Those Who Can Do; Those Who Can't Write

I certainly have always felt that way.  The worse I feel about my singing (either from a technical standpoint or just in terms of where I fit in the bigger picture) the more blog posts I write.

Why am I feeling bad?  I have been singing better and haven't had any more asthma attacks.  The Bolena duet sounds good. I am learning the December Songs.  I may even try to do something with  Winterreise around my 70th birthday.  I can start planning on my 69th.  Thursday I will bite the bullet and ask the choir director if there are any "solo bits" on Good Friday.  I don't expect anything as perfect as what I got last year.  I would be happy with the alto line in a solo quartet or trio.  I think what makes me nervous is that something has given me an inkling (our last writing assigment in a writing contest I am in was "inkling"; now I'm realizing I could have used the inkling I'm about to mention) that the choir director has been talking to the new dramatic soprano about Good Friday, which does not make me feel great.  Even last year when he assigned me the solo I didn't know about it until we had been working on the music for several weeks as a group.

Certain people are always "triggers".  Unfortunately, one of the women I "unfriended" on Facebook (or she unfriended me) because I said something about singers being self-involved, which she didn't like, is the friend of someone who is  a dear friend of mine on Facebook.  This dear friend is also a singer, but she is a good person and has been through a lot, and she was very helpful to me in choosing some lighter repertoire.  (Of course part of me is sad that she has never said to me "You will really sing the daylights out of [fillintheblank with some impressive aria]" the way she has often said to Envy Trigger.)

Anyhow, Envy Trigger, who is probably in her late 30s, and has had her share of heartbreak and depression, nonetheless is now singing "big girl" opera roles here, there, and yonder (noplace stellar, and I don't know if any of it is for money) and I am not.  I feel all that repertoire slipping away.  I have a wider range than I ever had, but the stamina required to do that kind of singing continues to feel daunting.  I can do it if "all the stars are in alignment", if not, not.  I mean I can't second guess myself into the bottom of the alto section, the way a woman in my choir who is a few years older than I am has done.  I'm sure she could sing more than she has been singing, but she has become so phobic (she also hasn't studied in years) that she now won't sing anything above an E and won't really sing solos anymore either.  And on the few occasions when she's had a solo line she sounds very nervous.  I won't let anything like that happen to me.  Just because I blew that high A on a morning when I had an asthma attack doesn't spell doom.  It was a one-off.

So I can sing sweet songs: Hoiby and Rorem and Maury Yeston.  And a few arias here and there.  I can still sing Rossini which flows trippingly off the tongue and doesn't seem to require the stamina needed to pack a punch at the end of, say, "Acerba Volutta". 

I want so much to love my "small life" with my "small performance opportunities" and I pray for that willingness every day - but then there's Envy Trigger.

Sad, Angry, and Manic

I am in one of the worst moods I have been in in a long time.

I had worked really hard on the soprano part of the St. Paul piece.  It was not comfortable, but it was certainly manageable if I sang it full voice.  Yes I can sing a pianissimo high G but only in a piece where the phrase is meant to be sung pianissimo.  These phrases are all marked forte.

Now, let me first say that if when he handed the music out, the choir director had said to me "why don't you sing the alto part on this piece, it's lovely" (true - the altos do a lot of singing on their own) that would have been fine and in fact if we still had trained high sopranos, I would have volunteered to sing the alto part, but I didn't think there was anyone who could sing the soprano part.  But what happened instead was that I started singing and he asked me to sing with the altos "in certain sections".  So first, I was angry that I felt that I was made a spectacle of in a negative way (he has never given me any public compliments, unlike the ones he often gave Little Miss; the only times he has ever spoken to me in front of the group has been about something negative although he has given me compliments of various kinds in private).  Second, singing with the altos "in certain sections" would have been a lose/lose proposition because then I wouldn't get to sing the lovely alto sections or the soprano high notes.  So I just said "why don't I just switch sections" and he said "fine". Actually the part is lovely (and it goes up to an E not a C) and I brought every ounce of vocal technique to it.

When he rehearsed sections alone at one point the sopranos sang the bit going up to the high A, which sounded, to be polite, rather anemic and tinny (I think only two people were singing), some woman in the alto section said "Wow".  Really??? No one has ever said "wow" in public over anything I sang.  People have come up to me in private and complimented me when I've sung a solo but that's about it.

Then to make everything worse at the end of the rehearsal when the choir director asked if there were any announcements, after a few about people who were ill, the tenor from the conservatory (the one with the rude wife), who only seems to be interested in other people from conservatories, announced that Little Miss is going to be an apprentice at Caramoor.  Who effing cares?  As a friend of mine used to say, "Let's talk about the people who are in the room."  It was different at least when she had a recital  because that was something people could be invited to.

I felt like going home and throwing dishes and screaming.  My therapist has told me that when I feel like that probably what I want to do is cry, so I did that too.

This morning I spoke to my partner about how upset I was.  I don't usually bother her about problems that don't concern her because she is so frail, but I just wanted a hug, a compliment, some affirmation, anything.

What I decided, after trying to pull myself together (crying is bad for the voice no matter what range I'm going to be singing in) was that what I want most is a video.  What better vehicle for public kvelling?  So I will post something on Facebook about my birthday concert (just in general terms) about this, and then home in on some specific people as the time approaches.  For now, I don't even know how many guests I can invite.

Back to the Wizard of Oz OR My Kingdom for a Video

Well guess what?  I woke up this morning, read my email, looked at Facebook, and there was a video clip of Little Miss, posted by her musician/composer/conductor boyfriend, with endless kvelling.

I have, to date, not been able to obtain the video of me singing "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth".  The church Communications Director said it was too big to download easily, although when we last spoke, he was doing just that.  I don't want to bother him again.  It's too bad, because I was happy with how I sounded, at least in the bit that I heard.

Yes, I have talent, and now I have a decent technique too, and I'm even pretty good looking for someone almost 66, but what I don't have (hence the Wizard of Oz reference) are any cheerleaders.

My voice teacher doesn't know how to make videos with a phone.  He says he used to make videos of all his performances (I guess someone else operated the camera) but he now has told me he doesn't like how he looks on camera.  He is going to make an audiotape of Carmen, he told me.

Well, I guess the next thing I am going to do is write to my former boss, the photographer, and see if he can bring some kind of camera to document the performance in some manner or form, so that I can have something to post and kvell over.

How can I not feel despondent when no one even cares enough about all this to document me?

Is this little blog really all there is?

Public and Private

Well, wouldncha know?  I was in a quasi bad mood yesterday (I say "quasi" because I felt frustrated to be back where things were with the choir director, but still happy at how I had gained ascendancy - good pun - over the "Hallelujah Chorus" as well as happy that I will be singing "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth" this coming Sunday), so guess what I did? I just had to take a look at Little Miss's Facebook page to see if there was anything about her Master's recital (which she sang Saturday night after singing the Faure Requiem Friday night).

Obviously I can't be "envious" because she put on a recital, nor would I have wanted it not to go well.

Here's what I just can't bear.  The public nature of all the praise and showcasing that she gets when I basically get none.  Private compliments, dear to my heart as they are, are ephemeral.  I hear them, but the world at large does not.

Basically, the story is, her prestigious voice teacher posted sound clips and photos from the recital with a litany of praise beginning with how she had been blown away by this young woman's audition for the school 7 years ago.

My voice teacher doesn't even know how to use a bloody cell phone camera.

I don't have much else to say about this, other than that I desperately need a publicist.  I do what I can.  I asked the Communications Manager at the church to bring his video equipment on Sunday (he seems to have bought some new equipment) so that he can tape me singing.  He put it in his calendar.  Tomorrow I will remind him.  If I like the video, I can post it on my Facebook page and on my Youtube page (I set one up for myself months ago but have had almost nothing to post there).  In a few weeks I am going to look at the space at the senior center where I am doing Carmen and when I'm there I will ask the Event Planner if he can bring video equipment or if he knows someone who can.  Just to tape something.

As I've said, private compliments are sweet, public ones are a hundredfold sweeter.

In fact what pushed me over the edge with the choir director last year was his endless public praising of Little Miss.  I found it unseemly and at variance with the alleged mission of what we were doing there.

There was a meme circulating on Facebook a while ago (which I didn't do) that asked "What superpower would you want?" Really all I want is to be able to go back to 1964 and do a few things differently and then let my life play out again.  I'm not asking for perfection, or even for all my wishes to come true.  Really, when I think about it, everything that makes me want to put my head down and sob (which I did yesterday) has its roots in some mistakes I made when I was, oh, between the ages of 14 and 20.  Not mistakes I made last week or last year or even ten years ago.

I'm also crying because my partner may be losing her eyesight, because I know that things with her will never get better, all I can do is slow down their getting worse.  And a friend's partner (whom I don't know very well) is dying of cancer, that overtook her very fast.  I'm sad for them and I'm sad for me that I can't insulate myself from everything except being at the top of my game, assisted by a "team" rooting for me, which is of course what people like Little Miss do (and then of course they are also on other people's teams - their peers in these rarefied environments).

Well, this afternoon I have a voice lesson.  Maybe that will make me feel better.

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.

Grieving: Is it a Bad Metaphor?

Yesterday for the first time I was really angry with my therapist.

She had told me that the fact that I was angry so much of the time meant that I probably felt sad (true), and that maybe I needed to do "grief work" about my past mistakes.

What possible purpose could that have, other than to make me feel worse?

I told her that I thought that was the wrong model.  If I were really grieving (over the loss of a loved one), the "silver lining" would be all the support I would get.  True, I didn't get much of that when my mother died, but then we really didn't like each other (she wanted to control me, I resented her) so in a way it was disingenuous for me to have been miffed that her friends didn't offer "condolences".  On the other hand I think I had a right to be appalled by their lack of manners.  Sitting and watching someone die in an environment where you get no sleep and there is no food or caffeine in the house is stressful, and deserving of sympathy however much you did or did not love the person who died.  I did my duty.  The last words my mother heard were my saying "I love you".

But I know that if my partner died (a real possibility as she is 80) I would get support.  I could cry as much as I wanted and no one would yell at me to pull up my socks and get on with it.  People would understand.  I would get invitations.  I could join a support group.

I could even do these things if I were grieving a breakup, a job loss, or the loss of my home.

But about the past????

One thing that I found shocking, but telling, was how many people got angry with me, mostly at the other blogging place (which is why I ended up deleting that blog), but also on Facebook, because I expressed regrets, sadness, and anger about all the bridges I burned regarding my talent as a singer (I am talking about between the ages of 14 and 30).  About my attempts to do something now and how almost all of them have been thwarted (except that I keep singing better and better, particularly this past year).  I don't know what it says about me, or the other people involved, but I find it bizarre that people who hardly knew me (and didn't know me at all in real life) thought it was ok to give me insulting and humiliating lectures about my expressing my sadness and anger.  I couldn't imagine doing that to someone.  I have said, in person, to numerous people (mostly decades ago when I was active in 12 step programs) that I didn't want to hear any more about _________, because they had been talking about it for [a year, two years, 5 years] and never seemed to do anything about it.  But if I get bored or annoyed by someone's blog posts, I can just skim and move on, or unfriend or unfollow them.  But a lecture??? One of these told me I had no right to complain because of all the people who had suffered real tragedies (and then she went on the enumerate friends and relatives of hers who had experienced everything from agonizing cancer deaths, to loss of limbs, to seeing a relative shot).

I don't think my own personal friends would be quite that uncharitable, but as I explained to my therapist, they would not provide any kind of support system around this grieving process.  They are for the most part extremely sympathetic about my problems with my partner, my physical challenges in dealing with bad weather, even the feeling of isolation that I have working at home.  But any time I have broached this subject (except with one woman who began singing late as well) the responses I get vary from telling me to "stay in the now" (a 12 step slogan), to politely changing the subject.  One woman even said "je  ne regrette rien" in a snotty tone (this was in writing) and blew me off about the whole subject despite that she herself was a therapist.  And there are no bereavement groups for failed performing artists, I might add.

Also, what would constitute "closure"?  When a loved one dies (or you lose a job or a relationship) you grieve, and even though you may never "move on" (particularly in the case of losing a loved one who dies unexpectedly and too soon) eventually life "happens" and you get distracted, even for a little while.  Yes, things remind you of your loss, and that may always happen, but as time goes by it happens a little less.

So where is the analogy?  I am not going to give up singing.  I have worked too hard and made too much progress, and, for example, being able now, to open up my mouth and wait out a high B flat with little effort feels too good to stop now.  I have tried to shut out the whole world of "singers on the professional cusp" (the ones I feel the most competitive with; obviously I am not competing with Jamie Barton!!) whether on Facebook, my blog feed, or elsewhere (unless they have personally been kind to me), and have pretty much stopped going to hear performances that these singers appear in.

Then there's choir.  It is my anchor right now for a variety of reasons and I am not going to give that up either.  Of course the way the director behaves with Little Miss is galling.  (The Wednesday before the "Gloria" he buzzed around her anxiously asking her to reassure him that she would be there because there were only two other sopranos.  There were nine altos, including me, so we were expendable.  I fantasized about falling into a snow drift on the way there and staying there until noon but decided that that would be "cutting off my nose to spite my face".  I actually did deliberately leave the house late, but somehow managed to get there only 5 minutes after "call" and nothing had started yet.)

So what exactly is going to "happen" to move things along after I start this so-called "grieving process" anyhow?  Nothing "happens" to stay at home freelancers who spend most of the rest of their time taking care of a loved one.  And anyhow I think it would be disrespectful of people who are really grieving to use that nomenclature.

All that being said, being a dutiful patient (or "client" as they are called now),  I looked up "grief" online.  I tried variations such as "grieving process" and "grieving over past mistakes".  (All I got from the latter was an article on things one wished one had said to or done for someone who has died.)

So now I have gone from - I suppose - grieving, to brooding about grieving.

If only someone would "get"  it.  I'm not just being a nuisance or a bore.

Don't Mourn, Organize!

I don't think I have used this phrase as a blog post title, although apparently I quoted it in another post.  Good.  One thing my therapist told me to do was try to make this blog more searchable through key words.  And this is a saying that people will search, albeit for totally other purposes.  But then, who knows?

Yesterday I had another "Little Miss"-related source of fury.  Apparently she sang something this past Sunday (our choir wasn't there) and someone made a videotape (she has oodles of these whereas I have only one - from church at any rate, and not many more otherwise) and then I saw it because a woman from church (who is actually a personal friend of mine and did come to my Carmen and make a video from her phone, which she posted to my Facebook page although she didn't circulate it) posted it somewhere for public viewing with a gushing paean to Little Miss saying how lucky the church was to have such wonderful young talent.

When I was going over my New Year's resolutions with my therapist, she was confused by number 5

Talk about myself and write about myself broadly.  I still believe there is someone out there who would find my whole "package" intriguing, even with all the imperfections and the lack of a traditional history (and the uncertainty of my "future").  Remember, there are guys who love girls with acne and scars (I hope this doesn't offend anyone). 

and asked me what I was looking for here, friends? a "guy"? (The latter, no!  I used that as a metaphor.)

What I am looking for is someone who is interested in me because I am 64 and singing so much better than I did when I was 54 (in fact, I feel that I have made more progress in the past year than I made in the preceding 9, probably because all those tiny muscles are finally doing what they are supposed to).  To stop seeing myself as a less-desirable version of what people desire most: a singer in her 20s or at least her 30s (there are almost no singers in my fach in their 20s), but to see myself as valuable for what I actually am.  That was what prompted the comment about acne and scars.  I need to appeal to someone - a journalist, a physician, a DMus who is studying older singers - who wants to showcase me (or other people whose studies took a similar trajectory) just the way I am.

The other problem with being older is that younger people (I mean today, in 2015) have access to all sorts of technology, and, more importantly, their friends and family do too (and their family is still living).  I am probably more tech savvy than most people my age, because of what I do for a living, but I don't have friends who come to hear me sing equipped with recording devices that they will automatically whip out.  The one friend who tried to do this on September 11 had problems, and the woman I referred to earlier managed to make one short video of Carmen but that was it.  My teacher always would make an audiotape of my performances but this was in the form of a CD of very poor quality and anyhow CDs have gone the way of the Edsel.  Also, young people are more likely to have a gaggle of "fans" whether they be blood relatives, parents, or BFFs who have a quid pro quo setup with attending performances and applauding.  My friends who are my age are either too busy or have too many health problems, or would rather go hear free chamber music at Juilliard.

So as for the title of this post, after noticing the video posting (I did not play it or comment on it) I messaged the man who started the Spanish service (who is lovely and always made nice comments about my singing) and asked if he would bring his video camera or phone with video capabilities on the 15th when I am singing "Et Exsultavit" in the Spanish service and he said "it would be his pleasure".

Speaking of "Et Exsultavit", I sang through it after not having sung it for several years and it is like the difference between night and day.  I am singing it now with my big, dark, dramatic voice (although it is a melismatic piece, not a dramatic one) and my voice moves as easily as it ever did, and the long run (which many professional singers opt out of and break up) was easier than it ever was, singing full voice with a big pharyngeal space.  And Giovanna Seymour continues to rock.

I just  now need a claque.  One that loves older women.

Lend Me a Plumber

Well, yesterday I stayed in (did I mention that bad weather just compounds all the things that put me in a bad mood - feeling hemmed in by a lack of money, lack of free time, and caregiving?) and spoke to my therapist on the phone.  I had emailed her my New Year's resolutions, as well as answers to some questions that I found in the New York Times about making a Mission Statement.  Well, the latter went belly up, but we had an interesting discussion about the former.  Then today I found an article online called "The Seven Myths about Habits", which I won't repost here, but which did have a few nuggets that I identified with.  It used as an example that if you are constantly tempted by, say, chocolate chip cookies, the issue isn't that you need will power, it's that you need to create an environment that is mostly cookie-free.  They certainly tell you that in 12 step meetings.

So to extrapolate, if my negative thinking is a bad habit, I need to change my environment, but how?  I mostly toggle back and forth between my apartment, where I am alone working or practicing, except for interactions that I choose to engage in with people online or on Facebook (my partner is the only person I speak with on the phone), my partner's house, where we are pretty much alone together, choir rehearsals, church, voice lessons, Pilates classes, the grocery store, and the laundry room where I see and chat with neighbors.  So as I've been saying for some time (see Resolution 7) it is  my environment that is making me sick, in the sense of spiritual sickness.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I had a very interesting interaction, one that I wish I could have more of, if only I knew where to find them.

I needed a plumber because there was no heat in my bathroom.  After he finished looking at the pipe, he had to wait for the super so I invited him to sit at my dining table and asked him if he wanted a glass of water.  He said yes, so while he sat there, we talked.  He noticed that my electronic keyboard was on the table (shows how often I have people over for a meal, at least one where we sit at a table) and asked me if I played the piano.  I told him, not really (I took piano lessons as a kid, but by now can only play with the right hand, which is enough to learn music I am singing), but that I sang.  He then mentioned that his 5 year old daughter had a toy keyboard, and that he wanted her to have real piano lessons, because he knew that you had to start kids early.  I asked him where he lived and he said Harlem, so I told him about the Manhattan School of Music.  Imagine!!  Me telling someone about the Manhattan School of Music, that institution whose graduates are part and parcel of the tsunami of talent that I have so often mentioned that makes me feel like I am drowning.  (Even their graduates from decades past who never sang, like the wife of my neighbor the music critic, have their noses in the air around me.)  Then I also mentioned Harlem School of the Arts, which he said he had heard of.  I said I didn't know where there were free music lessons for children but I said there must be somewhere.   He also mentioned hoping to get his daughter into a magnet school (I don't think that was the term he used; he was from Ecuador and his English, while totally understandable, was not that good), so I told him that when he was at the school for an interview he could ask about their music programs.  In any case, this was the kind of interchange that I have oh so rarely, and that I treasure.  Imagine!  Appearing in someone else's eyes as someone with knowledge.

As he was leaving, he told me how "pretty" everything in my apartment looked.  Again, this is not an experience that I have very often.  I have been told this from time to time by a few people as I have a lot of artwork on my walls and some antique furniture, but to most people (did I say that probably one third of the people I know own two places of residence and at least another third own a coop that is three times the size of this studio apartment?) it is just a dump, sort of like an older woman's version of a college dormitory filled with books, CDs, and with no light.

I'm sure the city is filled with people who were never in a high school orchestra or school play, who did not go to college (or have technical degrees from community colleges), and who "think they might like" classical music but are not so immersed in it up to their eyeballs that the best reaction they will ever have to something I produce and sing in is a polite attempt to search for a compliment (that is if they even show up at all).  So why don't I know these people?  Why am I always around people who make me feel "less than"?  Not on purpose, of course.

So for me it's not the cookies or the beer or the lottery tickets, it's the blogs of working singers, the idle banter of fellow choir members about their years at conservatories, in college theater programs, even high school bands.  It's the little bios of the performers in all the nooks and crannies all over the city that showcase classical music.

I really really want to break this habit of negative thinking; but first I need an environment in which to shine, sparkle, and, yes sometimes, lead.

Sunday I went to my partner's house and brought the Gay 90s Songbook, as I had promised, so that she could sing some of the songs preferatory to (maybe) going to try out for that Alzheimers chorus in the Spring.  She is very musical, and singing some of the songs brought back happy memories for her.  Of course with her COPD she has no range really.  But she was smiling and swaying in time to the music and if she faltered, I sang for her.  And when we got to something unfamiliar, I attempted to "solfege" it: something I didn't even think I could do!! (Maybe that's how I need to learn to sight-sing, not with a textbook!).

Maybe I should just try to start small?

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.

How Can I Compete with Total Immersion? (Reprise)

Well, yesterday was a day of "the Bitter and the Sweet" (another oft-used blog post title).

I have been spared playing backup to Little Miss; the choir director scrapped the Moses Hogan spiritual for this Sunday because we don't have enough people.  We are singing a lovely arrangement of  "Precious Lord" instead.

And I got to really rock the Argento "Gloria".  It's so nice to be able to really sing; that is, not have to either be singing soprano and trying to keep the volume down (if there are two soprano parts this is less of a problem, and I can really sing when I'm on second, also) or singing alto and barely getting to sing a D once every few pages.

So I am determined to be letter perfect with the notes next week.

But also, I was disappointed that my partner decided to opt out of going to the try outs for the Alzheimer chorus.  The weather is bad, she doesn't feel well, and she said she hasn't sung for a while.  The good news is that the director of the chorus said that the chorus year is divided into three seasons, each culminating in a concert, so we can come in in April and try out for the next concert. As for trying to get my partner to sing, as she seems to have "lost" the old Lutheran hymnal that I brought her, I will bring a book of Gay 90s songs that I have, and we can try singing those.  She loves them.

At Tuesday's therapy session I came in angry; mostly anticipating the dreaded Moses Hogan experience, Little Miss showing off (that's not fair, really, she would just be singing while the women with lower voices were grunting out notes), and the response she would get.  So my therapist said if I was that angry that much of the time (mostly about what I've called the tsunami of talented people that I feel is pushing me further and further toward the ocean floor, no matter how much technical progress I make, not to mention all the thoughtless 20 and 30 somethings who take up more than their fair share of the space in subway cars and elevators if not with their backpacks then with their loud conversations and high jinks) I need to write down every time I feel angry and what else I feel as well.  She said I probably also felt sad or hurt.  So I have been doing that.  It is an interesting exercise, because of course as soon as I stop to write something down I no longer feel angry.

She also asked me why I was still singing if it made me unhappy.  I told her that singing didn't make me feel unhappy and that in fact nothing made me happier than singing well.  Nothing! And I feel that I have made so much technical progress that it amazes me.  It's the closed doors that make me angry.  Being written off because I am old and don't have a music degree.  Because I don't move in a community of musicians.  Because I don't live on the periphery of the people who sing at the Met and perform in orchestras at Avery Fisher Hall.  The people I am talking about all do.  I have nothing except how well I sing at any given moment (and yes, my personal charisma, which is huge).  I have no resume, no names to drop, no past, and, therefore, in people's eyes, no future.

So this morning I woke up feeling really good about last night's rehearsal (I am much more appreciated in the alto section because there, you see, I am the "Little Miss", the one who can always sing that F that makes everyone else nervous, the way in the soprano section she can ace that A.)

Then I read a Facebook post by a woman in the congregation who is a lovely person, but she exemplifies who I am up against.  She is probably in her late 30s (she can't be all that young based on how long she says she has been married) and has put together a pastiche of things to do for a living in the arts, both visual and performing, as well as teaching, both for pay and as a volunteer.  Her husband has a paying job in the theater.  Now she has enrolled in all kinds of classes at prestigious institutions (I have no idea who is paying for this).  So she lives and breathes art, all day long.  And there are many of these people all around.

So it comes back, to some extent, to the Wizard of Oz, who told the Scarecrow that he didn't need a brain, he needed a diploma.  There are no signifiers in my life that I am a performer.  Lots of people sing in church choirs.  So I sing Donizetti in the bathroom.  Big deal.  Not even the neighbors care, because they go to the Met all the time.  It's around the corner after all.

That's one reason I write this blog.  It is about singing and very little else.  Occasionally I make reference to something else, but to me, other than caring for my partner, these things are not important.

I mean I think if God took away my voice (through some kind of health challenge) I would not fall apart.  I would find something else to do.  But as long as this huge voice is beating its wings inside me, wanting to soar and take people's breath away, wanting to be heard, wanting to put me front and center somewhere, no matter how tiny, I will never, never, never, stop.

The Year So Far

I was hoping that having a list of resolutions would make me feel fresh, new, cheerful, and optimistic about 2015, but it hasn't, really.

I still stand with my life behind my first resolution: that my number one priority is to make the rest of my partner's life (however long that is; she is 80) as happy as possible.  I mean every time I think of how empty and frustrating my life feels,  I remember that if I didn't have her, annoyances and all, it could be oh, so much emptier.

That being said, I broke part of my first resolution less than 12 hours into the New Year: I lost my temper at her over something trivial.  Then I cried.  Hardly a way to start things off with a bang.  I didn't cry because I lost my temper, not really. It was over an object. Did I ever mention that I hate objects the way some people hate spelling or math? They always stump me.  I am fine with technology, because that is more like math or logic.  It doesn't involve how objects are put together in three dimensions.

But that is not what I was crying over.  I was crying over how all the hard work I put into singing seems to get me nowhere but I don't want to stop doing it.  When I say "nowhere" I don't mean I don't make technical progress, I mean that I feel pushed into the background by everyone and everything.  If Little Miss and her solo soprano voice (yes, I really do get the point that Peg made about how that voice fits into the sound that the choir director likes for choir pieces) are going to dominate my experience with the choir, I need to find another arena, but what?? Going to lessons and singing in a concert once a year that hardly anyone comes to isn't it, although that is important to do just so that I can have the challenge of getting up and singing in front of people.  Well, maybe things are not that bleak.  With the new Director of Music Ministries in charge of the schedule I'm sure I can find solo spots.  There are three services every Sunday there.

I think what I really want is to find a way of expressing my displeasure (other than "vaguebooking" on Facebook) and I don't have one.

At least when I worked in an office once a year I could write a self-evaluation, not to mention that there was a Human Resources department, even if only as a symbol.

I had been hoping to do something with the Alzheimer chorus (which might be a long shot because my partner does not technically have Alzheimers) but now they have switched the first rehearsal from Thursday to Wednesday, which is the day she has started getting food from God's Love We Deliver, so she has to be home.  I told her not to worry for one second about this.  I am thrilled that she is getting this food.  She got Meals on Wheels for years and found them inedible, which meant we had to spend just as much on groceries and she ate almost nothing except cheese danish and soy yoghurt (with the occasional BLT ordered from a coffee shop) unless I was there, and kept getting skinnier and more malnourished.  The food from God's Love is really good food.  She is very lucky to have gotten certified by both a doctor and a social worker to receive it.  So I wrote to the woman in charge of the chorus and said that we could come for evaluation at the second rehearsal, which is on the regular day, Thursday, but that we can not come on Wednesday.  So I will see what kind of response I get.  I was hoping to do something with that chorus for several reasons.  The main one, of course, was that it would be something the two of us could do out of the house together.  But the second one was that maybe that was someplace that my talents could be appreciated.

Anyhow, if we don't go to that evaluation this coming Wednesday I am still going to stick to my plan of showing up at choir rehearsal at 7:45.  There is absolutely no reason for me to be there to "warm up".  I do that at home and if the choir director doesn't like how I sound when I unleash my voice in a way that feels healthy then I don't need to be there doing that.  If I am singing a piece I can follow the dynamics as they are written.

And I am waiting to get the choir schedule so that I can contact the Director (who also plays for the Spanish services) about singing a Spanish art song during Epiphany.  On Epiphany itself (this Sunday) there is a new Spanish choir that will be singing something.

As for how my own practicing is going, the Giovanna Seymour duet sounds really really good and I don't find it hard.  And I sang through "Rejoice Greatly" in Spanish, just for fun.  I sang that a few years ago on Epiphany.  That also went like a house afire.  What is not such good news, though, is that the dreaded ascending phrase in the Amneris/Radames duet still defeats me.  I can sing it the second time, because there is less singing involved, but the first time, if I start with "Chi ti salva" I run out of steam on that ascending phrase and can't make it up to the B flat so that it sounds like a note.  I need to see if I can apply some of my newfound technical progress to that.  I can certainly sing really good high B flats in my warmups.

I just wish I could feel more optimistic about this coming year....

ETA: I heard back from the woman in charge of the Alzheimers chorus and she said yes, we can come Thursday the 15th.  So maybe that will be the beginning or something fulfilling.  And I will show up Wednesday for choir practice at 7:45 as I planned.

Not Really a New Year's Post. Maybe Later

So today my therapist asked how my year had been.  It was once again, mostly disappointments.  This doesn't mean I don't have things to be grateful for.  I make myself think of these as often as I can.  I said what I wished for more than anything was the musical equivalent of a soul mate.  Not (well, now now) a "partner" in the spousal sense, just someone who is really interested in me from a musical and artistic standpoint.  Who feels that I have something unique to offer and wants to showcase it in some fashion.  I don't mean a big talent scout who will give me a big opera contract; obviously that's absurd.  What I mean is some little small scale operation that is looking for people over a certain age who began performing late, that is just for us, that shuts the "emergings" and the older managed singers out.  That is not used as a "test drive" for those people.  Where whoever is running it is excited to find, say, someone like me who sings better at 64 than I did at 54, and who finds other people who fit that demographic and wants to do something with and for us.  Peers who are as excited about singing in front of an audience as I am, who invite all their friends.  You see, if I put on a concert with people who sing better than I do (these are really the only people I know who are interested) then the issue isn't that they sing better than I do but that they don't respect what they are going to be performing in and don't invite people, so that not only is all the planning and financing of it on me, but I have to provide the audience too.

I mean it was a huge disappointment that I couldn't get people to come to Carmen.  Eight of the 20-30 people whom I invited came (along with the narrator's parents and some people from the building where the theater was.)  I mean, yikes, I bet more people from the choir came to see this opera at the conservatory that Little Miss was in, even though she was only singing in the chorus.  Because you see that was "real" music and whatever I do isn't.  This set me back in terms of my journey toward building self esteem (not just my journey of building my voice, which is going like gangbusters) quite a long ways.  I thought that here I had come up with something original and different, but when all was said and done it didn't matter.  And the woman who helped me produce it was disgusted with me and has lost interest in me, for the  most part, although she did let me sing two songs on September 11 and seemed happy with them.

Then there was the smaller disappointment of being turned down for the Handel opera mostly, I believe, because I am not the "type" this woman is interested in using (meaning I am not going anywhere, even if I keep singing better).  I was less angry at her than at the fact that there isn't something similar for amateurs (I mean real amateurs like me) who would rather bellow their way through, say, leading roles in Il Trovatore than sing in a chorus, even if it's just for each other, maybe spearheaded by a pianist who asks us each to chip in some money, and who will make it clear that this is not a training ground for "emergings" or professional comprimari who want to sing through a lead.

And the choir director (most likely unconsciously) only likes sopranos with pretty voices.

I mean I have been on the planet long enough to know that no matter what you look like and whatever your temperament (unless you act like a total horror) there is someone out there (may you find him or her - some people don't) who is looking for you.  So if this is true with dating and mating, shouldn't it also be true for performers?  I am not, as I said, asking to be paid big bucks, only that my "package" (age, talent, skills, how I acquired them, and my story) really grabs someone.

So why can't I find anyone?  Even a friend who wants to dive into this with me.

I was feeling better since I told myself that the most important thing in my life was making my partner happy for what remains of hers.  This doesn't mean that I don't want to sing, just that I am not going to chase after opportunities that there's a 99% chance I won't get, and a 1% chance that if I do they will take up time that I don't have.

I don't want to give up singing.  I sound so much better than I did last year that this must be what I am meant to be doing.  There is nothing that I do (I am not now talking about snuggling with my loved one or sharing sweet moments) that makes me as happy as letting my big dramatic voice rip and seeing how much easier it is than it was before.

Can 2015 please be the year I find someone who thinks I'm special and wants to "take" me somewhere?

The Ugly Dachshund

It's been a long time since I've felt the need to return to this theme (which I've never linked to the movie before) but I had an irksome contretemps with the choir director last night.

I think the issue is, really, in a nutshell, that he just doesn't like the sound of big dramatic voices.  To him they sound ugly, even when they're not.  Yes, I know in my lifetime I have let out some really ugly notes at both ends of my range (never in my comfort zone of on the staff) but I rarely do that now.  But some people just think those sounds are ugly (the way, for example, I always thought the sound of Lotte Lenya singing was ugly and, therefore, preferred Gay's The Beggar's Opera to Weill's updated Threepenny). This is not to say that Lotte Lenya is not a great artist, simply that she is not to my taste. When I was a child I tried to imitate Julie Andrews and the lyric sopranos on my mother's Gilbert and Sullivan records.

So to the import of this post.  Last night when we were warming up before choir rehearsal (which I always disliked, as everyone has their own way of warming up that works for them) the choir director had us sing the phrase "Joy to the world, the Lord is come" going down and back up the scale. When we got to a G (or maybe it was a G sharp) I ditched the words at the end of the ascending scale and just sang "Jah to the world, ah, la, ah, ah").  Well, that's pretty standard practice when you sing up there, even for a lot of sopranos.  So the choir director said to me "you know you can always sing it an octave lower."  So I said "I can sing up there, I just can't sing words up there."  So he said "well, maybe that means it is out of your range".  Well, that had me boiling mad.

Basically, there is a whole series of things that add up to making me feel that I am not a golden child there.  I would not go so far as to say that I am not wanted, because he needs me for certain things: to hold down a second soprano part, to sing with solid intonation and power in a middle register where most sopranos have no volume (many of them, interestingly, can belt very loud toward the bottom of the staff and below), to be an anchor in services (e.g. Christmas Eve) where there are often no trained singers (particularly in the soprano section) because all the golden children are young people who came from "elsewhere" to try to have a "career" in the performing arts and therefore go "home" at Christmas.

In any event, I am just very disheartened.  Basically I sing with that choir for the following reasons.

1. I have no family, and sort of by default, even though I am not Christian, the people in that choir are my "family" for now. (There are a lot of lovely people around my age, mostly avocational singers, whom I have made friends with.)
2. It has improved my musicianship enormously.
3. We sing interesting music and I have been acquainted with a wide variety of composers and large choral works.  Often this has led me down a byway to discover a solo from one of those works that I can add to my repertoire.
4. I get solo opportunities often enough that I can use this as a regular venue for singing in front of an audience.

On the other hand...

1. It is obvious that the choir director does not like (or understand) my voice type.  He likes women's voices that are small and pretty.  If they are small and pretty with training, then those women become the season's "golden children".  I get the most compliments from him either when I make my voice sound small and pretty (I can do this without harming it if I don't sing above an F sharp or maybe a G) or if I sing something in an extremely limited range, like "O Rest in the Lord", which is actually listed as being for a contralto, but does not go below middle C.  For example if I compare the video of "Angel" from the church to the video of the same song sung in a concert hall I can hear that in the first instance I am barely singing above a whisper and am obviously afraid of making one false move.  The second version sounds much more "present".  Yes, I am still singing softly but I sound like a dramatic mezzo singing softly not like I am trying to imitate a light soprano.
2. If there are solos interspersed into choral pieces he never gives those to me.  If they are for lower or midrange voices he asks everyone to sing them.  He only gives solos to whoever the current high soprano golden child is that year.  Occasionally he will give a solo to a man.  I hadn't thought that a choir director who is barely over 30 would be sexist but maybe he is, in that only men are allowed to have voices that are large, authoritative, maybe occasionally "un-pretty", but nonetheless impressive.  He does not like women whose voices conjure up those adjectives.

As for the title of this post, this whole situation conjures up this film (and the book, which was actually better).  Particularly as I am a Dachshund lover as well as a singer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Dachshund

Well, so OK, here's my game plan going forward.  Christmas Eve I will be the only trained soprano there.  We are singing two pieces in an easy range.  The new Director of Music Ministries will be leading the choir.  He seems to have a better understanding of different voice types (and of group dynamics) and he also does different warmups.  Some of these are things that I do not do (I was told not to do lip trills ever and in fact don't even know how - my teacher said to roll an r instead - and some of the staccato arpeggios leave me behind in the dust around a G) but if he really wants to get the soprano section to keep singing higher he gives us nice friendly legato arpeggios on an Aw vowel, just like my teacher, not a string of words that keeps ascending. 

As for the first rehearsal in  January, it turns out I may be late anyhow because that is the day of the tryouts for the Alzheimer chorus which I hope to get involved in with my partner.  After that, the simplest thing may simply be to come to rehearsals at 7:45 instead of 7:30.  I don't need these warmups (except the ones that involve singing in parts on a chord, which never go very high).  I can warm up at home and save myself a lot of agita.

And as soon as we get the January schedule I will try to find a spot to sing a Spanish song on or near Epiphany.  I already have one picked out.

Was Planning to Make this an Upbeat Post, But.....

First, the upbeat part.  My teacher definitely wants to sing with me at the May concert.  Other than substituting the Giovanna/Enrico duet from Anna Bolena for the Amneris/Ramfis Judgment Scene from Aida, it will be pretty much the same program I sang in this concert.

This means we will sing the Laura/Alvise duet from La Gioconda and the Vengeance Duet from Samson et Dalila.  I realize that the latter might be viewed as "politically incorrect", as the last line is "death to the Hebrews", but, well, this all happened a very long time ago!!

Then we will each sing a least one aria.  He wants to sing Bartolo's aria from Barber of Seville and I will sing Dalila's "Mon Coeur" (minus the interpolated B flat which is not written anyhow).

If there is time for us each to sing two arias, I may add Laura's aria which I have always found easy to sing because the first part moves, and there is a lot of "setup time" before the last climactic high note.

On top of my excitement about having something on my calendar, I was really really thrilled with how I sounded at my lesson.  My voice is just getting freer and freer and more open.  I have even changed how I breathe: breathing lower in a more relaxed way instead of gripping with my back ribs, which I didn't even know I had been doing.  And (counterintuitively) the darker and "heavier" I sing the easier it is to sing higher.  And most importantly, I can tell that my teacher sees me as being in a different "league".

Now for the subject I am avoiding.  I was just beginning to get over how upset I was at how few people came to my Carmen concert.  I am not angry at any particular person.  Everyone is busy.  I think I am angry at how this event was perceived by people, consciously or unconsciously.  It was like "yes, it's great that BabyD is doing this, but it's not a real performing arts event [you know, the sort that get reviewed in the Times or are at prestigious venues]."

Now here's the huge thing.  I have no idea if this is deliberate or unconscious, but my choir director has never emailed out any flyer I sent him or given people a nudge to "let's come and show our support"!  All he ever did was let me hand out flyers and make an announcement.  Which sends the message that the event is important to me but not to him, whose imprimatur obviously sends a signal.  Well, this morning I got a group email from him forwarding flyers from people (one was Little Miss Conservatory who is singing in the chorus of an opera; the other was someone else who sings cabaret) saying just that "let's come and show our support"!  So what should I make of this?  I am not going to say anything.  He actually did come to three of my events: two at the church and one at a small venue where I sang scenes from Il Trovatore and Aida (actually not very well, because the air conditioner had not been cleaned and I felt like I was choking; something that has never happened before or since).  But it all just makes me feel irrelevant and pushy.  You know I  am always the one who has to remind people that "hey, yes, I'm a performer too, hey, yes, I sing too and, ok, it's not just high Bs that take artistry even if all the untrained women think anyone could sing 'O Rest in the Lord' because it's in the same range someone might sing 'Happy Birthday'".

So I'm just in a really bad mood, just when I was starting to feel optimistic again.  Sunday I sang "Patiently Have I Waited for the Lord" in two services.  It went well for the most part except for those low Bs which I am not comfortable sitting on any more than I am comfortable sitting on high notes; it's just that with the low notes it's easier to fake it.  And I got a lot of compliments, including from a woman in her 90s who said "your singing is really improving".  I didn't find that insulting, actually it made me happy because it means that all the hard work I have been doing has paid off.  So I just said "Thank you.  I work very hard at it."

And the best news of all...maybe maybe maybe I really will not die anonymous!  Someone may interview me for a magazine article about classical singers who started late.

Elegy for a Lost Narrative

"Don't sell yourself short," a friend told me.

"Why can't you give yourself credit for all that you have accomplished?" my partner has told me on numerous occasions, despite her initially having no understanding of why I was doing all this.

In some ways, things are so exciting, and so exhilarating.  I never ever sounded this good.  Now that I know how to really push my larynx down and stop gagging on high notes, make space, lift my soft palate, and relax my jaw, I sometimes can't believe how I sound.  So, OK, I may never be able to sit on a high B for five counts, but I'm homing in on those notes and everything sounds so much better.  After making some (standard) cuts, and replacing the two Bs with G sharps, I am sailing through the two Giovanna Seymour selections that my teacher wanted me to work on.  And I am working on my Italian pronunciation as well as taking out the dictionary to look up the words I was unfamiliar with. (Although of course I know the import of what she's singing!)

And I am really rocking it at choir rehearsals.  How many people in a "convenience sample" choir can start out singing a highly ornamented alto line in a Bach cantata (in full dramatic mezzo chest voice, or at least a rich mix) and end up floating a high G sharp in the soprano section for a piece for All Saint's Day?

The problem is that my narrative is lost. 

I want to "not sell myself short," and "give myself credit" but it all gets lost in the Babel of Manhattan's Upper West Side, most particularly here in ZIP code 10023.  Who really cares?  People can go to the Met or they can go to see all those low budget opera productions that don't want to use me that are full of the stars of tomorrow (or the working comprimari of today showcased in leading roles), or free chamber music featuring conservatory students, or senior recitals, or edgy groups that use some classical singers with smaller voices in smaller venues.

I had hoped that writing this blog would give meaning to my narrative, but responses are few and far between, other than from one friend I made here with whom I correspond almost daily. (She is another late-starting classical singer in a less talent-packed geographic area.)

My teacher is (surprised and) impressed by my progress, but he knows so many mezzos who sing better (and who if they're anywhere near my age have decades more experience) that this doesn't really translate into any opportunities that I don't have to organize myself.

I know they now say too much praise is bad for kids.  Certainly praise with no constructive criticism isn't going to help a person improve.  I wouldn't be singing this well if my teacher hadn't been at me constantly through every exercise, stopping me when something didn't sound right.

But as I have no venue, so it seems, for regular high profile singing (even a very humble one), I also have no context for my narrative that will make it sparkle and shine.

No one has ever said "It's really amazing that someone your age, who began singing at the age when many singers retire, sounds the way you do now." Or, "It's really extraordinary the amount of time and effort and dogged persistence, against all odds, that you have put into perfecting an art form at your age, with your limited resources, when you could have just said, why bother?"  All I want is to hear those things.  Some time.  Then maybe I would stop selling myself short.

Not a Drop, but a Thud

So I heard back from the woman I sang the Handel for and she wrote back and said "no thank you".  She didn't even offer me a cover.

Why has this upset me so much?  The last two auditions I went to I didn't get anything and I just shrugged it off.  Maybe because these were real live staged productions of big Italian operas and this was just a chance to sing a role in a Handel opera from a book in someone's living room.  So I'm not even good enough to do that?

I just feel so much despair.

I was so happy with how I've been sounding (although I got into perilous waters at last week's choir practice singing a spiritual where the second sopranos end by pounding words on Fs and G flats at the top of the staff) but it's like a big so what.  At the risk of making an inappropriate analogy, I feel the way certain ethnic groups feel about immigrants.  No matter how well they do, a new wave of immigrants comes in and pushes them back to the bottom.  Actually that's a very apt analogy, because no matter how much progress I make, there will be a new wave of people coming here who have a "package" (they sound perfect, look good, and have music degrees).  So I end up on the bottom again.

I just don't know how many disappointments I can sustain.  But apparently it's not enough to make me stop singing (and no, choral singing doesn't do it - I have to have a venue for solo singing, even in someone's living room where I'm just singing for peers, or in church).  I know that the Mentor found me in the back of that church for a reason and I can't give up now. I feel like there's a huge bird beating its wings inside me and it has to fly.  And no, it's not a little sparrow or a little robin but a huge tropical bird with bright colored feathers that wants to take people's breath away when it soars.

I think the last straw was when I produced Carmen, which was something innovative and different, and hardly anyone came.  And that this annoyed the woman helping me produce it, to boot.

Yesterday I looked at the site for a nursing home/social service facility that brings in "performances".  Well, guess what? All the names of scheduled performers were groups I'd heard of, the sort that get reviewed in the TIMES. 

So I'm at a complete loss.  And I don't even have anything on my calendar.  Not one thing.  Well, once the Advent schedule comes out I can chase the choir director around trying to get a spot to sing something (I am going to order the piano vocal score for Verdi's Ave Maria with Strings to see if I can excerpt something; otherwise I found a Bach hymn called "Advent" that is arranged as a solo.)  And maybe the woman who produced the September 11 concert will have a Christmas concert in various outreach venues.  At least she's savvy enough to know that if she wants to get a group of people to do this (last time it was 5 or 6 women) she has to offer us each solo verses in the carols we're doing.

And I will think of something else...

A Toxic Environment

Yesterday I almost lost it.  By "lost it" I mean got into such a rage that I crossed some kind of line between mental health and mental unwellness.

I hesitate to use the term "mental illness" because these are serious illnesses.  Severe depression kills, as was evidenced by what happened to Robin Williams.  Severe depression cripples.  Mental "unwellness" is another thing, a state that I can get into frequently if I have enough external triggers (I am never one of these people who says "everything is going so well, but I'm miserable").  If I'm miserable, it's because I'm having my nose rubbed, on a daily basis, in other people's talent, exciting careers, large families, interesting travels, new opportunities, you name it.

Yesterday I was in a situation that was a metaphor for everything that makes me angry and despairing.  No, I don't feel suicidal.  I am more apt to want to kick out a window than slit my wrists, quite frankly.  So yesterday I was bringing my SO home from a doctor's appointment in Soho.  I forgot just how awful Soho is.  I have written at length about how living on the Upper West Side, I feel about the size of a gnat, and about as relevant.  But Soho is where everyone seems to be glamorous and, oh so young!  So, waiting for a cab with my SO on the corner of Houston St. and Broadway, I was virtually trapped under what I will call a tsunami of young, glamorous, people ignoring me and my SO, some of them trying to hail cabs.  A seemingly nice young man started to help us find one (with no luck) but abandoned the task once his eye was caught by an extremely glamorous and trendy looking heavily made up (yes, I usually am that, too) woman in her 30s, probably, who didn't speak much English (was she Italian? maybe).  So he began chatting her up, was rebuffed, and scarpered off.  And then, when this (expletive deleted) started hailing a cab, I just bloody lost it!!  I tried to gesture to her that I was trying to get a cab for someone elderly (I pointed to my SO's cane), but who knows if this woman even understood my words.  On the other hand, she could see, right???

I truly think I was saved from committing a murder (I wanted to throw her into the traffic) by my SO grabbing me and our skittering across the street to an island, where, Heaven be praised, a taxi appeared.

I did not feel good about myself after this.  My SO was angry with me.  Later I realized that this was not about getting a cab (although I have been known to almost get into fistfights with young healthy people who try to take cabs away from me and my SO from under our noses) it was about my endless frustration at feeling at the bottom of a tsunami of talented young people who suck up all the opportunities, the attention, the concert attendees, the water cooler conversation at the church, and the list goes on.

Last night I had a dream I was in prison.  Not a hardcore prison and I don't think I was expecting to be there long because I was trying to figure out how to get hold of someone who could pay my rent.  At the crux of the dream was my anxiety that I hadn't been given intake forms to fill out, which was supposed to happen.  I know that that was a stand in for my desperately wanting people to know who I am; that I am a performer too, that my life revolves around what I am singing and where I am singing, and sometimes about my photographs and my writing.  That I am not ordinary.  

Overall, I have been in a better mood than usual.  My therapist always comes back to that a lot of my bad feelings stem from living here in New York, where the best of everything is in my face 24/7.  Well, that's just the way it is.  My maternal grandparents moved here in 1919, and I'm a third generation apartment dwelling non driver.  I have a cheap apartment.  At my last session my therapist used a phrase I had never used either aloud or too myself.  She said "well, so let's start from that you are in a toxic environment and then take it from there".

I never used to feel that way and I have lived here all my life.  The city (so it seems) used to be full of ordinary people who lived in cramped apartments and went to ordinary jobs, who weren't especially stylish, and who, although they may have loved to go to performances, did not and had no plans to work in the performing arts.  So where are those people now?

For the most part, things have been going well.  I have two definite solos for the September 11 concert: Handel's "O Had I Jubal's Lyre" and "Domine Deus" from the Vivaldi Gloria.  The concert producer is happy with them.  There will be seven singers on the program, four classical singers and three musical theater singers.  I am able to hold my own quite nicely in that setting.  And on Sunday August 31 I will sing "Erfreute Zeit" as a solo in the church service.

And I keep singing better and better.  Those exercises with the "h" have really done something to open up my voice.  I am singing regularly up to a high C again.  I had a nice time singing with the informal summer choir.  "Little Miss Conservatory" is not there.  She is away performing in a real opera with real singers who are going places.  I don't have to think about that.  So I wonder how things will be when she is back?  Will there be "room" for me as a serious performer?  Another issue is that I think one unwritten mission that this church has is to be a "home" for "young people" who have come to New York to work (for pay or not) in the performing arts.  So OK.  What about the older people who want to perform, who want to be taken seriously?  This is a continuing source of discontent for me.  Finding visibility.  Finding visibility in a toxic environment.  Without ending up in prison for real.

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".

The Drop

Well, surprise!

I was expecting to feel a letdown, but it still hurts.

First of all, I really do think that the woman who produced the concert is angry at me, either because it was not well enough attended (I think she thought my entire congregation would show up), or because it was not as polished as she thought it should be (I totally agree that it needs polishing, but when and with what aim and with whose help?) or because we had some misunderstanding about money, which I thought was patched up, but maybe she does not. I suppose I think this because she did not write to me (even in response to my writing to her to thank her for her help) to say anything nice, supportive, or encouraging.  On the other hand, maybe as I said that I would be back to rehearsals, etc. at her house in June, she is turning her attention to other things.

But I am left with an "empty" feeling.

I know all the people who did come really enjoyed it, and aside from forgetting to take my glasses off, I think I sang (certainly I acted) close to my personal best.

The biggest problem is that I just don't (can't) do enough of these things.  When I posted something on Facebook about feeling depressed having to go back to my mundane life a friend (who had been to my performance and complimented me on it) said that well, most performers have day jobs.  This is true, but many of those at least have time, money, and resources (not to mention familial good will) to spend most of their non-day-job time involved with performing.  Many of them are married to or partnered with other performers with day jobs, so they are in it together.

Other than church solos (which there seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities for) and going to voice lessons and working on technique and repertoire at home, it is very difficult for me to justify throwing a lot of time, money, and energy into something.

And whether or not I earn money performing, the fact that I don't even do it all that often means that people forget that that is who I am when I am surrounded by conservatory students, music teachers, and people who came to New York to eke out a living in the performing arts, sort of.  I just sort of blend in with the other women my age who sing in the choir as a hobby.  I know I know I know that I shouldn't be looking for validation from other people, but if people don't engage with the "me" that is important to me, but engage with  me as someone else, the performer "me" just sort of gets lost.

I guess I have to take compliments where I find them.  I was interviewing a cleaning woman for my partner and I told her what I do for a living (a propos of my partner telling her I worked at home) and she said she was quite surprised, that looking at me she thought I was an actress.

I think the reason I am so upset about the (real or perceived) falling out with the concert producer is that she was the only person who suggested things for me to do, sing, look at, think about, etc.  My voice teacher gives me exercises to sing (often based on what I tell him I am having difficulties with) but he has never suggested any place for me to sing or given me ideas for anything to do and in fact I am angry with him again (I am not sure how to address this) because he has once again found another mezzo to replace his wife in a concert.  He has never asked me to sing even one thing in any of his concerts.  If I ever did leave him as a teacher it would not be for technical reasons, or because he does not have a conservatory degree, but because I wanted a teacher who at least would give studio recitals that I could sing in.  The choir director has never suggested a solo for me to sing.  All the ideas come from me.  And I don't even have friends (with one possible exception and she does not live here) who ask me what I'm doing next, or who nag me or prod me, or who even care if I am performing or not; even people who compliment me on performances they have come to.

ETA: I finally did get an email from the concert producer, complimenting me on the performance.  I mean of course there are things that needed improvement, the main issue is that I need to feel I am worth teaching and mentoring and I suppose she still does.  She mentioned the Spanish songs I want to sing and told me to buy copies of the music (which I had already done; they are in a book of Spanish songs she had suggested that I buy).  So things look a little brighter today than they did yesterday...

What Goes Up Must Come Down (Reprise)

I was so happy with my plans for my Carmen concert.  Why can't it last?

Yesterday I had a totally crappy morning.

The choir was singing a Spanish anthem with a little solo for two altos.  So I sang the top part and one of the other women sang the bottom part.  I thought it sounded nice.  It was a lovely anthem, mostly in four parts with an occasional middle women's part, so I sang alto and when there were three women's parts I switched to the middle part, which was on the soprano line. There was a high C at the end, so little miss Conservatory (and probably at least one other soprano) sang it.

So guess what?  When we were done rehearsing the choir director said "Thank you LMC for that high C"!!!! Is this mind boggling or what???? Not "thank you Babydramatic and alto for that lovely intro" or "thank you all for the anthem" but "Thank you LMC???"

In all the years I've sung there, this particular choir director has always made a point of stressing (by his behavior) that, as Lutherans assert, the communal voice is more important than the individual voice, and, up until recently, has never thanked anyone in front of the group, other than the usual "thank you tenors [or whomever] for that [whatever]". So as they say in the therapy biz, I  have no idea what this is "about".

But I can tell you it is getting under my skin.  Also, to make things worse, one of the women in the alto section (not my duet partner) made a vague critical comment about the little duet and then when I asked her what I should have done differently made a smarmy kind of "never mind" gesture and then said, looking embarrassed "well, what you need to do is sing it with confidence".  Well, you know what?  I am sure I did.  That little bar of music is in the best part of my range.

I wish these things didn't bother me so much but they do.  I keep thinking if I were a better person, or more "grown up", I wouldn't care.  But that's just not who I am.  Being a diva who loves the limelight is in my DNA and I should stop apologizing for it.  I only wish I could find something as ear-grabbing as a bloody high C.  No, and I don't have a B natural or a B flat either, really.  And no one seems to care if I can sing with a lovely line, or that I can hold a note in the middle of the staff almost indefinitely while everyone else is staggering breaths, or that I can sing pages and pages of heavily ornamented music in a middle register without choking to death.

Speaking of choking to death, I just think those extreme notes are not in my physiology.  They do not materialize no matter what I do.  When I try to sing a B flat off the cuff, for example, I don't squeak or squeal, which would be a start, I make a hideous yowl (probably if it translated to a note it would be an F at the top of the staff) that sounds like a cat being strangled.

I feel so much despair because I haven't a clue what to do about this problem (not the problem of my upper register, but the problem of how to find a wow! factor without it).  I finally said something to the choir director about the fact that we'd had "an awful lot of solos for high sopranos lately", which is when he offered me the top line of the duet in the Spanish anthem (and said he would try to find a spot for "O Rest in the Lord" on Maundy Thursday; if I don't hear from him I will write to him again).  But now it isn't even an issue of being more equitable with solos; it is an issue of being more equitable with praise.  Isn't this something leaders (like bosses) are supposed to be self-aware about?  Also, what's so mystifying is he never behaved that way before.  And no, I don't think he has a crush on this young woman.  He has a gorgeous wife, and this young woman is not all that much to look at.  Yes, she has a stunning voice, particularly in the context of what is, when all is said and done, a "convenience sample" choir, but other people have other vocal assets as well.  And just as a point of accuracy, she is not arrogant or full or herself at all.  She is very sweet.  So my upset is with him, not her.

I was so upset yesterday that even my partner encouraged me to "talk", something she never does.  I think she was worried that if I looked upset it might be about her.  I can't say, though, that she had any helpful suggestions.  Yes, I know I should be grateful to be singing in this choir in this church with a lot of wonderful people, but if I wanted to, I could stop singing there (that would be the acid test - would anyone miss me and say so?) and work in the food pantry on Saturdays and see my partner on Sundays.  And sing with the woman producing my Carmen concert.  She is a lot more sensitive to the fact that everyone wants their moment in the spotlight, whether they're singing a complex aria or a simple song.

One thing I have decided to do is every day, post one clip of a great mezzo singing an oratorio aria that does not go above an E or an F.  Maybe that will educate people that voices come in all ranges and that there are divas who don't sing high Cs.