me to sing "pretty".  The choir does sing things in different languages so we get drilled in how to pronounce words in German, for example, and the Spanish woman helped me with my Spanish (although I felt most of what she had to say about vocal production was wrong, so I did some of it but didn't incorporate it into my singing when I was not singing for her).  But that is not the same as having to get up in front of my peers (what peers???) every week and sing something, starting with the Italian songbook, and ending, maybe six years later, with some dramatic arias.  As I've said, the two groups I went to that were supposed to serve that purpose were filled with people younger and more confident, so I just felt depressed and irrelevant.

I was telling my therapist that the issue of confidence is in some ways a feedback loop.  I felt more confident in the beginning when I was working with the Mentor and everyone was bowled over by how I sounded because the choir was so talent starved.  And I felt reasonably confident when I started out in this avocational choir and was one of the, oh, let's say three best singers there.  But the more I see how I don't measure up, even as an avocational opera singer, certainly in Manhattan (or the outer boroughs - people will travel there to sing a leading role, i.e. nothing is just for the local talent any more) the less confidence I have.  And I have been trained to be make myself look humble and self-effacing when I sing choir solos.  I have never really been encouraged, except briefly by the Mentor, to strut my stuff in any way.  If it isn't the choir director telling me to sing softly (even when I'm singing a solo) it's my partner telling me to cover up my cleavage and dress like a "mature professional woman" (barf).

I also think (insane as this sounds) that I underrated the extent to which seeing all those equality signs everywhere made me feel ripped off.  That was my private bit of daring 30 years ago and now it's a litmus test for how "with it" the stodgy urban middle classes are?

Which is not that afield from how I feel about singing.  Is there no little patch of ground I can stand on that isn't occupied by a bajillion people?

It would be so much easier if I were "from" somewhere else and I could just "go home" where there was less competition, fewer singers with large operatic voices, fewer pretty Lesbians who were "out". But I am in fact a third generation apartment dwelling, subway riding, non-driving New Yorker.  And so much of what once was "metropolitan and cosmopolitan" has now moved out to smaller cities and larger towns that I would have to go somewhere very very very small indeed to feel special.

I want to run away to Ogunquit.  Sometimes that's what I really really want to do.  With my partner.  Away from all the people who swallow me up and make me feel invisible, anonymous, and irrelevant.

In Search of Awesomeness

If anyone's interested, I have given this blog a subtitle.

At today's therapy session I decided, that despite my dislike of young people's slang, what I really am looking for is more of a sense of "awesomeness".  I can't think of a better word.

For example, someone with my level of/lack of technical vocal expertise might be thrilled to be singing in a prestigious chorus in a work like the Verdi Requiem in a prestigious venue.  I most decidedly would not, unless I were getting paid as much as I make now working as a copyeditor.  I definitely care more about visibility than I do about venue.

The more I think about it, the more I wish I had been born in a small town.  I remember one of the biggest "ups" for me was when I went to Port Aransas, Texas to hold auditions for my play Duet, and demonstrated for the women auditioning how to sing "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix".  People literally fell on the floor.  They said they had never ever ever stood next to anyone with a voice that size with that type of sound.  Hey!  I could do with a little bit of that on a weekly basis!

But for someone who grew up here, what is there?  I have a rent regulated apartment around the corner from Lincoln Center, and unless something goes awry, they will carry me out in a pine box.  Not to mention that there is no small town I could move to where I wouldn't need a chauffeur, which is rather a sad commentary on the lack of public transportation options in most of this country.

My therapist suggested that maybe I might feel better if I found a place to sing outside of New York that was accessible enough that I could come and go in one day at minimal expense.  I rolled my eyes.  I would have to go very very very far afield to find someplace where my singing of "Mon Coeur" or anything else would be considered special or awesome.

Although that is not entirely true.

One of my intermittent sources of frustration with this high level avocational choir (which I only sing in because most of the time I feel that it "matters" if I am there or not) is that the only opportunities for awesomeness seem to fall to high sopranos or men (the latter because there are so few of them).  What would be awesome a propos of my voice (that it is huge and basically drowns out all the other women even when I'm singing mezzo piano in middle voice) is only an annoyance to people not a crowning glory.  And the odd bits of this and that that I can do better than anyone (for example hold a G above middle C for 24 counts without sneaking a breath) mostly pass by unnoticed.

But getting back to my moment of awesomeness, even on the Upper West side.  Two years ago, after having white knuckled it through the 8th or the 9th solo bit by the woman I have referred to as the "Young Coloratura" in various choir pieces, I set myself the task of finding something to sing with no high notes, not even any "mezzo high notes" (Fs and Gs) that was totally awesome.

What I came up with was the alto cantata "Erfreute Zeit"

http://youtu.be/Dpj5N9lTnHM

and someone in the audience  congregation came up to me afterwards and said "Babydramatic, that was  awesome."

So yes, it's still possible.

My therapist asked me what I do when I feel depressed, angry, and frustrated that other people (in  my immediate surroundings, even virtual ones) are being/perceived as "awesome" and I am not.  I thought for a minute and said "I work harder".   I guess that's just another spin on my mother's "Don't mourn - organize!"

So it's back to "Liber Scriptus".  Yesterday I had 6 out of 7 good runs with it (I kept re-singing the difficult passage because the first time I sang it the piece had gone a half tone flat for some inexplicable reason.)  So today I will try again.  "Lux Aeterna" shouldn't be a problem.  I will breathe where I need to, sing that G as loud as I need to, hold if for 3 counts, and then decrescendo.

My therapist also said we needed to work on my awesomeness.  What would give me that rush?  (Being dressed up with a ton of stage makeup helps, and I love my new hairdo, which is basically the old one courtesy of lots of little rollers instead of a perm, which looks bigger, curlier, and flashier, and is probably better for my hair.)

And she said she will try to come to the concert.  I hope that helps with nerves.

Gratitude or Giving Up?

A while back I posted something on Facebook (was it as long ago as last Thanksgiving?) where I said I found it hard to tell the difference between gratitude and laziness.

People think I am not grateful because I so often feel frustrated at how anonymous and irrelevant I feel...no matter how well I sing (or do anything for that matter) I am surrounded in this city and particularly in this neighborhood by a suffocating mass of people who can do it better.

It is easy to say, OK, I have it pretty good.  I have someone who loves me, however flawed our relationship is, something to do for a modest living that I can do on my own schedule, a cheap apartment in a pricey ZIP code, not to mention that I am old enough now to know that no matter who is President, I, personally, will not fall through the cracks.  I spent 35 years bored out of my wits for most of the day and what I have to show for it is two 401ks and health insurance for life.  And now I earn little enough that I could probably qualify for lower middle income subsidized senior housing if I lost this apartment.

But I have this huge hunger in me to be somebody and in this environment I am nobody even if I leave the house every day flawlessly made up, looking like I am going for a photo shoot or at the very least a curtain call....no  mean feat at 62 when nobody cares how I look but me and my significant other.  It ain't in my job description.

Lately I have just felt like giving up.  One thing I learned (surprisingly) during the hurricane was how lovely it was to lie in bed in the dark (I could have done with a little heat) listening to the radio with my significant other with few pressures other than having to run home for a few hours a day to work at my laptop (I had power in the apartment, she didn't).  The competition was on hold

I want to run away to Ogunquit Maine.  Almost every summer we spent a week here. And this picture doesn't even do it justice. This room looks out on a Japanese garden that was written up in a magazine (I can't remember which one, now).

Just think if I lived in Ogunquit.  Well, I would have to walk everywhere except in July and August when the trolley is running, which would mean walking the equivalent of ten blocks, possibly in the snow, to buy overpriced groceries at a small convenience store.  Or maybe there might be someplace I could order groceries online?  There would only be one church within walking distance, and chances are I would get to be the star soloist full stop.  I would get bored pretty quickly...there are a few art galleries and a summer theater from which I would have to walk home the equivalent of 15 blocks with a flashlight, because it's not on the trolley route, and two movie theaters.  Maybe once a month or so I could take the bus to Portland but I would probably only get to spend 4 hours there because the last bus gets back fairly early, I think.  I would be bored, but I wouldn't feel like I was drowning at the bottom of a pool of talent, so far down at the bottom of the pool that no one can even see my nose.

If I hadn't been born in New York it would be easy.  I could go "home", presumably somewhere where I would be a bigger fish than I am here, and I would feel less overwhelmed.  But I have noplace to go home to.

I could choose to live a simple life here: just close my eyes to the mass of talented people, never go to another audition, stop reading Classical Singer, unfriend all the working singers on Facebook who don't know me and certainly don't care about me even if we met once or twice at a "meetup", and be an unpaid choir soloist and go caroling in nursing homes and sing a few art songs.  But is that giving up?  Is that admitting that I am a failure?  Or is it being grateful?

Next week I have the first rehearsal for this Requiem that I have been planning for over a year.  I will probably get flak about it from my significant other, but I will deal with it.  Maybe this will be the last  "big" thing I will ever do.

Mr. B.

Once again, I should be working, but one of the exercises in The Artist's Way involved making lists of people who discouraged you, and people who encouraged you, so....

God knows I have wasted enough "ink" on the former, so why not write about the latter?

I know I blame other people (and social trends) for my failure to nurture my own singing talent until the age of 54, when it was well past the 11th hour, but much of the blame lies with me.  (But knowing that, where do I go from here?)

I say that I started singing the first time when I was 26, but that is not true.  That was the first time I studied and sang after I had quit smoking.  I don't really count the earlier forays into classical singing but maybe I should.

There were the casual lessons I took at 15, with a former Metropolitan opera soprano, where I learned nothing, and in fact my singing got worse and worse the more I smoked and went on unhealthy crash diets.

Then I stopped altogether to wallow in drugs and rock and roll (any sex I wallowed in was incidental and not really relevant one way or another in terms of my singing) and started again at 22 when I was singing with a Gilbert and Sullivan company in the chorus and as a cover for the lead contralto.

After years of abuse, my voice had dropped about a fifth from where it had been at 15, but it must have had something because one of the men in the cast (who had come to G&S via a minor opera career) told me I sounded "like the old fashioned Italian mezzos, particularly Ebe Stignani." He told me that my performance as Katisha was "astounding".  I didn't have a teacher at the time, but found one via one of the tenors in the company.

I will call this man "Mr. B."  I have always said that he went a good way to "ruining" my voice but maybe some of the problem lay with me and my smoking (and intermittent drinking).  Mr. B. taught a specific technique (I don't know what it's called) that emphasized singing in a raw chest voice.  The theory was that if you could isolate your chest voice you could also isolate your head voice and have better high notes, but with me that never happened, although it had with the tenor in question, who previously to studying with Mr. B. had only been able to sing high notes falsetto.  And lest you think it was a man's game only, Mr. B.'s daughter was singing Mimi at 18 and now, at 50 is a famous Wagnerian soprano.  One of the things that technique is based on is enormous physical strength.  In addition to singing, Mr. B, had me doing sit-ups, walking two miles a day, and drinking milk with every meal.  Actually, in the beginning I did sound a lot like Ebe Stignani and even managed to sing through "O Don Fatale" but that was short lived.  Was the fault with Mr. B., my smoking, or my singing 7 shows a week with the G&S outfit? In any event, my upper register pretty much disappeared and I lived in mortal terror of "Mikado week" when at any moment I might be called upon to sub as Katisha and have to sing a high A flat at the end of Act 1.  Otherwise, I had a rich full voice up to the F or F sharp at the top of the staff and that was it.

But suppose I had stuck with Mr. B. and just been a student?  Suppose I had been nunlike and given up smoking and drinking and partying?  Even given up the G&S company?  They weren't paying me anything unless I sang a children's matinee. (I earned my living during the day by grooming dogs and had a flexible schedule.)  Mr. B. gave a discount to students who came every day ($10 a lesson in 1972) and I remember I did do that in the beginning (hence my surprising performance of "O Don Fatale"?)

When I say I made all the wrong choices, I don't just mean with smoking, drinking, starving myself (actually I had stopped doing that for a while at the G&S company - I had to share costumes with a woman the size of Deborah Voigt pre-surgery and pinning them down to a size 12 was hard enough) but also the gruelling schedule I was performing at that company.  It was "fun".  That was why I did it.  I knew a few people who were going to a conservatory and they were deconstructing art songs in different languages while I was having "fun".  Of course the people who put in the work of that kind when they're 21 have the lives I would give my eye teeth for at 40, but how could I have known that then?

So the question is: what am I going to do with this information that I am getting from The Artist's Way?


What I long for is to find something special, that only I can do, or that I can do better than most of the people in my immediate environment, that will interest someone. No matter how well I can sing "Acerba Volutta" there will be not ten, but probably 50 people who can sing it as well, or better, who are younger and better educated, and who have "connections", even insignificant ones.

I don't think it's likely that I will move out of my rent regulated apartment in the armpit of Lincoln Center any time soon, but boy, there are days when I wish I were singing the National Anthem at a Little League game in "East Eggshell, Iowa" and signing autographs afterwards.

The Artist's Way

Finding myself totally at a loss how to become "unstuck", I decided to revisit a suggestion the therapist made several years ago - to do the exercises in the book The Artist's Way.

I had thumbed through it several years ago, but that was when I was working in an office.  One of the mandatory exercises is to write three pages of longhand when you wake up, which seemed prohibitively onerous if I would have had to cram this into an already stressed and overcrowded morning.  Now that I am a freelancer and almost never have to set the alarm (except on Sundays), this is very doable.

So I will start.

I think "creative block" definitely describes my problem.  I mean I practice daily and learn new music, but I am at a loss as to what to do with this big talent (yes, I have a big talent, I just don't have all the skills, or any of the educational underpinnings, not to mention the physical stamina, free time, and youth to pursue it along traditional channels), so maybe these exercises will help.  Although I want to continue singing and would like to be able to incorporate my big dramatic mezzo rep (the bits and pieces I can sing without getting tired) into something but the question is what? I am in an environment that is crawling with singers and performers of every possible sort so I see nothing I can do that would be of interest to anyone except teachers and friends.  (FWIW yesterday I sang "Acerba Volutta" better than I ever have, I think, from start to finish.)

I would even be happy to find some nonmusical creative outlet (e.g. continuing to market my play until someone picks it up) if I can get inspiration somewhere.

I had another insight, namely, that a lot of the general discontent I feel began when I started going to that Unitarian church.  Not just because of the Mentor but because that was the first time I had a lot of contact with working performing artists of all sorts.  I live on the Upper West Side, and believe me, that's where they all live, from Hell's Kitchen up to Inwood.  Previously I had only known one working artist - a Tony-winning costume designer, but I saw her as the exception not the rule and in any event she was not in a field that I was interested in.  I knew starving artists who had Hellish lives (including one who managed to live on Welfare for years until she found a rich husband), and weekend artists who had day jobs at the various companies I worked at (as many of them at my last job were my subordinates, or my professional peers' subordinates, I hardly envied them), but not anyone who really made a living out of performing (or out of performing and teaching). I knew lawyers, doctors, and various types of academics, and occasionally I felt a pang of envy that they got to do something both interesting and lucrative, but those feelings were short lived because I could have gone to law school for example, if I had really wanted to.  I have never felt that something like that was out of reach because of circumstances beyond my control or bad choices I made long long ago.  But I really do feel my interest in performing was jinxed from the beginning.  I had no one in my corner.  Until I met him and of course that was a mixed blessing.

Then I began to "meet" real singers online.

And the Lutheran church is the same.  Although there are not many singers there at my level certainly not in the choir regularly there are a number of instrumentalists and other kinds of performers who make a living at it.

There was an old Jewish joke my mother used to tell (I hope I remember it).


A man who has made a lot of money buys a yacht, and then he buys a captains uniform.  He visits his mother in the uniform and says "Look Ma!  I'm a captain!"  So she says "By you you're a captain and by me you're a captain, but by captains are you a captain?"


So there it is in a nutshell.  By singers (certainly the hoards of conservatory graduates living in New York) I am not a singer.  Not really.

Speaking of my play, I remember being at the auditions for the lead at the community theater in Texas where my play was produced, and singing a few bars of "Mon Coeur" to demonstrate what I wanted to the auditioning women.  This literally blew people away.  They had never heard sounds like that come out of anyone's mouth.  I suppose that is what I am looking for - at least once in a while.

Keeping my fingers crossed that The Artist's Way will help me uncover some "wow" moments for myself, as nice punctuation to all the hard work...

The Bitter and the Sweet (Reprise)

The Bitter: For the first time in a long time, I decided to investigate an audition listed in the back of Classical Singer.  When I went to their web site and read their mission statement, there was the "Y" word loud and clear (and no, I don't mean "yelp", I mean "young").  In my last several posts I mentioned their being a "glut" of opera groups, which is true, and at least half of them use the "Y" word in their mission statement.  The next thing that happened, which would be funny if it weren't so sad, was I googled "opportunities for older singers" and the first hit was an article was about how to get "youth choruses" to accept older teenagers and the second hit was an old post I had made on the Forum. Which about tells you how many of these opportunities there are.

The Sweet:Well, this article allayed my fears about being homeless, at least for a while, so I can focus on other things. (The downside is I won't be moving to that hypothetical small town where I can be a real diva, either, but will be staying in my cubbyhole in the armpit of Lincoln Center.) And I sang through "Lux Aeterna" from the Requiem and it sounds really good! And I have fallen in love with a new role: Gertrude in Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. It is lush and lovely, and is mostly in a middle register. Jennifer Larmore had referred to the role as "high", which to me seems odd as it does not go above an A, I don't think. My recording features Denyce Graves, who, when I think of it, is probably the closest to me, as a total package (despite the ethnic difference), rather than Dolora Zajick. Zajick has a big dramatic voice but is also blessed with easy top notes, which I am not, and plummy low notes, which I am not either, and sex appeal is not her strong suit. Graves seems to have made a career out of singing three roles: Carmen, Dalila, and Charlotte, all of which require a sensuous beauty, both vocal and otherwise, and do not go up into the vocal stratosphere. When I look at my CD, the arias on it are a close match to those on her aria CD, in fact I think she has recorded them all. In any event, she is the perfect Gertrude, and I think I am going to try to do something with this opera, after the Requiem, which now gives me a long view.

A Glut of Everything

Getting back to something I addressed in my last post, which was brought to mind again when one of my singing message boards sent me a notice about a production of Aida in northern Manhattan cast with "new young singers", David Brooks really says it better than I could, in this Op Ed piece.

So what can I possibly dream up that ten other people/groups, aren't already doing here?

An Emotional Roller Coaster of a Day

And not because of that event that many people were obsessed with today. It's just not on my radar screen. Never has been. My father was a Marxist college professor who had never been to or watched a sporting event in his life.

No, my day began at 6 when I woke up to get ready for my choir gig (yes, I do call it that) when I found a response from the soprano I had invited to participate in my Verdi Requiem (I wanted to check that she wasn't interested because I am going to have to postpone it) and she started off basically indicating that she was insulted that I had asked her. Then she ended by trying to be polite. She is a good person, not a snark.

I mean I know there are people struggling to make money singing who hate people who do it for free. On an intellectual level I can understand it. But I already feel inferior enough that I'm an "amateur". This is why I wish I could meet some people who want to sing opera but don't sing quite as well as I do or have quite as much experience. This is not about ego, it's about wanting someone who will be happy that I invited them to do something and see it as a good opportunity. I mean the only reason I asked this woman was I had seen her perform at a pay to sing outfit (the one where my teacher used to sing for free all the time, until he got tired of it).

So I ended up feeling bad about myself and I really don't need one more reason to feel bad about myself.

I mean singing is something that people do for love (like all the arts). Which I guess sets up an adversarial situation with people who want to get paid for work they do in the arts. I mean, sure, I would love to get paid to sing, but if I don't, I'm going to do it anyhow. Most things people get paid to do are not enjoyable which is why they expect to be paid. I mean I would never read or edit anything anyone had written for free. Never. Nor would I do any left brain work for anyone: filing, organizing, reading business letters and explaining what they mean. These are things my partner has asked me to do and I have always said no. I will cook, shop, do the laundry, even scrub the kitchen floor. But not anything that is even remotely connected with what I do for a living. For example I don't own a watch because my entire life in offices revolved around time, and not wasting it, and trying to maximize productivity, so my rebellion is I don't own a watch so that I can make a statement that when I am not working I am exclusively a sensual, right-brain person who doesn't care what time it is.

So if someone does something for free does that make them inferior? I feel I always have to apologize that I am not paid for my choir spot.

Yesterday that whole interchange made me angry (although I suppose my asking this woman to sing in my vanity concert made her angry) so it spurred me on to want to post my little search for peers on the Forum but then I got cold feet again. I feel that that universe is full of exactly the kind of people who would laugh at me for wanting to produce concerts for no money. I would rather do that than pay $300 at one of these pay to sing outfits. If it's my production I can decide what role or scenes I am singing and have control of the rehearsal schedule. Of course then there's the issue of people backing out for one reason or another.

Today I saw that they put out a calendar of events for Lent, so I spoke to the choir director and told him that I would not be doing this Requiem concert this year but that the Pastor said I could use the church so I will do it next year. And I will. I wanted to sing Dalila, so I did. In any event, I said I would like to sing "Lux Aeterna" in one of the services. (I know he doesn't like "Liber Scriptus".) I looked at Lux Aeterna carefully and it can easily be turned into a solo, I think. He said I could bring him the music Wednesday. I said if he didn't like it maybe I could sing the aria from the Rossini Stabat Mater again (Fac ut Portem) or maybe the Crucifixus from the Petit Messe. I think I made a faux pas in that I said I didn't want to "throw away" any of those pieces singing at one of the Wednesday 6:30 services because they are not well attended. After I could see he was put out I apologized for being rude. In any event he said I could definitely sing something as a solo for Lent as it is a big singing season.

I also got some bad news (this may be a rumor that has spiraled out of control) that the Supreme Court may hear a case about rent control and rent stabilization. I know I am terrified every time the State Legislature votes on it but at least those people, even the Republicans, understand about how people live in New York City. But the people on the Supreme Court have no idea and could declare it unconstitutional. I mean we don't know yet if they will even hear the case. In any event, this is a really serious matter and could mean I would be out of my apartment in the "armpit of Lincoln Center", which I love, on the other hand living there couldn't be worse for someone with a modest talent - no, I don't think I have a modest talent - I think I have a big unusual dramatic voice, like the old Italian mezzos. I have a modest ability because I started too late, did too much damage to myself at a very young age, even though I have not touched alcohol or nicotine in over three decades, and never was in the right environment to foster a musical talent (some of which was certainly my fault), and now it is too late.

So maybe I'll end up in that small town after all. As long as I don't have to learn to drive.

A Very Tiny Fish

Usually I take my bad moods to "the other place" (someplace I write under a pseudonym and yes, you will have to waterboard me to get the link), but since this one is specifically about singing, why not bring it before a wider audience.

First of all, I am not in a great mood because I have no freelance work on the immediate horizon (something's supposed to come in at the end of the month) and I'm waiting for a check to come in the mail.

Then I heard one of the "real" singers in my building warm up. By "real" I mean she is no doubt under 45 and makes a living entirely from music-related activities, like cantoring, giving voice lessons, and singing a leading operatic role at a C or D house.

And to add insult to injury, she is a large-voiced soprano who can, oh so easily, sail up above high C.

So ok, I am really really really envious not just of singers who can do it for a living, but also of singers who don't have to struggle and fight just to sing a note or two above A natural. And this includes a lot of mezzos. My teacher assures me that this is physiological, not technical. He is not the only teacher I have studied with but aside from being able to sing staccati up to an E flat as a teenager (before I was well ensonced into my two pack a day cigarette habit), I have really never been able to sing consistently above A natural no matter what technique or imagery I use. I mentioned my teenage smoking here, but I've been told that since I haven't had a cigarette in almost 30 years now, that is not the culprit. My teacher says my vocal chords may be "shorter and thicker" than many female singers, even mezzos.

So ok. I will never have an easy upper register (for an opera singer - compared to people who sing pop or even some MT my voice sounds very high)just as I will never have narrow hips or be 5 foot 8 (I am still hoping to make it back up to 5 foot 5, since I was once 5 foot 6).

It's also very painful being a wannabe living around the corner from the Met. I mean most of the time I feel truly blessed. I have a rent stabilized apartment around the corner from the Met, on a safe street, in a building where dogs are allowed, where there's an elevator, and where we have a very strong tenants association that lobbies for our rights and then some. So barring a disaster or a huge windfall, I intend to die here.

But on the other hand I am constantly reminded that I am way at the bottom of the food chain where singing is concerned. The city is crawling with women who sound as good (and can sing a note or three higher than I can with no struggle), look as good, are 30 years younger, have conservatory degrees, and all sorts of apprenticeships and YAPs on their resumes.

So what am I really? A middle aged (well, they now say middle age lasts until you're 60) who had the chutzpah and ingenuity to put on a concert version of Samson et Dalila in a church? Who has the chutzpah to get up and sing in "meetups" where everyone else is either (much) younger or managed? I mean even in our no-pay Upper West Side choir now there are "stars" from conservatories. So ok, there are 52 weeks of the year and I can still get plenty of solo spots.

So, ok, I just have to look on the brighter side. Today I have a "free" day (I mean really, there are only so many hours I can send out resumes) so after picking up my mail (and hoping there's a check there), and doing a few errands, I can take my "battle with the B flat" into my bathroom with the water running full blast.

I really only have a few more days to wrestle with this duet. My nursing home concert is coming up where I'm singing the Judgment Scene (not hard for me) and several other duets so I need to go back to those.

And make sure I know the second soprano part on this spiritual we're singing.

The Shop Around the Corner

At the end of the month I have an audition for a role in a Handel opera (a long shot, of course, since the character is a romantic love interest and the production was advertised as avante garde) so when I wasn't able to find a CD of it at The Lincoln Center Library, I decided to buy one at The Juilliard Store.

Which brings me to a subject I have pondered for quite some time. What's a gal with a modest talent to do when her "local" this, that, and the other are Lincoln Center, the Met, and Juilliard??

Many's the time I wished I lived in "East Eggshell, Iowa", a generic catchword used by one of my former coworkers for small town America. If nothing else, I could be a working comprimaria at their local opera house and a minor celebrity in the grocery store.

Many readers know that, in addition to singing opera, I have also written a play. It's called Duet and is the story of a young church singer whose life is transformed forever by singing Dalila's "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix" under the tutelage of a charismatic voice coach. The play was produced in a tiny town in Texas and there was a story about me in their local paper. When I was interviewed, the interviewer asked if I would like a copy of the story sent to my "hometown paper". "Won't the people back home be proud of you?" he said. Well, I just burst out laughing. "My hometown paper is The New York TIMES", I said. "And no, I don't think they'd be interested."

So why haven't I moved? First of all, New York is where I come from so there's noplace to go back to. I wasn't strictly born in the Big Apple itself. I was born in Brooklyn Heights which used to be a lot like a small town, but now rents are prohibitive (my apartment in the armpit of Lincoln Center is rent stabilized), and it has lost its small town flavor. When I was growing up there was a theater troupe called The Heights Players which really was for the locals (in those days primarily housewives who had once dreamed of being actresses)and I and other local children sang in the chorus if they did a musical, but now as I understand it's overrun with people from the tristate area who are serious about having careers in the theatuh, much as the no-pay no-fee opera groups that used to comprise the Opera Underground several decades ago have now re-emerged as prep schools for yappers and resting places for managed professional singers between gigs.

So Brooklyn Heights really isn't an option. And when I add to the mix that there really is noplace I could live more cheaply, not to mention that I've never learned to drive, I'm sort of stuck here. Which is fine, most of the time, I just sometimes have these yearnings not to be such a tiny fish that I can't even really swim my way into a tiny pond.

Unless you count church fundraisers of course.

If I haven't mentioned it, my profile picture shows me hanging out in a minister's office preferatory to entertaining the congregation and their friends with the Habanera. An hour of dressing, including professionally applied stage makeup and a wig, for less than 10 minutes of singing, but I had a ball.

Some people idolize celebrities. I idolize "working singers" in my fach who sing medium sized roles and cover larger roles in medium size opera houses. I laugh when I read their postings about "coming to New York". For them, New York is the Promised Land, and my "nabe" is the Holy Grail. Maybe sometime I'll run into one of them on their way to an audition while I'm grocery shopping in my jeans, big hair, and stage makeup.

Oh, if I didn't mention it, even though I'm not a real diva, I always dress like one, even in the grocery store.

Now It's back to listening closely to my audition aria and coming up with solid ornamentation for the da capo.

A bientot.