More Deep Sadness, and Changes

Yesterday my partner's doctor came to visit her and said that the chronic sleepiness (and 20 hour sleep marathons) as well as her inability to put words together (different from her typical confusion, which manifests in things like her telling me she had been in Boston) were likely due to a brain bleed.  He said that people on blood thinners (she has been on blood thinners, first Warfarin, then Eliquis, for 13 years) often get them.

He said I had two choices. I could have her taken to the ER, which would mean that she would lie on a gurney in the hall for hours, not have her diapers changed, and then be shunted all over for tests.  The last time she was in the ER (for something acute and life threatening that could be dealt with with treatment) she was on a gurney in the hall from 6 pm until 1 am, when she went for a CAT scan.  They didn't change her diapers very often and she came home with bed sores that took months to get rid of.  Or, I could have a consultation with a hospice nurse.  I chose the latter.

I know that this is not necessarily the end.  The doctor also prescribed an antibiotic for a UTI that she might have, and already, less than 24 hours later, she is a little better.  She knows that Sunday is her 85th birthday, for example, which she didn't know yesterday. I think what the doctor meant was that what she mostly needs is comfort care.  What could they possibly do for a brain bleed that would enhance her quality of life all that much?  He said if she wants to sleep, let her sleep.  If she wants to consume nothing but Ensure and cookies, let her do that.

But the end will be sooner rather than later and I am desolate.  All the love that I didn't give to the parents I didn't love (my father, who died when I was 14 had a violent temper, and my mother, who died when I was 60, did everything she could to squash and squelch every independent thought that I had).  I did not feel much sadness when either of them died.  When my father died I felt relieved (although several decades later I saw what a disruption his death was, mostly socioeconomically, but also because his death removed the only person who could tell my mother she was wrong, and make her listen) and when my mother died I felt liberated.  Sometimes reflecting on this makes me think I'm a monster.  I hear people talk about the deep grief they feel, even over a decade later, over the death of a parent and I feel nothing. 

I also didn't have any children. All the love I might have given to a parent or a child I gave to my partner.

When she goes I will be inconsolable.  No, she was never perfect, and we had terrible fights.  But what she gave me was the gift of letting me know that I was enough.  I felt loved.  I felt like the most beautiful woman in the world.  We laughed, we snuggled, we made a safe haven for each other.

This morning, after having a new rug put down in my dining room and doing some cleaning, I realized that it was my partner who taught me to be a person.  She taught me how to cook and keep house (my mother was a wonderful cook, but as she was always obese, I didn't want any part of cooking when I lived with her), how to watch the news and learn about the world. When I met her I was 25, newly sober,  had almost nothing in my apartment and less in my refrigerator, and didn't even know the name of the governor of New York State.

Right now all I want is to spend as much time with her as is reasonably possible.  I am waiting to hear from the hospice nurse.  One wonderful thing is that he or she will stop by regularly and let me know when the end is near.  My greatest fear is that my partner will die alone.

But life needs to go on, I know.  I am 15 years younger than she is and I still want to sing.  I will not give that up.  I cannot lose ground whatever happens.  Luckily it is the summer, so I have more time.

A Bold Move

After a terrible experience getting harsh (and I suppose mostly gauche) negative criticism (it was so severe and all encompassing it completely took me aback and left me shaken for weeks) after posting some (badly engineered) sound clips at a time when I wasn't sounding as good as I would have liked, I have only once posted a video of myself singing here.  That was in 2012 (the day after "Sandy Hook") and I posted a video made in church of me singing "Der Engel" by Richard Wagner, struggling to keep the whole thing pianissimo, and only using half my voice.

Well, now This video of me singing Rossini is the culmination of 14 years of hard work.  I was debating whether or not to publish it here, and I know that I'm doing it partly because I'm proud and partly because I'm angry and depressed.

I know this is silly; I know how hard I've worked, how much progress I've made, everyone says it including my teacher and the choir director (I can sing a pianissimo high A off the cuff which I couldn't even do last year).  But all I have to do is engage with real singers talking about singing and I feel like nothing.  Like a tiny mouse who has found herself in a den of snakes.  Sometimes they ignore me, sometimes I think they're laughing at me.  Mostly I feel like someone who's stepped into an exclusive club where I don't belong.  And I keep trying!  I keep putting feelers out.  Because I'm stupid and have no self-esteem.

(I'm also depressed now because I have no more solo singing on the horizon other than something in church in July or August tbd).

So here's "Tanti Affetti", one of the most flamboyant mezzo arias on the planet.  Like it or lump it.

First Rehearsal for October 1 Recital, and...

Yesterday I had the first rehearsal for my October 1 recital. It went much better than I had expected.  I was a little worried because 1. I had never tried to sing the entire program through to pace myself and 2. I had been a little under the weather.  At my lesson the day before my throat felt a little "raw", like my vocal cords were irritated.  It might be that I had spent the day before with my partner and when I am there I don't use my Neti pot in the morning.  Also the aides clean everything to a faretheewell with bleach.

The three difficult arias went well.  When I say "difficult" I don't mean in a league with Verdi; simply that they require me to be technically spot on.  The highest note in anything is an A.  I did better than I had expected to with "In Buddy's Eyes".  Sondheim rhythms are very tricky.  After singing it the first time I realized that I can sorta kinda listen to the accompanist and I will then know when to come in and on what note.  "Vanilla Ice Cream" was no problem at all.  I decided to pass on singing "Mon Coeur" and the "Habanera" because I could sing them in my sleep.  Next week (my second and final rehearsal) I told the accompanist that I wanted to do a runthrough, including my little spoken bits, and his piano solos, so that I can get a sense of the pace.

Other things on the horizon are a difficult soprano part in Ralph Vaughan Williams' "A Choral Flourish", which I have not had enough time to work into my voice, unfortunately.  I have been listening to it, and will hope for the best.  It sits in a high-ish tessitura although the highest note is a G.  That is the sort of tessitura that is comfortable for me if I'm singing a solo; less so if I'm singing a choral piece with noplace to take a breath.  I may have to skip a few measures. We are singing it at 9 am this Sunday. (Oy).

Then I put out a bid to sing at someone's funeral.  This is a woman who had been a member of the church for decades.  Someone asked the choir director if the choir was going to sing and he said he didn't think so, because a lot of the newer choir members wouldn't have really known this woman (she went into a nursing home 3 or 4 years ago).  I offered to sing Dvorak's "God is My Shepherd" because it was a piece she liked (I sang it once or twice on Good Shepherd Sunday and she came up to me and told me she liked it.) The choir director said that might be nice, and said he would ask the Minister of Music.  If I don't hear anything about it, I will write to the Minister of Music after my recital.  The funeral is scheduled for two weeks after that.

As for the "and".  I never know what is going to unleash a floodgate of regret about the past. When I say "the past" I mean those crucial years when I was between the ages of 13 and 30 (which includes years when I was sober and no longer smoking).  There were so many missed connections, bad choices, wrong priorities.  Sadly, the more people damn me for feeling regretful the more painful it is because I don't just feel regretful, I feel that my feeling regretful is a character flaw.  What happened was that I was listening to a radio program about a man who had been a major figure in SNCC.  He used to sing with our choir (until he died) and his wife still does.  It reminded me of that period when I was in high school when I was a little burgeoning hippie.  That was when a music teacher friend of my mother's told me how impressed she was with my singing voice.  I had spent my childhood imitating Julie Andrews.  I sang in the school glee club.  At the risk of sounding Trumpian, I do think the fact that I was not a minority with that particular vocal color made me not of interest to the school glee club director (who was white). It was the era of glorious African American pop singers, and less than glorious white protest music.  A lot of the white protest singers (Joan Baez excepted) used drugs.  I listened to lots of folk, rock, and other protest music during those years.  If only I had not started smoking, which I did because I wanted to be stylishly thin and I thought smoking would curb my appetite. I was never clinically obese, but I was built like Kim Novak in an era when the idol was Twiggy.  Really all I would have had to do not to throw my talent in the garbage (yes, I resurrected it, in part at 26, and then seriously at 54, but the big chance was gone forever) would have been to not smoke (or abuse alcohol and drugs, which I did later.)  Basically I could have done anything else.  Sing folk music, go to protest rallies, play hookie, neck promiscuously...

I realized recently that the reason I so loathe Bob Dylan is not only that his songs were part of the whole zeitgeist that destroyed me, but also that his voice so reflects what can happen to a voice if a person abuses their instrument.  He was known to abuse drugs.  I always said I hated the sound of his voice because it was too evocative of the wrong things, but now I think it's because it's a reminder of how I destroyed my own voice.  I realized this the other day when I saw the text of some of his songs written down in an article I was editing, and realized that they are quite interesting, and yes, that he is a poet, but I can never bear to listen to that voice.

Then I snap out of it and realize that so many people have so much to grieve for, so many different types of loss, and I just despise myself.

Obit

Sadly, I have to report that the man I referenced here has now died.

I have so many mixed feelings.

Why him and not me?  How did he live such that his life had so many blessings?  Talent well used, an ability to form healthy relationships, home-making skills.

I have none of those things and I am still here.  I didn't know whether to beam, cry, or rage with envy when I read his wife's FB tribute. I don't want to recap it all here, as it went into a great deal of detail and also I want to respect their privacy.  But this struck a note.

We encouraged each other and complimented each other. We had very different brains, talents and character defects, but we genuinely loved and respected each other.

A lot of this is relevant because I am shepherding someone through the end of life.  Of course much is different.  He was a man in his 50s who was dying of a terminal illness and was in hospice.  My partner is going to be 83 next month and is bedridden but not "ill".  Whatever else I complain about, I feel blessed to have this time with her.

Did we encourage each other?  Probably no.  We clung to each other and she, particularly, felt   threatened by any venturing forth on the part of the other.  I had to fight, literally, like a tiger, for any scrap of independence I had.  Now it's easier because she's too out of it to make demands.  She can't tell me "you can't go to the Met unless you go with me" because she doesn't go anywhere.  So yes, I will go out with friends.  She has accepted that I must sing, not just in church.

And yet we have always loved each other, passionately and desperately.  My greatest joy in life is to lie curled up by her side watching tv, or to hold her little hand.

I suppose the man who died, and his wife, were just enough younger than me (and the fact that this was his third marriage, and they both came to it as people, not children says something) that he was able to have a relationship with less teenage (or less 1950s/1960s) baggage. You know - stand by your man (or your butch beau) and the worse he treats you the more brownie points you get, because of course, life is supposed to be like a rock song - or an opera.  I partnered when I was an age that is now not even considered adult (25) during a decade when the most important thing for a woman was to "please" a partner, not to be a person. Now people develop selves first, partner later.

And of course I always envied how proud he was of his daughter, as I wrote several years ago. Another example of a healthy relationship. My mother was never proud of me that way: she alternated between mercilessly criticizing me and taking any of my accomplishments (certainly if they involved writing) to be her own.

I have spent the past, God knows, 8 years (since I left the full-time work force) trying to make a rich, vibrant, fulfilling life for myself and not much has come of it.  Something has come of it, yes.  I keep singing better and better.  I realize I will never do anything I even like for a living, but that I can do many things that I like. I can write. I have discovered that I enjoy helping children with language skills. I can live on very little money.  I don't have to travel.  I don't have the money or the energy to turn this overstuffed British spinster style studio apartment into a "middle class home" (read shovel everything out, even temporarily, and have the floors sanded and waxed and the walls painted, not to mention keeping the dining table looking like a dining table instead of a place to keep my electronic keyboard) but I try to say that this does not mean that I have "failed" at being an adult.

Love is love whether you share erudite conversation at a dinner table with a tablecloth or hunker down in front of the tv with sandwiches on paper plates.  I don't believe this man's widow loved him any more than I love my partner because they lived in nice surroundings and spoke to each other like adult friends instead of  like squabbling teenagers madly in love who don't get along.

Most precious of all was the fact that his last words to her were "I love you".  If I can have that too, that is really all I have a right to ask for.

Comic Relief

Rather than bore you with another of my awful Faust days (I had to hear a lot about Little Miss yesterday, which spoiled any pleasure I had been taking in getting to wail out a top F and G in a choir piece), here is some comic relief.  Many people have posted these on Facebook from time to time, so I figured out how to make one of my own.  The problem is that there is a typo and I couldn't get the image back into "edit" mode to fix it.

It boils down to:

She gets to sing in numerous real operas with prestigious companies, I produce my own home-made concerts.

She has a boyfriend who is a prestigious musician who posts pictures of her (with much kvelling)  all over Facebook, I have a partner who finally realizes how much it means for me to sing (it only took 10 years - no wait!! don't I mean 40??)

She has a prestigious voice teacher who posts encouragement on Facebook.  My teacher doesn't use Facebook.

She gets to dress up and pretend to be someone else, I'm sitting here cleaning up commas.

She's 23, I'm 65.

This afternoon I have a date with myself to practice before I leave for my eldercare weekend (with my cane, so that I won't fall in the snow tomorrow).

I hope this is good for a laugh anyhow.

R.I.P. L.M., and a Thought about Holidays that Wither Away

I had been planning to post something anyhow, to let readers know that my friend L died peacefully a few days ago.  It was all very quick.  So this is another friend gone.

I have been inspired to write something by a heart-wrenching Facebook post from a friend - a young man whose mother died recently.  She was younger than I am.  He was writing about how painful the holidays will be, and how hard it will be to try to recreate the old traditions.

What has happened to me is very different.  There was no one big loss that changed everything.  I suppose there was for my mother, in that my father died suddenly in 1964, when I was 14.  In addition to grief, she was dealing with the shock of now being thrown on her own resources with an unruly teenage daughter, when she had not had a "job" other than homemaking and parenting, for 15 years.  He died near Christmas, so that was the last year we had a Christmas tree.  I'm sure if I had wanted one, we would have continued, but I did not want one (and I think this shows how different 1964 was from, say, 1984 and subsequently) because I thought holidays were for "children" and spending time with family was "icky".  Also whether or not to celebrate Christmas had become a hot button issue because, as someone whose mother was Jewish (albeit secular) my Jewish classmates told me I should not (which my mother thought was ridiculous - she told me that Christmas trees, rather than being "Christian", were, in one view, pagan, and in another, simply part of "Western Civ", along with Bach, Handel, and paintings of the Madonna and Child).

I have had a lot of rich, deeply meaningful holidays since then with friends, or with my mother and my partner (after my mother's parents died I did not have any sort of blood family, other than distant cousins who apparently have no interest in me - I have tried to connect with them at various times over the decades to no avail).

What has left me bereft now isn't the loss of one person, but the falling away of many people, either through death, "relocation", travel, or, simply, lack of energy and lack of interest. And, so, by extension, holiday celebrations (and birthdays) have just withered away.

I never had homemaking skills and that's just the way things are.  It is not likely to change.  I live in a rent regulated studio apartment in a prime neighborhood, and I am not likely to move somewhere now where I can host holidays.  And no one I know does these things either.  For years my mother would have Thanksgiving and Christmas in her apartment, the latter with a bowl of ornaments, some branches, a red tablecloth, and some candles.  And presents, even if they were chosen beforehand by the recipient (her idea of the best way to use money wisely and avoid disappointments) were always elegantly wrapped.  And (I had been discussing this with a friend recently), unpleasant or mundane topics were forbidden at the dinner table.

Once my partner was unable to climb the stairs to my mother's Brooklyn apartment, we had these holidays in a restaurant, taking turns paying, or splitting the check.

Since my mother died, my partner and I eat in a Spanish restaurant in Chelsea on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.  We used to bring leftovers home for her neighbor, a dear friend, but that woman, although she seemed healthier, more fit, and more mobile than my partner, died a few years ago.

I try to decorate (a little) for Christmas.  I have some Christmassy things that I can put around the apartment and I always buy a little tree.  Always the theological mongrel, I no longer feel conflicted about Christmas.  I am Christian enough to celebrate Christmas, but too Jewish to want to be Baptised, no matter how much I love the Lutheran church where I sing almost every Sunday.

And I make sure that my partner has a little tree.  There are some ornaments that I used to display around the apartment, but now that she has the cat, they might get damaged.

I don't buy or receive presents at Christmas.  I can't afford it and it is not necessary.  I can be happy singing, having a meal out, and photographing all the beauty around the city.

Of course I wish things were different.  Through a combination of choices I made (not to have children) and chance (I no longer work in an office where a certain amount of socializing - certainly birthday lunches with a large group, and an annual holiday party in an upscale venue - is provided in situ) I am left with very little.

I don't want to be someone whose life ends with a whimper, becoming quieter and quieter until there's nothing there.  I'm not that kind of person.  I'm a BIG DIVA who loves dressing up, and who always likes to flirt with "too much".  If I want MORE I don't even know where to start.

After that gut wrenching birthday that wasn't, I told myself that I was going to do things differently.  I was always going to say "yes" to anyplace I could go where there would be people, instead of "no".  So I am now working at the church after school program.  I will go to more of the Moon Circles.  I engage in conversations with people I meet in stores.

How did I end up having such a tiny footprint?

The other day I asked myself: is someone who gets four birthday cards, a spoiled lunch, and a dress bought under coercion for a milestone birthday worth less than someone whose large extended family throws them a party with 50 people, a huge meal, and a slide show complete with funny stories?  I have certainly been to those.  I suppose not in the eyes of God.  But I do feel that.

Well, on a more upbeat note, it looks like I will have my birthday concert!!  I am now in real communication with the woman at the Home.  She said it sounds like a lovely idea,  So now I just have to settle on a date, and ask her if I can invite guests.  I said there wouldn't be more than 10.  Fat chance that there will even be that many.  Well, I will post it on Facebook and say it is my birthday.  All I want is a few people to come with a cell phone camera and maybe someone to bring flowers.  Or someone can send them to my house.  I don't even know anyone who can be bothered doing that any more.

The Eye of the Needle Part 2

In my last post I quoted this Bible verse:

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:25)

This post could be subtitled, "And yet some can."

In an addendum to my last post I mentioned a friend of mine and my SO's who has terminal cancer.

My heart is very heavy.  She isn't really my friend (as she herself once said!) but is a friend of my partner's.  But I am feeling her loss so keenly because she was one of those rare people who brought joy to everyone she met.  Running counter to type, and oh, so antithetical to the woman I described in my previous post and called "Clueless", L. (my friend who is dying), felt it was her moral obligation to use her large unearned wealth not only to give to charities (she gave money and land) but to treat her less fortunate friends.  No matter where she was (and she spent quite a lot of time out of the country) she always remembered to give my partner a membership to the Museum of Modern Art as a birthday present.  Not only was she ever generous, she also never let my partner's birthday pass unacknowledged.  She renewed this membership every year. If she was going to be gone during my partner's birthday month, she hand-delivered a card with the new MOMA card in it the month before. This membership has brought us countless hours of enrichment and pleasure.

Several times L. gave us a check when we went on vacation.  And if she met people for lunch, she always picked up the check and left a large tip.  No dickering, no bickering.

As I've said, I believe that people with unearned wealth start life with a large moral deficit, and L. more than made up for hers, and then some.

Even as I am writing this, she will be boarding a plane to spend her last months in the MidWest with her sisters.  She had a mutual friend call up my partner to say goodbye.

Even though L. and I were not close friends, I will miss her a lot.  She loved life and brought joy to so many people.

Is Anybody Out There??

First, let me say that since taking the writing class (which I loved), I am eager to write, and I may, from time to time, write about things other than singing.

This doesn't mean that I have stopped singing!  In fact I am looking forward to my voice lesson today, when I can work on some of the scenes from Carmen.

But I would like to branch out.

Something happened yesterday that made me terribly sad, and of course now I feel like an idiot for feeling sad!

I just feel so much loss.  Loss of the possibility of doing anything "noteworthy" with singing, loss of the possibility of having an interesting and stimulating livelihood, loss of a peer partner (which is a lose-lose situation; if she dies I will be desolate, and as long as she lives I am trapped in a lesser life), loss of my mother, who, even though she had a deformed spirit, still really was interested in what I was thinking and doing, even if only to argue with me about it.

The thing that made me sad involved an interchange between a father and daughter on Facebook, in which the father expressed pride in an blog essay the daughter had written about bisexuality.  True, this is not a new story.  In fact,this article covers a lot of the same territory. But I felt sad that never, in a million years, would my mother have been "proud" of anything I wrote as it stood. (The subject matter here is immaterial; it never bothered her that I had a same sex partner, it bothered her that I had such an ordinary life.) Her first impulse would always have been to gleefully, like a child asking permission to eat a forbidden cookie, say "is it ok if I take out my red pencil" (pant pant slobber slobber) which of course put an end to it.  If I said no, she would tell me she would rather not read it.  She was never really interested in what I thought, or in how well I formulated my thoughts, or in relating to me as a separate person, with whom she could agree to disagree.  Although specifics really didn't matter.  No matter how compellingly I might write that something was blue, she would make a case for the fact that it was red, and if I had written compellingly about the fact that it was red, she would have made a case for the fact that it was blue.  In any event, discord would ensue and everything would be spoiled.

But since she died, in some ways things are worse.  Give or take one or two people (my SO aka my "it's complicated" is not one of them) no one really gives a damn.  I can't tell you how many interesting Facebook status updates I've made that no one has responded to (and believe me, most of them are more interesting than what Jane Doe ate for dinner or the fact that Mary Smith spilled soup on her blouse!).  Or the fact that this blog has only 13 followers (the daughter I referenced has 23).   I mean every day I look at my stats, which show that obviously I have more than 13 readers, but still.

My therapist helped me see that so much of what makes me feel wanting is generational.  The women who have the things that I want are 40, not 63.  I have not done badly for someone who was told during what is now called emerging adulthood to "turn on, tune in, and drop out", the latter with disastrous lifelong consequences.  Few women of my generation had "careers".  Blue collar women had blue collar jobs and "intellectual-ish" women worked in the pink collar ghetto of the publishing industry cleaning up grammar and syntax, which is what I am still doing.  That work has as little to do with the putative "glamourous world of publishing" as being a house cleaner has with being an interior designer.  But the types of "career" that not only pay well but that entail traveling, attending conferences, and meeting people, did not figure in the lives of most women, even intelligent ones with a good postsecondary education.  And it was not just the women.  Baby boomers dropped out of college in droves, to finish, sometimes, at night as middle aged adults.  People in their early 20s made hippie marriages, some of which they ended up stuck in (I would count myself here even though I am not legally married).  Being lazy was a virtue, working too hard was frowned on (one of the dream jobs back then was being a case worker for the city, which in those days entailed visiting clients, allowing for huge swaths of absenteeism during the day that went unnoticed).

So I really don't feel wanting compared to most women my age, except that some managed to marry someone gainfully employed for most of their lives, and many are still working full time (many at jobs they dislike as much as I disliked mine).  The handful of women I grew up with who had enviable careers are all single.

I probably was happier in those two sessions of the writing class than I have been in a long time.  That was the first time in - decades, it seems - when I was in a small group where it felt that the playing field was level, and each person's story was deemed equally worthy.  Each person got an equal share of the talking time and was listened to.  I can't remember the last time I felt listened to on a regular basis, even in cyberspace.

I am not sure where I am going with this.  Tomorrow I am having lunch with the only friend I have (herself bisexual, and, like me, someone who never had  the luxury of being a stay at home wife and mother) who totally agrees with me that marriage is about money not about love.  Unfortunately, my SO will be there with me, so we can't talk about that (last time we talked about it briefly while my SO was in the loo).  Maybe if I can catch her on the fly she will tell me "you made a good point there, BabyD, succinctly and well put".  Other than in the writing class, that's a phrase I haven't heard in a very long time.

Singing and Life are Such a Bad Mix - How Do People Do It?

Among the many reasons I gave up singing at age 30, along with that it was too expensive for a hobby and I needed to go to college at night so I could get a decent job, and that it was considered a "politically incorrect" choice for Lesbians in 1980, was that I simply could not manage the amount of self care required.  It was too much fun to be skinny, sleep-deprived, and hoarse after a night of clubbing (even if I myself was no longer smoking).

When I went back to singing I was 54, and took good care of myself anyhow so it was no longer as big an issue.

But despite no longer crash dieting or clubbing, well, there's life.  And most of life is not lived with the buoyantly lifted ribcage, the serene breath, and the open pharyngeal space.

Even if one eats properly and sleeps adequately, sadness deflates the ribs, annoyance constricts the back of the throat, minor depression makes it oh, so hard to give that extra lower abdominal "push" needed for those high notes to sail out.

When I was growing up, my mother, who loved classical music but had little respect for classical musicians, referred to singers as "bovine".  One of her friends (whom I didn't really know) taught voice at one of the big conservatories and when she went to his house she met several singers (and there was an up and coming young male opera singer who lived next door to us).  According to my mother, most of these people were placid, very few if any came from New York, and none of them could carry on a particularly intelligent or animated conversation about the issues of the day.

In the "olden days", I think singers led very sheltered lives (remember all the jokes about female singers and their mothers?).  They were not exposed to much that would make them want to scream, cry, or sink into the sort of angst that is best fed with cigarettes, alcohol, or if not those, lots of coffee and interminable talking.

If anyone is wondering why I am thinking about this now, it's that for so much of last three years, I have been stressed to the breaking point by eldercare.  Not just the sadness of seeing someone you love in decline, but dealing with the logistics of another person's life as well as your own, worrying, being deprived of sleep, arguing to get a point across with a service provider. It's draining, it makes you hoarse, it's sad, and it's extremely difficult to then go (if I can even find the time) and joyfully or pseudojoyfully muster up the superhuman, tension-free, golden throated energy balance to sing my opera repertoire.

I mean I have enough basic technique to enable me to go on autopilot and sing through a church solo that doesn't go above a G.  But nothing more strenuous.

I mean there seem to be singers who can keep the back of their throats open and speak musically no matter how angry or sad they are (is that what my mother meant by "bovine"?) but I am certainly not one of them.  (That also may be why it seems that there are not a lot of singers who were born in New York City - the way we speak is absolutely the worst thing a singer can do.)  Or maybe some people have been blessed with so much natural energy balance and stamina that they can get all that infrastructure to hold up an evening of Amneris or Azucena even if they are depressed, angry, nervous, or tired.  I don't know.  I am not one of them, certainly not now.

Some days now I so just want to wallow in all the things that are bad for singing (I think that's what 12 step programs call "feeling your feelings") like talking, eating and sleeping too little, letting my body crumple up and my ribcage collapse, and enjoying the pain of exhaustion as it mirrors the pain in my heart.

(I say pain in my heart because even if the immediate danger has passed, this is probably a downhill slope from which there is no scrambling back to wellness and happiness for my loved one.)

But I have fought too hard for what I have.

So I am going to my lesson tomorrow.

And I will see if I can squeeze in a practice some time this week.

Culture and Chatter - And Why Does This All Feel Like Junior High?

This may be one of the most honest things I have ever written; it is taking all the angst I have felt not about singing but about my place in the universe of singing, to a new level. Which is why I feel compelled to write this even though I need to practice (which I will do later!)

I was asking myself why is it that every time I get too deeply involved in conversations on the Forum I start to feel depressed. Ditto if I respond too much to things that "real" singers post on Facebook.

I think the most devastating thing that happened to me when I began to emerge from my cocoon with The Mentor and stick my toe into the big wide world of singing wasn't disappointment that I didn't sound like a polished professional yesterday, or that I didn't get anywhere at auditions, but that I really was a nobody. As I said, if you were to put all the people singing opera in New York in a room, and give them a grade, I would end up in around the 15th or the 20th percentile. (One of the very first things I did when I started singing again was enter a competition, one of the few that had no age limit. We were given grades, based on a perfect score of 100, and mine was around 55. Of course I have no idea what other people's scores were, but still...I should add, though, that about four years later when I went to an audition that provided feedback, the only negative feedback I got was that I was too histrionic and too old.)

So the point is, in a city like this one, no one is interested in someone in the 15th or the 20th percentile. I mean the church where I sing for no money is happy to have me there - I do sound as good as many paid church soloists and I don't make a fuss about getting paid. All I want is regular solo opportunities and respect. (And as that church seems to be the only place, really, that I have gotten the latter, it's that that keeps me there, at least as much as the former.)

But the thing that was even more devastating, was realizing that there's a whole culture to do with singing regularly, whether you're a striving mid-level professional or a good amateur with a manager, that I am not a part of. A culture implies shared stories, mutual acquaintances, similar experiences, and a feeling of belonging.

I mean the Forum is exactly that: a Forum. There are people who post there who are mid-level professionals and people who post there who are 40 and taking their first voice lessons since college. But there is a pecking order and it has been made clear to me that I am at the bottom of it. It's fine if I have a question. People have been truly helpful, for which I am grateful. But it is also made clear to me in subtle ways that I am not part of the "in" crowd and that unless I am there as a supplicant, I should keep my mouth shut. Stupidly, I think that if I share experiences of my own, tiny scraps of things that occur to me in the microscopic nooks and crannies of my life that involve singing in public, past and present, that someone will be interested, and will make me feel included. But of course they won't. It's similar to being in Junior High and yearning after the popular girls who never invite me to their table or include me in their gossip, because, quite frankly, I haven't quite had the sophisticated life experiences that they have had, so in their world I have nothing to say.

The same thing happened with that pseudonymous blog. I felt like I had my nose pressed against the windowpane, looking into a glamorous world where people bought gowns regularly, traveled and stayed in hotels, had on-the-job flirtations, and, of course, worked very hard on perfecting their art, needless to say.

This may be a non sequitur, but I was thinking the other day about purging my closet - I probably own enough clothes for four people. So I was thinking I should definitely get rid of a lot of the office attire that I will never wear again (the nicest things I will keep to wear to the opera or an occasional party) but that I will never never never get rid of the handful of gowns that I bought at Housing Works, even though I have worn two of them once, and have two that I have never worn at all. I suppose I want someone to know that even the fact that I bought those gowns says something about me. I am the woman who bought those gowns, even if all I do 95% of the time is sit at a laptop editing manuscripts or sing in a choir robe.

A bitter lesson that I have learned is that I probably am better off staying away from this "community" of singers in which I have no place. I got some suggestions about how to put on an opera or concert so I should just cut my losses and disappear again.

But the problem that remains that I have no community. Which is what I meant when I made that post about a peer group. I wasn't just asking about how to find people to sing in a concert I want to produce, I was asking about how to find a group of people with whom I can find common ground, people (not young vocal performance students, but people closer to my age) who are excited about singing, who want to deconstruct their last practice session or strategize about how to orchestrate an opportunity to be "diva for an afternoon" without feeling pushed out by all the younger more polished people. People who will look at me and see the woman in the gown who sang "O Ma Lyre Immortelle" not the woman in jeans who pounds a laptop and cleans up semicolons.

...When Family is Not Supportive (Reprise)

Because this has been an ongoing theme in my life since I began seriously singing in my 20s, I knew I had made a post on this subject earlier so I went back and re-read it. Many things have happened in the past 11 months: my mother has died, we are on a path toward moving my partner into an assisted living facility, and one of the two auditions I mentioned led to my being cast in a small role, spending $400 on tickets, only to be tortured and bullied by a conductor and deciding I wanted "out" - so badly, in fact, that I didn't even bother to ask for my money back, but just took it as a tax deduction.

Before my mother died, I had been going from time to time to group coaching sessions. I was always the oldest person there, and with the least experience, although compared to some people who showed up, I was often better prepared. I simply didn't have the heart for this for several months (or I was too busy), but on a whim I decided to sign up for one for this afternoon. I didn't plan on singing any opera. I am too stressed out at the moment to sing "Condotta" in public, which is what would be next on the agenda for me (I have already sung "Acerba Volutta", "Stella del Marinar", "O Mio Fernando", Fenena's short aria from Nabucco, and Dido's Lament there, as well as a few pieces of church music.) So I decided to bring "Liber Scriptus" from the Verdi Requiem and "Fac ut Portem" from the Rossini Stabat Mater. (The fact that it's Lent also gave me an excuse to beg off opera.)

Well, my partner gave me this long lecture about why my doing this sort of thing is stupid: I feel bad that other people are younger and better (true), it's a waste of money (not true - these things cost about $15 or $20), and basically she implied that this whole thing is a "fantasy". She said "you sing in a choir and do some solos". Isn't that enough? No. Because, for example, I can't sing a piece like "Liber Scriptus" in that setting.

I spent my whole last therapy session crying about the fact that I have stopped making plans to sing anything other than choir solos. I just feel I can't afford it either monetarily, or in view of my living in a constant family crisis. I know no one is going to "hire" me to do anything, but I also know that if I wheel and deal, I can plan something myself and carry it off well enough to give people an enjoyable afternoon of opera and myself a diva platform which is something I am starved for. But this involves making this particular thing, and the date that it's scheduled for, and the dates that rehearsals are scheduled for, the most important thing in my life (as I'm freelancing now I can always work - if I managed to plan concerts when I had a full-time job I can certainly plan concerts when I'm working at home on my laptop!). And how can I do that when my partner is in a constant state of crisis and she resents the small amount of money I spend on an ad hoc two hours of coaching?

What's holding me back isn't lack of talent or lack of a good teacher or even my age, so much as getting no support from anyone. I know this sounds whiney, and if I were twenty years younger I could just divorce the unsupportive spouse and move on, but I can't do that now.

I don't know why my partner hates the whole idea of my singing opera. I used to think it was because she thought I would meet straight men who found me attractive (or vice versa) but there were plenty of straight men at the career coaching group I went to and she never said anything about it. I think she had an agenda for me and singing was never on it. She wanted me to be a "professional woman" who dressed like the women who show up on tv newscasts in suits. It's similar to how (after we outgrew the whole politically correct Lesbian in jeans thing) she was always steering me toward conservative suits that were two sizes too big, and telling me to cut my hair. That's just not me! If I can't be a real diva I'll be a bathroom diva but I'll be blowed if I'm even going to go do the laundry without makeup on and believe me - I never buy anything that says it's supposed to look "natural" because I don't do "natural".

I thought I sang well enough at the group coaching. I mean I have no future, so the agent husband of the woman who runs it (who is very nice and can sing anything) thought a good time to take a bathroom break was when I was singing, but the woman herself admired my pianissimo high E (well for a mezzo it's a "high" E) in "Fac ut Portem" and one of the men said I had "big high notes" after hearing "Liber Scriptus".

But having no support team just makes me sad. I mean my teacher is good to do some quarterbacking with, but as I've said in the past, he's a voice teacher, not a mentor.

It also makes me angry. I have tried to be forebearing with my partner. I love her, and I feel sad that she is in such physical and mental decline, and I want her in a better living situation. I am even resigned to the fact that I spend "leisure time" doing her chores not going to movies and museums like other healthy women my age. But when she blows off my singing, my heart turns to ice.

Sometimes it's a Blessing to be Singing Alto

I may not be writing much here, because I may not be singing anything ambitious (don't worry, I will still be practicing every day and learning my choir music and choir solos). I am going through a very sad life transition (on the heels of the sad life transition of losing my mother) which involves trying to get my partner into an assisted living facility. I don't want to say much here, for reasons of her personal privacy, but suffice it to say that I have been spending a lot of time googling (thank goodness for all the research on nonprofits I did on my last full-time job) and a lot of time crying.

I know it's for the best, and it will be wonderful not to have to do shopping and laundry for her on the weekends, but it's still sad.

I also haven't been sleeping well since this decision was made a few days ago.

Tomorrow I'm singing alto in a selection from Haydn's "The Seasons". So I have to know my music, but as the part only goes up to an E, I don't have to be in great physical shape.

But I need to keep vocalizing, at least up to a B. I am taking a break from a rather scaled down practice session, and don't know if I have the nerve to take a crack at the ascending phrase from the Amneris/Radames duet (I've been working on it again and it's been giving me trouble again - the Azucena "Condotta" B flat is easier). Maybe not. I do need to work on a piece we're singing on Ash Wednesday, though. I'm singing soprano and it bounces up and down to "high" Fs. Fine if I can sing with my real voice.

A Kick in the Pants

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

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

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

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

3.My mother died.

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

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



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

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

So OK, what's on the table:

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

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

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

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

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

A Helpful Analogy - So Now What?

One of my idols, a real opera singer, is Cindy who writes the blog "The Next Hundred Pounds". This is primarily about her journey with weight, health, and fitness, but interestingly, although I started reading the blog to get vicarious pleasure from following a real working singer's life (I think until God invented the Internet I only knew about two types of singers - Met stars and talented amateurs like me and the people I sang with decades ago in the "Opera Underground"), I also find it inspirational in an unusual way. Cindy's journey with fitness is not all that different from my journey with singing. Work hard, things improve, then suddenly there's a setback. And you can either take the setback to heart and give up (she doesn't), or pick yourself up and start over.

Like Cindy, I am not a fan of New Year's Resolutions. As someone in AA, I know we only have "one day at a time" and that, if things are going particularly badly, we can start our day over.

This year I went into the New Year in a funk. This has been one of my hardest years. It was my first year in over three decades not working in an office (which makes me deliriously happy) on the other hand it was my first year in three decades without a regular paycheck. As I am blessed to get health insurance from my last employer (who considers me "retired") I decided to set myself up as a freelance copyeditor. It took about 10 months to get enough clients to support myself, and right as things were starting to take off my mother died. She was 94, and died in peace, but when someone first is in hospice, and then has died, there is a lot to do, and suddenly I found myself in a family crisis with no paid leave.

As for singing, despite my singing better and better, it has been borne in on me that I am so far down the food chain that there is really no climbing to be done. Which means, other than singing in this no-pay choir, where I get to be a soloist every few months, I can't look for any validation from outside. No one is going to "hire" me, even for no money. No matter how well I sing, there are always other people who are younger, can read music (yes, yes, I should teach myself to do that, I know), understand music theory, and have something to put on a resume besides self-produced concerts and performances with 30 year old opera companies that are now considered a joke.

My one experience "passing" an audition, where I ended up being the oldest person with the smallest role, where I came totally prepared and had my what? three pages of singing ripped to shreds and given conflicting instructions that made no sense? left me really scarred. I don't want something like that to happen again, certainly not after throwing down $400 for tickets I will never sell. (When I mentioned this to my therapist she said, well, these things happen. Suppose you spent that much on a vacation and something went terribly wrong and it was a nightmare?)

I deliberately didn't make any New Year's resolutions because I didn't know what kind to make. I already practice at least a half hour every day and probably spend three hours a week working on music (I have two Bach arias for choir solos, one new, that I'm working on, as well as the Amneris/Aida duet that someone might sing with me in a class). I go to Pilates, mostly to reverse my spinal stenosis, but don't think that I don't love how all those roll ups have given me abs of steel that help me sing better.

But I just don't have the heart to plan anything. I think my teacher's malaise is certainly a factor as well. Not that he isn't the best teacher on the planet. Just when I feel I've hit a plateau (like I did with my upper register) he comes up with a new exercise for me. But I mean his malaise about his own singing. That certainly doesn't help me pick myself up and start planning something.

I have really just felt like hibernating: sitting at my computer and working (which I'm just about to start doing) and spending evenings in front of the tv. And weekends with my partner, who is now mostly housebound.

So as Cindy so humorously said in this post how do I "divorce my buttocks from the couch" (or my recumbent body from the bed) and get my groove back?

Maybe I need to stop looking for validation from an outside source. So OK, my mother wasn't interested in my singing, she wanted me to be a writer. My partner and her friends wanted me to sing something "womyn centered" and not give my energy to a "patriarchal art form" like opera. No one "out there" cares about a 60-year-old who is just on the verge of having the kind of secure vocal technique that she can apply to a role like Amneris. (Too bad there isn't a tv program called "America's Seniors Got Talent". I do think I might have a shot at being a grandma Paul Potts)

I keep thinking that my new blog title will inspire me with something but so far, nada.

On the other hand, I can't give up now. I stopped singing for 23 years and have spent the past 6 regretting it. If I give up at 60 I will be toast.

Yesterday's Lesson

Yesterday I had a long talk with my teacher about some things (luckily, he usually lets me give him an update and do some brainstorming as an add-on, without cutting into our hour singing time).

I mentioned my frustration about feeling that no one takes me seriously, and that this has dampened my ardor for trying to find places to sing (where I don't have to pay anything, and there will be a real audience - AKA I can invite my friends and acquaintances, and get to show off- not a nursing home, even though I believe singing in a nursing home is a worthy endeavor).

I asked again about our joint concert and he basically went "meh", which was not about my singing, it was more about his own feelings about singing right how. He is my age, and has sung almost every tenor and most baritone roles in the standard rep, in recent years with a pay-to-sing outfit run by a friend of his, who always needs men, so my teacher has never had to pay anything. (I suppose what he "pays" is jumping in to sing comprimario roles now and then when someone is needed.) He seems to have backed off this relationship lately, maybe because the outfit now has enough men willing to pay? I don't know. My teacher still can sing anything, just about, because he's a superb technician (and a superb teacher, unlike the conductor of Carmelites who seemed to be unable to convey to me what it was he wanted).

So I've put Amneris/Radames on the shelf for now. Not a bad idea. I worked it to death, and doing that improved my extreme upper register.

I also was honest with my teacher about my hurt that when he puts on a group concert he has never used me, but in fact on one occasion when his regular mezzo was not available used someone whose singing was (IMHO and also in his) not as good as mine.

He said well, that she was someone he had known for years and he had heard her perform under pressure. He reminded me that he had only actually heard me "perform" twice. So now it's back to these same issues that keep surfacing over and over. I can't get anywhere because I have no past. Or the past I have is so ancient and laughable, and the people who knew me then are gone, as at that time I was one of the youngest singers.

I don't want to start the new year feeling disheartened. I know I am singing better and better and my teacher agrees. Those exercises on "VVVVV" that are meant to liberate my "flute register" have been lightening my voice and making it easier to sing high notes with a variety of dynamics, however, as my teacher pointed out, they have not increased my range. I can now sing a tiny "VVVV" on a B natural off the cuff but nothing higher (Eboli at 61 perhaps?) but I still can't phonate on anything above a C and probably will never be able to. But I don't have a peer group. Which is why I have kept relying on that bass, who despite having a glorious instrument and a lot of stage presence, definitely has vocal "issues". He's about the only person I know who came out of nowhere in midlife like I did and is jonesing to sing opera.

Well, I just have to pick myself up and go on. I refuse to let all that talent go to waste or be buried forever in a choir. I need something else.

My choir director recently played in a small chamber music venue, something new that was opened up by an old fashioned stringed instrument maker. I wouldn't be able to sing opera there, but maybe the violinist from the church (he's retired from the NYCO and has happily accompanied me in several of the services)would do something with me. Maybe an all Bach program? I will try to find out what's involved in performing there. I doubt I would have to pay to use the space as I'm sure my choir director wouldn't have done that.

So do I want to make a New Year's resolution? What? To take myself seriously? How do I do that?

How Do I Make Myself Believe I Matter?

I'm taking a break from work now preferatory to trudging out in the snow to get groceries (I ordered some online but if I can't see what I'm buying it's often not the thing I really wanted) and feel a need to write.

I'm not sure about what, only that I feel I'm being pulled in two directions at once, in more than one sense.

Self Assessment

I know that I keep singing better and better, and despite my advancing age, keep getting stronger and stronger. With a few months of work for example, I probably could sing most of Amneris in public (giving a pass on the Triumphal Scene with the treacherous C flats).

I now have a respectable pianissimo high G and G sharp, and even an A on good days.

The new exercises my teacher has given me to learn to sing "on the edges of my chords" (AKA with that "heady" sound that so many sopranos and even mezzos come by naturally) have changed my sound dramatically (no pun intended - if anything I sound more "lyric").

On the other hand, the more I scour the backgrounds of people I meet, whether at group aria coachings, or whatever, the smaller and more comtemptibly irrelevant I seem. The other Mother Jeanne from the Carmelites production has her own web site, and quite a nice list of credentials including opera and symphony choruses in top venues and a few mid-sized roles with places that turned me down (one of them was where I sang "Acerba Volutta" and the auditor yelled "Brava" but never offered me anything).

So what do I have? A handful of roles that I don't sing any more at venues that I now know are a joke, that I sang over 30 years ago, some solos at churches that don't pay people, a few concerts in hospitals and nursing homes, and my big expletive deleted deal production of Samson et Dalila that I organized myself.

Self-Definition

Why can't I just be happy to be a nice (unBaptised) churchlady who sings? I remind myself of a character in a Margaret Yorke mystery that I read: an "old maid" who had retired from a management job to a small English village and sang contralto in a Bach choir (a lot of Yorke's novels use choirs as a setting) but did not take communion because she couldn't bring herself to believe in a lot of the church doctrines. Other than my lack of a birth religion, I fit right in there with the music-loving amateur choir singers with good intonation and good taste. Or I could if I squashed the diva in me who is always screaming. Be one of the best of the bunch. Not on a par with paid soloists of course (although I sound as good as many of them) but good enough to sing a church solo in a limited range (and with the breath control to sing anything Bach wrote without taking a breath in a wimpy place!)

As my partner said "I have a lot". I have a livelihood that doesn't require my going anywhere, a dream apartment that I pay very little for, and someone to love who loves me.

But I won't give up. There's a part of me that only comes alive when I sing Verdi and verismo or Carmen or Dalila, or, sigh, Mother Marie.

If I were, even, 40 !!!! I might matter to someone but at 60??? I don't even think I matter that much to my teacher. Even though he continues to compliment me on my overall progress (and nitpick at the things that are still not right) he has sort of let the idea of our concert drop. Maybe at the nursing home, he said. He and some other people do a free concert once a year in a big venue and when I asked about it (the mezzo who sang last time did not sound as good as I do and he even begrudgingly admitted it) he never offered me anything.

And I just have run out of energy. I don't mean I've run out of energy to sing, or even to keep practicing, but I've run out of energy to treat myself as if I matter.

Laura and Me: A Watershed

Sooner or later, if I spend too much time with The Forum I will feel like bursting into tears. If it's not because I feel so insignificant, it's something else. This time it had to do with a thread about being "Out of the Closet" in the opera world, which I do know something about, well, not about "The Opera World" because the 1970s Opera Underground was not "The Opera World" although sometimes there was a path leading out of one and into the other (which I had just gotten my toes onto when I stopped singing) but I do know a hell of a lot about being a Lesbian singing opera.

When I mentioned my experiences regarding the attitudes of the (1970s) "Lesbian Community" toward my wanting to sing opera, someone, whom I actually respect very much, implied that I was being "ridiculous".

I am not ridiculous!!!. I may be small and insignificant in the scheme of things over there, but I am a real person and my real life matters.

The fact that I stopped singing because I was made to feel uncomfortable (mostly by other Lesbians) about singing opera matters!!

So maybe I should try to tell the story of "Laura and Me" from the beginning.

Laura in La Gioconda is one of the few roles in which a mezzo gets to play a romantic lead. Also La Gioconda is everything that people love and hate about opera.

When I was singing with the Opera Underground (Mme. La Puma, in fact) I saw a production of La Gioconda with the most luscious blonde as Laura. I knew that my dream was to sing that role someday, somehow.

About five years later I got an opportunity to sing that role with a small company that actually by today's standards would be considered a D House. I think I got a small stipend, I don't remember. It was the eve of my 30th birthday and I was singing better than ever. My voice had started to fill out and the role felt as if it could have been written for me. Of course I had listened to the old recording with Callas and (I think it was Barbieri) so many times I knew the whole thing by heart.

The stumbling block was that I had to play a love scene with a man.

People who weren't around just have no idea what "The Lesbian Community" was like in 1980. Most of the women were either angry at, or phobic about, men. They saw all men as, at worst, potential rapists or, at the very least, as oppressors to whom we should not give any attention (or any money, if possible). My partner and friends were already queasy about how much time I spent in opera rehearsals around straight people in general and straight men in particular. So OK, if I was playing a trouser role I was on safe ground, but now I was stepping out into the big unknown. I mean this man was not in any way a threat. He was probably about the age and height I am now, which for a man, is old!!! He never did or said anything untoward. (Tenors usually don't if they're in a duet situation where they have to worry about high notes.) So I felt between a rock and a hard place. If I did a good job, I would get flak at home after the performance. If I didn't, well, I might never get cast in a role like that again.

Since it was a small company the costumes were pretty old and ratty and the gowns I had to wear were several sizes too big. Singers were on the whole bigger then, certainly Lauras were, and I was still starving myself to keep my weight under 130 pounds (good thing, I guess, since I had to be carried onstage by one male chorister in Act IV). But the costumes looked anything but sexy and glamorous on me. I looked like I was sort of lost in them, despite attempts to take them in.

On the day of the performance, I sang the best I had ever sung in my whole life, a big "diva" role. It should have been a moment of glory. Instead, my partner was bored, said the story of the opera was stupid, that my costume was ugly, and like, so this was what all the fuss was about?

That was a big watershed both in ending my life as a singer and in changing my comfort level in my relationship.

I had set my 30th birthday as the deadline for giving up singing if it wasn't becoming a livelihood (ironically, I think if I had continued on for a few more years, resigned myself to fighting constantly with my partner over this or splitting up, and stopped starving myself, it might have become one). So not long after that performance of La Gioconda I stopped singing, enrolled in college to get a degree in Women's Studies while I worked full time as a Production Editor, became a "good dyke", and never opened my mouth again until I was "discovered" by The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed in 2004.

So that was then, this was now. Now it is the eve of my 60th birthday and I am still fighting with my (mostly ex) partner over singing. I am nervous to tell her I am singing on the afternoon of August 8. (I orchestrate these things carefully - I don't want to tell her too soon or she'll yell at me for confusing her. If I tell her too close to the date she will tell me I have "sprung" something at her. I will tell her Sunday. If she does something vindictive which results in my spending the day of my 60th birthday alone I have resolved she will never see me or our dog again.)

I haven't had anything to do with the "Lesbian Community" as such since the mid-90s. As my partner and I got older, we weren't that qualitatively different from other mature women - interested in going to museums and the theater, or on a vacation to Europe. Except that we didn't socialize with single straight men under the age of 80 (my doing so at work didn't seem to bother her), we had a variety of friends and no longer saw ourselves as part of a sect. Then I met Himself and suddenly found myself attracted to men. He was unattainable but others were not.

I think I will stay away from The Forum for a while. Yes, it may be tempting to see what kind of response I got to my response to the man who implied I was "ridiculous" but I don't need to do that. I reconnected with the Forum mainly as a way to post my blog link. I will try to find other places to post it.

And I won't let anything spoil my love affair with Amneris. At least she doesn't have to kiss anyone.