The Mentor and the "Shower Trick" #Metoo?

For those of you who are have followed my story for years, you know what a role the man I refer to as The Mentor played in it all.  He got me to sing, he awakened my feelings of desire, and through his influence, I retooled my personal image which, over the previous decade, had morphed from glamorous to sexless (albeit dressed for success), and redecorated my apartment, replacing a lot of the pastels with brilliant reds.  I lusted after him, to no avail, I envied him his freedom from both monogamy and office jobs, I wanted to please him, I cowered when he turned on a dime from being seductively admiring to being gratuitously cruel.  It was through having him as a muse that I wrote a play, with him as anti-hero, which was actually quite good, although too rom-com-ish for today's playgoers, certainly in major metropolitan areas (it was produced by a community theater in Texas). 

Over the years, when I would descibe some of his behavior, the words "sexual harrassment" would creep into the conversation (never used by me).  And I would wonder.  How could this be "sexual harrassment" if he was gay and was not interested in me?  Is teasing someone into lusting after you, then dancing away and laughing, particularly if you're in a position of power "sexual harrassment"? 

Here is one of his archetypal choice quotes that I have shared with people in speech and in writing (it even ended up as a "laugh line" in my play).

ME: (singing "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix")

HIM: What do the words mean?

ME: "My heart opens at your voice like a flower"

HIM: (leering) Weeeelll, so what kind of a flower do you think she's talking about"

And there was the time he told me to sing something like an orgasm, and the time he told me to put my hand on my "heart" or rather my "tits" (his word).

But now here's something I never told anyone, not because I was afraid or ashamed, but simply because I didn't attach any importance to it, until I heard about Charlie Rose and "the shower trick".

The very first time I showed up at the Mentor's apartment for a lesson, he took a while to answer the bell.  When he finally came to the door, he was wearing nothing but a towel.  He said he had just come out of the shower.  True, nothing "private" was visible, but what voice teacher takes a shower right before a student arrives?  What was the hidden agenda here, and believe me, there was one!  He didn't want to have sex with me, obviously.  But he did want to have power over me and what better way to do that than to sexualize our first encounter in his apartment.

So maybe that was a #metoo moment after all.  Because sexual harrassment is not about sex, but about power.

Not About Valentine's Day

I am long overdue for a blog post, but have simply been busy and have not had much to say.

Monday it will be 12 years since that fateful Samson et Dalila duet that changed my life forever.  Two weeks ago at church, it was Transfiguration Sunday, and there was a guest minister who spoke about transfiguration.  About God taking you out of your comfort zone.  He asked if anyone had ever had an experience like that that had changed them forever.  I raised my hand.  As I said to the woman who interviewed me for Classical Singer (she didn't print this quote), when the duet was over, after the audience went wild,I knew then that I wanted that (that mélange of glorious music, sex, glamour, applause, and magic) more than anything in the world and that I would make any sacrifice to have it.

The road has been long, rocky, and filled with disappointments.  There is the exhilaration of finally, beginning sometime in my 64th year, being able to let my voice fly free the way I believe it was always meant to, counterbalanced by the knowledge that I am too old for it to matter.

But I would never go back,  Never.

And finally, this year, I barely gave a passing thought to The Mentor.  A man in his mid-fifties who has a Facebook cover photo that zeroes in on his crotch is rather pathetic, when all is said and done.  Yes, I envy that he has managed to make a life out of the arts, and I have not, but that is all.

Carmen is now approaching.  I don't work on it too often, lest it get stale.

So next up is finding, with the help of the Director of Music Ministries, an appropriate Lent solo.  For Good Friday we will be singing excerpts from the Faure Requiem.  I asked about singing the "Pie Jesu" (which I had sung before on Maundy Thursday) but this Director says that Pie Jesus are inappropriate for Holy Week.  Who knew?  As a singing Jewish/Marxist/Unitarian, my knowledge of these things is a bit spotty, but I want to educate myself.  I don't have to believe this or that to become well versed in appropriate liturgy. Church singing has become my craft.  It is what I do best, and what I can do best because my age isn't (or shouldn't be) a barrier, and neither is my lack of physical mobility.

So I have revisited "Liber Scriptus".  Now that I sing several high C sharps every day, that A flat that I was so nervous about is easy.  And the low Ds are rich and plummy, not squawky the way they used to be.  And there's the gorgeous "Lord's Prayer" by Malotte.  I think there will be some evening services during Lent that center around the Lord's Prayer.  And I would love a chance to sing the Rossini "Fac ut Portem" again.  Everything is so different now and so much easier.

This week, for the first time ever, I had to miss a big service.  My partner was rushed to the ER on Ash Wednesday.  She fell as she was letting her occupational therapist into the apartment.  The OT called 911.  They thought she had broken her pelvis.  It turned out nothing was broken but I didn't make it to the 6:30 call.  I had alerted the choir director, and as I did not have a solo, I was ok about not singing.  I was disappointed, because the piece was in 8 parts, which is when I am in my glory.  Second soprano parts are hard, musically, but they are in a better part of my range than alto parts, but because there is still another part above me, I don't have to worry as much about keeping the volume down as I do if I am singing soprano in a four part piece (which is usually vocally healthier than singing alto, and allows me to use my full range).  Now of course I worry what if my partner has an emergency when I am supposed to sing Carmen, but I just can't go there.  If God wants me to sing, I will.  And I will make a plan B, for someone to take care of any emergency my partner might have.

There is a weather alert, so we are taking a rain check on Valentine's Day.  We will have lunch out on Wednesday - or have lunch in and watch a movie on demand.

OK, so yes, sometimes I wonder what The Mentor would think if he could hear me now.

Aria da Capo?

A few days ago, I ran into a man who used to sing in the choir at my old UU church.  The minister with whom I had so much discord has been gone for some time  I had run into this man before, and he had invited me to come back and "see what was going on" but I declined.  Theologically I still consider myself a Unitarian, but they don't know how to "do" theater the way the high church Protestants do.  That's it in a nutshell.  And when it comes to social justice organizing, the Lutheran church does as much, if not more, than my old UU church, so all bases are covered.  So, OK, I hear things I know are not "true", but hey! myths and fairy tales are lovely, and I am careful what I say and do.  I will sing anything, I will wear anything.  I don't take communion and don't speak prayers that begin with the words "I believe" because hey!  that's not "generic mezzo-soprano church soloist" singing, that's me Babydramatic with her Jewish maternal relatives behind her saying, "I believe".  So I pass on that.  But all in all, the Lutheran church offers a better package.

This time, however, when I ran into my friend, he said that the church had gotten rid of the choir (who was singing Beatle songs when last heard from) and used "paid guest soloists".  He said they even had classical music from time to time.  So, well, yes!!! I would love to sing there as a guest if I got paid.  I certainly sound as good as a lot of paid soloists, I just have given up trying to become a paid section leader somewhere because I don't sightread and can't seem to be bothered learning.

So I sent in a resume.

We will see.

I have no idea if The Mentor is still going there.  I think he spends most of his time traveling teaching dance, now mostly to (female) burlesque dancers. I have totally gotten over my lust for him and my fear of him.  I am grateful that he got me to sing.  If I hadn't been spellbound by singing Dalila leaning against his powerful wiry body, staring into his eyes as if we were about to float off somewhere for a tryst, I wouldn't be doing all the things I am doing today.  So every single tear, even the afternoon he frightened and humiliated me so much that I wanted to jump out his window, was worth it.

I know I won't be thrown if he is there.  The last time our paths crossed was in 2010 when I sang an aria from Gounod's Sappho and we had a nice "workmanlike" conversation about vocal technique.

I still would love to figure him out, though.  He is not like any gay (or straight) man I have ever met.  He is obsessed with women (all his gigs seem to involve him in a gaggle of them and all the pictures he posts show him with one or more females ranging in age from 4 to 94, but never show him with a man) but does not sleep with them.  He just gets his jollies from making us think he wants to.  Here's his latest Facebook "wall" page.  I in fact did post some full length pictures of him a while back (he's enough of a public figure that I don't feel I owe him anonymity) but here's the latest one.  I can see that it was cropped from something full length, that shows people's faces.  But what can one make of the fact that at the very center of the cropped wall picture is - his crotch!!

In other news, when I was tutoring one of the little girls on Monday, she said she wanted me to sing "Silent Night" (she has heard me sing at the Spanish service), so I sang it a capella without warming up, and she recorded it on her phone!!  She said she wants to "copy" my voice.  I told her if she likes to sing she should join the Spanish choir, that they are always looking for people.  So that's nice.

Next up is "O Magnum Mysterium".

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?

How My Imagination Atrophied

In a recent post about sexism, which also included quite a bit about generational differences, I spoke of how some of my self-dislike and low spirits around my dull work life, life as a caregiver (despite passionately loving my "care recipient"), and financial and temporal limitations, stemmed from "the conversation" or "the buzz" as you will around the topics of self-actualization through work, postponing coupling (and childbearing, which for me was not relevant), and an extended period of self-exploration.  And more importantly, about how doing those things is a passport to a good life, whereas not doing them, is a passport to poverty and a lesser one.

And now we have this op ed piece, which rehashes some of the same ground.

What I found most compelling, particularly in view of my goal to "jumpstart" my imagination, is the recent belief that postponing "settling" (one of the hallmarks of adulthood) allows the imagination to blossom more fully, and (although this was not mentioned) also allows one to "settle up" (with a more interesting and more lucrative career and a more appropriate spouse) when one does settle.  The article states that the jury is still out on which comes first: the "settled, hardened brain" or the routinized life, but they do seem to be related.

I (and many others of my generation) postponed adulthood, certainly middle-class adulthood, for a period of time, and some never found it, but this was a very different trajectory from that of today's millennials.  First, we got away from our parents at as young an age as possible and never went back.  We did not take money from our parents for living expenses, certainly if we were living in a way that they would not have approved of.  (If there was money, parents paid for college and graduate school - the latter mostly for sons - but nothing beyond.)  We did not become part of the "establishment".  Aborted our education.  Some died of drug overdoses or ended up in jail for misguided "politically motivated" crimes or for God know what that we did when on drugs.  Some managed a complete turnabout and became Yuppies.  The rest (I would include myself here) settled for the lesser life that one ends up in with a tenth rate education, often too little too late, and the need to opt for short-term financial security.

Once I got sober, the first thing I did was find a mate (someone I was madly in love with, with whom I could have sex regularly - let's get real here), then a job.  With nothing but a high school diploma and no work history I was lucky that I was able to get a "career ladder" secretarial job in publishing.  I was making a pittance but had good benefits and a ladder up in an industry that I was familiar with because I had grown up around it.  But that, and my early "marriage" did not do much in the way of allowing my imagination to blossom through novelty seeking.  True, I believed that I was sort of living on the edge of danger being out when sexual orientation was not a protected class with regard to employment discrimination, and when being in big groups of gay people demonstrating (or even going in and out of buildings known to be gay-centered) might have led to an ugly skirmish, but actually my life was pretty dull and predictable.  In the "textbook" time frame my relationship deteriorated from endless lovemaking and fighting (although some of that lasted for 20 years and the fighting continues to this day when I am mainly a caregiver) to discussions about grocery shopping and laundry, and certainly very little that I did at work was interesting at all.  I mostly liked the job because it was easy and I could take an hour and a half for lunch three times a week to go to an AA meeting and talk on the phone with my AA fellows most of the day while I shoved documents into file folders.  And I met interesting people.

I had  hoped that when I stopped working in an office and got out of the routine I could find "something different" but I see that I have settled into another routine that is just as dull, and I don't even sleep that much later!!

It always seems to be a struggle, not just to find venues for singing at my age with so little experience, but just to diversify my life in any way at all!!  I have always felt that my brain and my psyche fight these attempts at diversification much as my soul hungers for it, and at least this article explains why,

This also explains one of my sources of fascination with The Mentor.  I envied how he was free of the two things that made my life feel like a prison: monogamy (which wasn't even that any more, when your partner is physically failing) and an office job.  I can't comfortably address the first issue in a public blog, but although I am now free of the second, and do enjoy being able to mix and match my daytime schedule (do outside errands and make appointments during the day and work at my laptop at night), I seem to have ended up in the type of work that is largely dull and rote.

So how do I get my imagination jumpstarted?? Certainly remembering everything I learned from The Artist's Way has helped.

I would also like to see some articles about how some of the choices people like me made (and I am certainly not unique) can be leveraged as assets, going into the home stretch.  I'm really kind of sick of all the coverage given to young people.

A Memoir, a Song, and a Short Story, or Amneris, not Joanna

This post started out as a Facebook post that no one responded to, so I decided it might do better as a blog entry.

Since Maya Angelou died recently, a lot has been written about her first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Thinking about the title of this book reminded me of a song that I had almost as turbulent a relationship with as I had with Dalila's "Mon Coeur": "Green Finch and Linnet Bird".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBnNyL5O0Tc&feature=youtu.be

I laughingly referred to it as "the Caregiver's National Anthem" even though it is written to be sung by a young ingenue (although as it sits in my comfortable range of middle C to high G, I have sung it and I believe I have sung it well although I sound nothing like the woman in the Youtube clip).

For years I felt like Joanna: trapped with someone elderly in a passionless life.  In fact, in some of my earlier online communities, my "tag" was "if I cannot fly, let me sing".

This song was, in fact, my final battleground with The Mentor.  He coached me through it ridiculing me and mocking me, screaming and making faces, and, before we were finished, telling me I looked like Norma Desmond.

(When it came time for me to actually sing the piece - in a church fundraiser - he was notably AWOL.  In any event, it was after that session that I decided that he and I needed to call it quits.)

I have had various degrees of identification with this song over the years, and yes, although my life is no longer passionless, I still sometimes feel like a prisoner.  But I know I am not.  And I haven't had any impulse to sing this in a long time.

The import of my original Facebook posting was that I had wondered if Sondheim had seen (or read) the Angelou  memoir when he wrote this song because of course, the theme of it is "Why the Caged Bird Sings".

Later, when I entered an online writing contest (one thing I am proud of that carried over from the pseudonymous blog that I eventually deleted) one of the "prompts" was "the Caged Bird" (was this also an homage to Angelou?) I wrote a three page short story about my experiences working in the "Data Factory", which was, I guess, a short version of my Cinderella play, which I have let languish.  The story was published in an anthology called Idol Meanderings.

If I am not Joanna, I am definitely Amneris these days, with or without those dreaded B flats.  I had a voice lesson Tuesday for the first time in almost a month.  I sang through most of the Amneris/Radames duet (that is what my teacher wanted).  It sounded as if the role had been written for me except - what else! - when I got to the section with the dreaded ascending scale I panicked, started breathing shallowly (if at all) and pretty much blew it although I did hit the note on pitch.  Of course when I went back and only sang the few measures leading up to the phrase itself it sounded like gangbusters.  Now, what my teacher told me to do (this surprised me) was to start at the beginning of the duet, singing as well as I know I can (and he told me the way most of this role is written is ideal for my voice) and then, well, just keep singing well, with my larynx down and my throat open, and my support working, and see what happens when I get there, but not to obsess and panic and spoil the rest of the piece.  And if it doesn't work, he said then I can go back and sing the phrase by itself.  (And in a few minutes, I will do just that!)

And: at last night's choir practice I sounded really good.  There is a piece we will be singing with a high A flat and it was like, easy peasy.  (Now the question is will it be that easy at 7:50 am when I have to give it a whirl in my bathroom before leaving the house?)

Writing Assignment: The Most Important Thing that Happened to Me This Year

To my regular readers: I posted this in response to a "prompt" from the woman who taught the writing class I took this summer.  Much of the "history" here is familiar to you.  It isn't to her, so I needed to include it here.  And I suppose there are always new insights.  So of course I would love you all to read this.

The most important thing that happened to me this past year was finding a mentor.

When I look at people who have achieved excellence (and perhaps renown) in their chosen field, what they all have in common, is that they had a mentor.  It might be a parent (David Brooks once said that it took three generations to make a career), teacher, coach, or even a spouse or lover in a the same or a related field. I never had a mentor for my singing.  My mother wanted me to be a writer, in high school I was steered toward academics, not music (interestingly, students from disadvantaged backgrounds with good voices were more likely to be encouraged to sing than I was), and after I graduated from high school, let’s just euphemistically say I “fell off the map” for a looong time.

I began studying voice seriously (I had had a few informal lessons before that) in my late 20s, and was singing quite well, but at that time I was immersed in Lesbian-separatist political activities where I was discouraged from “giving my energy to a patriarchal art form,” particularly one where I would have lots of interaction with straight men.  So at 30 I stopped singing and enrolled in college to get a degree in – what else? – Women’s studies.

I say that after that I never thought about singing again until well into the millennium, but that is not really true.  If people were gathering around a piano at a party to sing, I would join in (and blow people away) and at least once a week I had a dream (I’m referring to the nocturnal kind) about singing.  And when we played “getting to know you” games at the office, I loved being able to answer the question “What is something nobody knows about you that would surprise them?” with “I used to be an opera singer” which I can say was true, even if I never got paid a penny for it.

Fast forward to 2003, the year of my “discovery” sitting in the back pew of my local Unitarian church, singing from a hymnal.  My partner and I started going to that church because we liked the idea of going to church but didn’t believe in most of the supernatural events that are the bedrock of most religions.  Certainly I didn’t go there to sing.  But one day, a very charismatic figure who looked like a cross between Rudolph Valentino and old drawings of Mephistopheles, whispered in my ear seductively “You’re a professional singer, aren’t you?” and things were off and running.  He led me a merry chase, which I wrote about at length here, but the end result was that I have been singing for ten years now.  He and I had a very ugly falling out (and then made peace five years to the day after that fateful Samson et Dalila duet, when I was singing the "Habanera" at a Valentine's Day concert at the Unitarian church), and I left the Unitarian church both because of that and because they decided to stop using classical music in the services, but I got right back on my feet and now have some solid (or they would be solid if I didn’t live in the most talent-packed ZIP code in the country) accomplishments under my belt.

Looking back, I realize that I would not have been so susceptible to a lot of his silliness (voice lessons, at which I learned a lot, were laced with racy comments – to me flattering, I suppose; I was 54 – and silly New Age blather) if I hadn’t been so starved for a mentor.

And I did not find another one until this year.  I have a good voice teacher, a musically knowledgeable choir director, and several coaches, but no one who was really interested in me.  I mean, really, when you come to think of it, who wants to mentor someone over 60?  Everything is about young, young, young, young talent.

But this year someone materialized.  I had sung with her before, but this year it has been different.  She says I have the perfect voice for Spanish songs.  Which to her includes Carmen.  She is going to help me produce a concert of excerpts from Carmen with someone reading from the novella by Prosper Merimee.  She gave me a big thumbs up for the Youtube video I made, singing the Habanera in the Strand Bookstore (available on request, just send me an email).  She suggested a book of Spanish songs for me to buy, as well as a book about Spanish culture.  And if the weather had been better, she had planned to come to the Lutheran church where I’m singing now to hear me sing a Spanish song about the birth of Jesus at a service conducted entirely in Spanish!

I have had so many disappointments since my 2003 “discovery”.  There are about 10 “community opera groups” (aka they don’t pay people) here and none of them wanted me.  They are filled with professional sounding singers (some even have managers) with conservatory degrees and impressive CVs.  Even a choir that doesn’t pay is now filled with the “stars of tomorrow” from the big conservatories.  I was starting to give up hope.

Now I can believe again.  That someone sees a special spark in me, no matter that I’m over 60, have no music degree, and nothing on my resume except church solos and a few homemade concerts (produced by me or someone else).

And if nothing else, I can still hope that someone turns my blog into a movie.  If it happened to “Julie”, cooking from Julia Child’s book, in obscurity, it can happen to anyone.

The Internal Call and the External Call

I have not been feeling great lately, mostly because of the weather.  Being A. more housebound than usual and B. noticeably more frightened by the idea of walking on snow and ice than younger people are (or than I was 20 years ago - yes, the last rapid succession of snowstorms was in 1993) has not been good for my mental health.

So this afternoon I took a break from work to listen to a tv interview with the (drop dead gorgeous) pastor at the church where I sing.

A lot of the thrust of the discussion had to do with the role of women in the church, the lack of female role models at the time she was ordained, how she dealt with her "call" in the absence of these, and what that call consisted of.  I am not going to post a link to the interview here, mostly because it is almost a half hour long, but one thing she mentioned about her "call" was that in the Lutheran tradition it is considered important for there to be both an internal and an external "call".  That means that not only was it important that she felt called to the ministry, but that other people should perceive her as being suitable for it.

So therein lies the heart of some of my deep sadness about missed opportunities as a singer.  The lack of an external call.  Oh, there were external calls, mostly when I was much younger, but they were few and far between and never loud enough to compete with my generation's exhortation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out", to smoke to stay thin, and to "be" an intellectual, engaged with the issues of the day, not with something as self-absorbed as the pursuit of excellence in classical music.  (Don't get me wrong.  As I've said many times, my mother and her circle adored classical music, but it was meant as something to listen to after a day's work in a classroom or at the typewriter, not as a personal pursuit.)

And the external call mostly petered out by the time I turned 21.  Even though I began studying singing seriously the first time at 26, that was too late for me to matter.  And my whole heart wasn't in it. True, I was no longer smoking, but I was still starving myself to fit into a size 30 jeans and spending long evenings at Lesbian discos.

I am now coming up on the tenth anniversary of my "discovery" by the Mentor.  I think why that was such a cataclysmal event in my life was that it was the first external call to singing that I'd had in a very, very, long time and it was neither elicited nor sought.  I had begun going to that Unitarian church to go to church, not to sing.  If we want to be picky, it is now beyond the date of my "discovery", which probably happened in the summer of 2003, but it was the sumptuous "Mon Coeur" that changed everything.  Which may explain why I am so (inexplicably) sympathetic to Miss Kansas. Maybe singing "Nessun Dorma" badly lit a fire under her that singing "Caro Mio Ben" in a studio with a vocal pedagogue never would. Maybe she will start again and do that now that the fire has been lit.  Would I have continued to be obsessed with singing for a decade if I had been asked to sing "Amazing Grace" instead of being coaxed and seduced with an image of my own lusciousness in a seethrough lace top singing one of the sexiest arias ever written?  Possibly not.

It is the external call that I still crave.  That is why I am happy with the woman who is helping me produce Carmen and sing Spanish songs.  More than half the people who show up at her meetups have never even had a formal voice lesson, so in that milieu I feel special.

I am also facing a choir dilemma.  Last Sunday we sang a piece in 8 parts and, for the first time ever, there were four other second sopranos, including one "ringer" (not a trained singer, but an instrumentalist who can sing pleasantly in tune and can sightread).  Why on earth was she needed in my section.  When I told her I was surprised she wasn't singing alto (where more people are needed) I am not sure she understood but she mentioned two women by name in the first soprano section, saying that their voices are "so strong".  Hello??? I can sing loud enough to drown both of them out any day of the week.  Now I will say with all humility that my voice is in no way as lovely certainly as the 21 year old conservatory student's.  But strong???  I know this sounds idiotic, but I was really hurt.

I just am not all that excited about singing there any more.  If I am not noticed, even as someone with a big, obviously trained, voice who can hold a part with confidence, why am I even doing this?  On the other hand, I don't want to skip rehearsal because of the weather.  That just makes me look old and dilettantish.  I will be there whatever the weather, unless I get a "call" from somewhere else to do something else, which I hope is more often than used to be.  I think the woman who produced the last Sunday concert will be producing another - in March.  I hope I can sing there with my Don Jose.

And now I need to get onto finding a reader.

Some

Particularly in view of my last post, I want to write here about the fabulous time I had last night working on the "Habanera"!  I have been singing this piece for 49 years yikes!! yet it is always fresh.

Last night I got the kind of holistic coaching that I had not gotten since working with The Mentor.  Some of the vocal things are not 100% in synch with what my teacher tells me, but as the piece is in a comfortable middle register, it doesn't matter.  The Spanish coach (she considers Carmen like Spanish music, and is very excited about working on it with me) told me to pronounce the French like spoken French, very forward and nasal, and to emphasize the consonants. She also wants it more self-contained and sneery.  There won't be room to walk among the guests, so she suggested using a chair (which will be by the piano) as a prop.  I am a little nervous because with my bad arthritis, standing up and sitting down gracefully is not easy, but this chair is high enough (unlike a church pew) that it should certainly be manageable.  She also gave me a silk rose, and there are all sorts of things I can do with that that will be quite titillating.

I was going to wear these shoes, which I had worn at the bookstore, but the buckle is broken and I won't have time to get it repaired by Sunday, so I will wear black ones.  I am a little nervous about walking in heels, but they are not high and the shoes have rubber soles.

And the date for the Carmen concert is confirmed!! I reminded the tenor, and asked him about finding a Micaela and an Escamillo.  I said that if these were people from the pay to sing group it would be "nice" if they chipped in to pay the accompanist for the performance and 2 or 3 rehearsals.  I hope that didn't put him off.  I know he has sung with that pay to sing group but I have no idea if he has paid anything.  He is a member of the Met chorus.  I would not ask him to pay anything, but when he mentioned finding the other singers he implied they would be "emerging" types.

I also sent an email to the accompanist the coach suggested.

Of course when I mentioned this to my partner, she made a snide remark about tenors (I had told her about the concert several months ago when I first had the idea) referring back to the Mentor.  But this morning she apologized.

My back is about 95% better, and I have not taken any Advil since Monday.  So I am going to try to schedule a lesson for next week and go back to my regular practice routine.

Money May Not Matter, but Mentors Do

This blog post was inspired by hearing from two sources recently about the relationship of having money to being able to pursue a career in classical music.

In one instance, a blogger was responding to an online comment from a woman who (I believe) was whining that she could have had an opera career if she had had money, with the purpose of debunking this myth.

In another, a friend of mine mentioned needing money to pursue such a career, as was evidenced by the number of conservatory graduates who can't make a go of a career in music.

I think money helps, certainly in the beginning, and particularly for instrumentalists.  A family with money is more likely to buy the child a musical instrument and pay for lessons.  With singers I believe this is less important, although it does seem to help if there are musicians in the family (I believe David Brooks wrote that it took three generations to make a career.)

What I do think, and this is my whine, is that you need the right person to come along at the right moment and do or say the right thing, or, more important, for the wrong person not to come along at that moment and do or say the wrong thing.  Or for the right person saying the right thing to drown out the wrong person saying the wrong thing.  And this doesn't just need to happen once.  It needs to happen at various points along the way.

I was a troubled teenager.  Almost at the same moment, a music teacher friend of my mother's told me that I had an exceptional voice (it was loud and high - by which I mean secure on Fs, Gs, and As), and I began smoking.  The immediate trigger was, actually, my mother, who herself was obese, telling me "have a cigarette, it will curb your appetite".  I was 13 and had a BMI of 25.  Hardly obese.  Then there were the thin girls who smoked.  And who hung out in coffee houses in Greenwich Village talking about the meaning of life.  Talk and smoke.  Suppose that music teacher had been my mother instead?

Suppose someone had said to me "You have a gift and you need to protect it.  Leave your weight alone."  Suppose I had auditioned for the performing arts high school and developed a different social circle, instead of the beatniks who smoked and talked, and later drank, smoked pot, and took amphetamines.

There's also the issue of screening out distractions.  And this has to begin when you're very young.  Some people have more discipline than others when it comes to doing this.  But then some people also have more distractions than others.  And the very age at which you need to be building your talent (I am talking about all the work that has to get done before you get into the music program, not after you leave, which is what the above referenced blog post was discussing) is that age at which most people are most distractable.   And of course mentors help here as well.  That oh-so-important high school teacher who can tell a young girl to treat her voice gently and stay away not only from smoking and drugs but from trying to scream like Aretha (when she doesn't have the training yet) or Giulietta Simionato (when - well, ditto).  Or who can tell her she really needs to re-think the boyfriend who is shooting up or the BFFs (see how with-it I am!) who keep telling her she's fat.

Of course money (or at least education and savvy) can sometimes help with screening out distractions.  My coach's daughter, a recent Juilliard graduate who is now studying in Europe (although she did neither of these things on family money - she got grants) was spared getting drawn into all the destructive things teenage girls do by being homeschooled  until she left for college.  Her family doesn't have a lot of money but they had the savvy to be able to homeschool her.  And she is very close with her mother, who has encouraged her dreams rather than laughing at her, as mine did.

Suppose I had been in a kind of time warp and had met the Mentor when I was 14, or even 34, instead of 54?  No matter how much he tormented me at the end, he made me believe in myself, and more importantly, he made me realize that God wanted me to sing and that that was what I had to do no matter how many sacrifices I had to make.

There have been so many times I thought I should give up.  Or just be a nice choir singer.  But just an hour in my bathroom singing arpeggios (yes, that C has been easier this month) and pouring over the score of Werther finding that if I can sing the progression up to the A just the way I sing the progression up to the G flat maybe I can nail it and know that I've nailed it and not panic ever again - maybe, tells me "no, you're not 'done' yet."

If I could just be Benjamin Button!  Then in no time at all I could be 45 and who knows what I could accomplish then?

A Passing Thought for The Mentor

I have been thinking a lot about him this week for some reason.  Not with lust or too much envy (albeit a bit of the latter), but, well, just thinking because he was the one who got me on this road that began with so much hope, has taken me through so much disappointment, and yet has become totally obsessive.

First of all: I know there are some gay men who read this blog, so tell me this.  How could a man who is gay, just be so all over women in a way that telegraphs hotness, and not of the male on male kind?

No, he did not put an "equality" sign on Facebook, but then again, I can't imagine him interested in anything as bourgeois as marriage.  He is over 50 and has never even had a steady relationship!  When I knew him he was (boastfully) juggling three (male) friends with benefits who did not know about each other.

Actually, it was because of him that not only am I singing now, but also I have publicly declared myself to be nonmonogamous on principle, whatever that means.  (Well, when your "mate" is elderly and ill, it means something different than it means if your mate is healthy and willing and you're "cheating".)

I remember noticing when I used to take voice lessons in his apartment that the picture he had as his computer wallpaper were of him with a woman in her 90s, a dancer he had met in a nursing home.  Most of his pictures on Facebook show him in a sea of women, flirting with them - or with the camera. The latest crop show him with various burlesque performers, and in one he has his hand on her breast?

Is anyone surprised I thought he represented that Freudian paradigm in reverse: the latent heterosexual?

As I have posted photos here of myself, former roommates, and singers I am envious of, I feel like having a giggle, after so many years of writing about him.  You know you're dying to see....(I am withholding his name and the name of the school where he teaches, but that's it)

Neither one of us was the world's greatest opera singer, but he ended up doing something fun and sexy for a living and I ended up, well, here at my laptop.

But if I hadn't had you I wouldn't have had this

So what's next?

Random Thoughts

I haven't written anything for a while, and I also haven't gotten many hits on my blog lately.  I even posted something to the the Forum a few days ago, which is a place I had promised myself to avoid, just to see if my blog link would attract people. I was also thinking about the movie Julie and Julia, because someone mentioned it, and I remembered that it was that movie that got me blogging in the first place. "Julie" wasn't the world's greatest cook or the world's greatest writer, but her writing about her passion for cooking bought her a ticket to fame.

Yesterday I listened to a playwright talking about a play he had written in which one of the themes was The Road Not Taken which by now is a cliche, even to having been misquoted by the author of the book The Road Less Traveled - as my mother would have said, he missed the "prepositional verb". Robert Frost refers to the "road less traveled by."

So is that all these past 8 years have been?  Scrambling to try to get back to the "Road Not Taken" and feeling angry and bitter?

Or is it about something else?

The Mentor (whom I haven't mentioned in quite a while) took a sensually quiescent middle aged woman and taught her to sing "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix" for a moment of music, magic, and a frisson of eroticism.  Was this just meant to be a one-off?  Then back to business as usual?

Whenever I falter in my journey, I remember that Valentine's Day and have faith that this was not just for nothing. Whatever God I believe in - a Christian one (monogamy is the sticking point there), or a pagan one (a little more attuned to my Dalila soul) - s/he meant that Valentine's Day to mean something.

I am at Week 11 of The Artist's Way. The world looks brighter and I have more hope. The things this process have taught me are not that different from the things I picked up from the Mentor, not just about singing and sexuality, but about colors, textures, and smells. About surrounding myself with beauty. Or what I consider beauty anyhow.  I laughed at one point when I was reading the book.  It mentioned feeling free to add that finishing touch to an outfit, something that is special to you, even if conventional people think you are "ruining" it.  That made me realize that the "trashy" way I love to dress is my form of self-expression.  It is how I signal to myself and the world that I am always a diva, no matter what I am doing.

I believe that some people are hardwired to be divas.  (Many disagree and say that the only people who can use that term about themselves are those who have perfected an art form and are acknowledged to excel in it.)  If you are hardwired to be a diva and you have a talent, nurture it, make the right connections, and find a venue, you are lucky.  Many don't.  I see these all around me: the bank teller with braids that probably cost an entire week's paycheck, flaunting her elaborate "nail art"; the harried pediatrician who buys a different flamboyant gown to wear to each wedding and Bar Mitzvah she is invited to when she really only needed two.

So maybe a venue will present itself.  Meanwhile the Requiem preparations continue.

This morning I sang a piece by a little-known composer, Joseph Raff, called "Great and Wonderful are All Thy Works".  I think I sang well, and the choir director was happy.  I also found a new violinist to perform Bach with.  Very few people said anything to me, even ones who spoke to me (about other things) after the service, so part of me felt the whole thing sort of fell into a black hole, but I guess God heard me, and that's all that should matter, although divas always love applause.

ETA: I realize that in saying I felt my singing "fell into a black hole" I was being insulting to those people who did thank me (I got several thank yous on Facebook after I wrote this, one from a fellow choir member who means a lot to me).  I think the thing I was most peeved about was that I was sitting with a woman who likes me, and who had (out of kindness) chided me for writing on Facebook about being envious.  You would think that she would have said something about my singing, as she was at both services, but she never even mentioned it.  The good news: This oratorio is little known (hasn't been performed in this country in my lifetime in any event) so it might be a good vehicle to try to attract big players to.  (By "big players" I mean getting some of the serious  musicians at the church to look for a venue for it, which is a whole 'nuther thing from putting on a vanity production.)

On Gratitude and Lassitude

Today it will be 8 years since I have been seeing this therapist, who is now going away for 3 weeks.  Does this mean  I am a hard case who is unable to change?  When I started seeing her I was awash in feelings about the Mentor, musical, romantic, and otherwise, and felt trapped with my partner with whom I had not had a real relationship for quite some time, and whose life revolved around a host of minor physical ailments that day by day made her life (and by extension my life) smaller and smaller.

Sometimes I wonder if I have made any progress at all.

I got away from the Mentor and even made peace with him (so that if we run into each other it is neither a cat fight nor a stony face-off) but the imprint he put on me has not left (which is a good thing) and I have found ways to amuse myself under the radar.  I have left the painfully stressful and boring job, which had me quasi-suicidal, although that was not through any efforts of my own.

I keep singing better and better, but at the same time feel smaller and smaller in the universe of singing and have had enough bad experiences out in the "big wide world" that I no longer venture forth to do anything that I have not planned myself.

I spent two years - 2006 and 2007, ostensibly "single", coming and going as I pleased and fighting off nuisance calls and threats from my partner.  After she had a hip replacement in 2007 I began taking care of her again, and yes, I really love her and it breaks my heart that she is now really ill, physically and possibly mentally as well, and may be losing her eyesight.  I don't have the energy to fight over every little thing, like why am I spending $25 to go to a group get up and sing thing, where everyone will sing better than I do (or at least be much younger and have much more confidence).  So there is a synergy between my own fears of inadequacy and not having the strength for a fight over something that no longer seems worth fighting for.

Yes, I will fight for my Requiem. If I have to I will lie and say other people are helping me pay for the pianist, just to shut my partner up.  Or I will treat her to something I can't afford to sweeten the pill, so she sees that there is money for a vanity event and for "us".

All this came to a head because my teacher gave me a list of operas that this pay to sing outfit is doing.  The price is actually quite reasonable and the repertoire is right up my alley.  It will probably cost more for me to produce this Requiem but at least with that I have control over what I sing and how I am treated by other people.  Now, I should say that my teacher didn't suggest that I audition for this outfit, he only mentioned it because sometimes the man who runs it asks him to sing something if there aren't enough paying men to handle all the performances (he knows almost every tenor and baritone role in every standard opera).  So he is working on Adriana Lecouvreur. The princess is a role I really want to sing.  It suits my voice and personality and the highest note is an A.  So I will work on it, once I get the Requiem under my belt.  I sang through "Acerba Volutta" at my lesson after not having sung it since January.  My teacher said it sounded better although I didn't feel I had the "oomph" for the ending the first go around.  He suggested not taking a breath before "non mente" (the word "mente" is on a high A) but that only worked in the studio, not at home.  I suggested that maybe when we're done with the Requiem we could work on the duet from Adriana and put together another concert and call it "Viva Verismo" (the Verdi concert I did  last year was called "Viva Verdi").  I also sang some of the best real high Cs at that lesson that I have ever sung.

But I just find it so hard to get my energy up, emotionally and otherwise.

I mentioned "gratitude" in the title of this post because I think I find it hard to differentiate between gratitude and lassitude.  Sometimes I can slip into gratitude without realizing it and feel content in my cozy apartment, knowing that I have paychecks coming in, albeit small ones, cuddling with my cat and watching reruns of Dowton Abbey, but then I think "if I give up the fight, that means I am lazy".

I was wishing I still had the Mentor to fight with, yearn after, and fear.  At least that lit a fire under me.

The Ghosts of Easters Past

Easter was never a big thing with me, which makes sense, as I am not Christian. Being raised as a secular socialist I was not strictly Jewish either - certainly neither my mother nor her parents observed Passover.

I did, however, fall into the habit of going to church to hear music on Easter. Mostly it was my partner's idea, but I went along, perhaps in memory of being taken to church on Easter by my mother - to hear music of course.

Easter 2003

This was the year that we got up too late to go to one of the Episcpal churches that featured good music, so we went to the local Unitarian church instead. I had fond memories of singing in the Unitarian church choir in Brooklyn, which at that time did have quite a bit of classical music. My more recent brush with Unitarianism had been less positive - I had attended a service at a church in Provincetown that was full of what I term Unitarianism's "hippie-ish silliness", a blend of tiresome pop psych and music from the druggie sixties, recycled as something "spiritual". The minister at the 2003 Easter service (whom I recognized as having once been a well-known journalist - which is what she should have stuck with, being a superb writer and an extremely unempathic person) said "even if you don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead, it's still a nice story". This grabbed us because we don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but were pleased that the minister referred to this story, as it was Easter. My partner and I became members of this church.

Easter 2004

Falling after the life-changing events of February 15, 2004, this Easter featured my singing a duet by Mendelssohn called "They have taken away my Lord" (Easter was the only time Jesus was allowed to be referenced in this church, which I, despite my atheistic parentage, found quite silly) with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed. There was lots of flirting and he made numerous jokes about his personal identification with Mary Magdelene. The choir sang a piece called "The Polish Easter Carol" in which I was bullied into singing a high B flat at the end. I am not a soprano, certainly not a high one, but I was the closest thing they could find to one in this amateur choir. That note loomed before me throughout the entire service.

Easter 2005

By now my relationship with The Mentor had become quite tarnished. He agreed to let me sing "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" in the service. There was quite a brouhaha about this, which I have discussed in this post which as I said represented exactly the sort of left-wing provincialism that I detest. But what I have not yet mentioned was the Sondheim-torturing-Stritch singing "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunch" ringer that The Mentor took me through the Saturday before. I probably sang "Redeemer" 17 or 18 times in his studio (who sings something that many times the day before a performance?) and each time he panned it, if not for one reason, then for another. After I sang it Easter Sunday, he put his thumbs down and made a face. So much for the first principle of Unitarianism "Belief in the inherent dignity and worth of every human being". No, I don't think I sounded bad, but I was so exhausted that when I went for the High B flat in the Easter Carol nothing came out. Oh, and did I mention I hadn't eaten anything the night before but had spent the entire night crying?

Easter 2006

I had a paying job singing the soprano line in the Halleluia Chorus, somewhere in New Jersey. Because I was getting paid, I felt entitled to sing as loud as I needed to to keep my larynx down, and actually got through the entire bloody piece without a mishap.

Easter 2007-2010

At the Lutheran church. Singing the soprano part in the Halleluia Chorus. Made gunshy by the glares that told me to keep the volume down, I was never able to sing all of the following: the High A on "he shall reign", and the last two rounds of Kings and Lords on the F and the G. If I was lucky I got two out of three. I coined the name "my annual battle with the KingznLordz"

****************************************************************

This Easter I decided to say goodbye to the KingznLordz forever and ever. With two trained coloraturas in the choir, why should I kill myself? The alto part is not much fun either, for other reasons. Too low, with nothing to show off my lovely mezzo legato line. Oh well. We never use it as a choir anthem anyhow. It's mostly on the program because the congregation knows it.

I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my partner for the first time in almost five months, ate too much gelato, and had a sleepover.

Tomorrow I am getting back to Amneris and Azucena. If I want to sing high notes, that's the rep where I should be singing them.

Love Your Voice

I hadn't expected to write anything else so soon, but was going to wait until after my marathon of Duruffle (solo from Requiem), Mozart (teeny weeny solo in Requiem and alto chorus part), and, what I sarcastically refer to as my "Annual Easter Battle with the KingznLordz", which I may pass up this year and sing in a more comfortable range forevah and evah!! but the jury is still out on that one!

However this post by the wonderful "Avocational Singer" was too good to pass up.

All I can say is yes, yes, yes.

These are the things I have learned to do over the decades, and which I do now. Unfortunately, I didn't do them when I was of an age to be on the verge of a career. First I smoked and drank (I laugh and say that I sang all the Gilbert and Sullivan contralto roles as a chain smoking underweight 22 year old and now sing Yum-Yum's "The Sun Whose Rays" at 60), and later, even after I had stopped doing those things, I continued to starve myself so that I could fit into a size 29 jeans (many women, including many singers, usually with lighter voices, are that size naturally, but I was not)and was caught up in a lot of Lesbian "PC silliness".

Would I have done more of those things if I had had a mentor?

Well, the jury is still out on that one, too.

Music and Mentors

There's not enough time before my Pilates class to do any work, so I might as well write. I haven't posted anything for a while, and I now have a new subject. It's an expansion of one of my pet subjects, that I addressed in this post - mentors.

Apparently a well-known diva has set up what she calls a "mentoring house" - a place for conservatory students and other young singers to live and have access to her archives, coaching, and other advice.

I don't know what the criteria are for getting to do this, but I've now met a young woman who is living there. Yes, she's good, but so are numerous other young singers whom I've met who are struggling on their own. Apparently she met The Diva in a masterclass. Did she stand out? I have no idea.

I never had a mentor, unless you count The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed and the problem with him was not only his toxic flirting (he was gay, so he was "only kidding" although he really had me fooled!) but his capriciousness. Basically after a certain point he got bored with me and wanted to move on to other "finds", in addition to having gotten an earful about how much the congregation of this UU church disliked operatic singing (boy am I glad to be outta there - a subject for another post)!

My current voice teacher, whom I've known for years, was never a mentor either, and come to think of it, he never had a mentor which is why he never had a career. A man with a dramatic voice like that, who can sing every tenor role Wagner ever wrote, half of Verdi's, and many Verdi baritone roles as well, should have been better known.

I think when my rather wistful envy of this woman and her mentoring situation (actually, she doesn't look very happy most of the time so I can't say I really envy her) turned to total dumbfoundedness was yesterday, when she mentioned not owning a black dress, and said she would "see if she could get Diva to buy her one!!" Apparently Diva had gone through this woman's wardrobe (part of mentoring, no doubt) and made her throw out half of it because it didn't fit. Well, yes, clothing is part of being a singer.

I suppose both my mother and my partner were mentors of a sort, just never about singing, which is what I desperately longed for. My mother made me a writer, by example, and it was because of my adolescent moonlighting as her proofreader that I was able to sidle into a professional editorial job with really no formal training. And my partner went shopping with me for the "right" clothes for a senior executive. Yes, they made me look frumpy and totally sexless, not to mention that they were too big, but it was her attempt to help me have a "career" (so that she would always be assured of a breadwinner in her life - no, don't go there!!)

Yesterday I had a reasonably happy day. The church where I sing observed Palm Sunday, which was her favorite holiday. She wanted to come but couldn't, so I brought her palms and made her favorite soup. During the soupmaking, she despaired of my not understanding the "right" way to chop parseley with a big knife. I asked her what the big deal was and she said "Well, I won't always be around, you know." Come to think of it she was my kitchen mentor as well. She taught me how to cook. (So I could cook for her?) In any event, I suppose that was a form of mentoring.

If I were a better person I might be more appreciative and less envious, but - I'm not!

On Writing, Not Singing

Over the weekend, I went to an LGBT themed brunch, where I must admit, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite; on the other hand, I still certainly count as solidly B.

In any event, I met someone there who is a high-level Broadway producer, and when another one of the guests mentioned that he had written something and the producer politely agreed to look at it, I just bit the bullet and told him about my play Duet. (If anyone is interested in reading it, you can post a comment with your real email address - which I will delete later if you ask me to). I don't actually know how this play got written. My mother always wanted me to "be" a writer (I - to my disappointment - got the English medal not the music medal when I graduated from High School) so I probably do write a lot better than I sing, but I had never written fiction before.

But when all the brouhaha was going on with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed, and there was really no one I could talk to because everyone I knew was either a friend of my partner's or of his, this play just sort of wrote itself. I mean he was very funny and a bit pretentious. An excellent voice teacher, yes, but besides his not knowing the difference between being seductive and being supportive, or being seductive and being appreciative, or what you will, he also did spout a lot of new-agey claptrap that was quite funny when I put it all down on paper.

The line of the decade (after hearing me sing "Mon Coeur)":

TMWSNBD: What are you singing about there. Translate it for me.

ME: My heart opens at your voice like a flower at the kiss of dawn.

TMWSNBD: Sooooooo. What kind of flower do you think she's talking about?

This play did have its world premier at a small community theater in Texas and sitting in the audience hearing people laugh at the lines I had written, which came from the torment I had suffered, just put me over the moon. I think the play is really good. It's funny and well-written. If it were a movie it would be called a "chick flick". The off-Broadway theaters I had sent it to weren't interested....not edgy enough, but even people from there seemed to be impressed with it.

So who knows? Maybe that tortured and transformative phase of my life will live on forever?

Mentors

I have been wanting to make a post on this subject for a long time, and am now inspired to by the circulation of a New York TIMES review of a new book called Bounce.

The thrust of the book (or of the review, in any event) is that hard work is much more important than talent. That high achievers (in sports, the arts, or chess) differ from others in that they spend hours practicing, in a fashion the author calls "chunking". (Brings to mind all the blood, sweat, tears, and obsessive thinking I've brought to that Amneris/Radames duet lately.)

Yes, in the talent/hard work debate I've always known that hard work trumps all, but there's a third factor that was not mentioned, at least in the review.

Mentors.

Now I am not referring to the silly (and ungrammatical)cliche "It's not what you know it's who(sic) you know". I'm not talking about using connections (with or without money or sex) to buy what you want. I'm talking about having the right person or persons in your life at the right time, to give you that extra push, pep talk, compliment, or whatever, to let you know that your talent (and the hard work needed to nurture it) matters.

I think in hindsight that my overwhelming obsession with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed stemmed from his being exactly the sort of person I am talking about. If I had met him 40 years ago, and he had held the side order of flirting - or not; maybe that was what carried the message - the course of my life might have changed significantly. But by the time he appeared I was well into my 50s, a minimum of fifteen years (and that's pushing it) past the age when any serious managers, coaches, directors, or producers would give a rat's tushy if I could sound like one of the Met mezzos with a little polishing. So for good or ill (and the jury continues to be out on this) all I got out of it was a homemade production of Samson et Dalila, a gig as an unpaid church soloist, and a chance to explore my own talent as a superannuated wannabe.

But suppose I had had someone when I was younger? Suppose my mother had nurtured my singing the way she nurtured my writing? Suppose a teacher in school had noticed my voice and taken me under her wing. I know every time I mention this I sound like a disgruntled Tea Partyer, but it's really true that in Brooklyn c. 1965, in my large public high school, the Black and Latino students were encouraged so sing (or dance, or play sports) and the white and Asian students were encouraged to take advanced calculus and elective civics. My mother and her friends all loved classical music, even opera (although my mother would only go to hear Mozart, Wagner, or something contemporary) but thought my interest in performing was "silly" and that I should be out protesting the VietNam War, writing modernist poetry, or, if I was going to sing, doing something edgy and avante garde. I liked Verdi??? How middlebrow.

And then there was my smoking habit. True, no one encouraged it, but no one, not even the voice teacher I went to for a few casual lessons, sat me down and read me the riot act, saying that I had an unusual talent and that if I didn't quit smoking immediately I would ruin it. (And yes, so what if I gained 10 or 15 pounds!)

When I finally put all my destructive addictions behind me and began really singing well, there was the issue of my partner. When I fell in love with her at 25 I had no idea I was marrying an ideology not just a person. And that ideology had no room for non-income-generating activities involving spending lots of time with straight men, not to mention as sexist an art form as opera. And I was young and impressionable and bought into it. And despite having a good voice teacher, who told me all the right things regarding how and what to sing, there was no one taking a holistic approach to my life.

So what I'm saying here is that not only is talent not enough, hard work is not enough either if no one really cares. If you don't make the right connections. If the road you choose is going in the wrong direction to nurture your talent and encourage your hard work, rather than in the right one.

Well, I guess since I can't turn back the clock, I'll just have to go back to "chunking".

Singing Makes It All Better

I haven't been having an easy time lately. I am worried about my finances (I don't want to cannibalize my 401ks) and exhausted by eldercare.

But when I sing, particularly when I sing well, or have a plan for someplace to sing next, all feels right with the world. I know this is probably foolish since I'm almost 60 and no matter how well I sing will never have a "career", but there you have it.

First, regarding the tenor. He wants to do Carmen (easy sing, lots of sex)and we're looking at the Fall of 2011. I will touch base with him again this Fall.

Next, I had a lesson yesterday. I can feel that my teacher is really excited about how I sound singing Amneris (despite lingering difficulties with those bloody B flats - more on that later) and he's also excited about singing the duet with me. Interestingly, he's still the only person who doesn't use the "D" word when describing my voice - he still calls me a "big lyric" - but he said I have real power in the upper register. The higher I sing the bigger my voice gets (which may explain why I hit a brick wall at A natural and have to push past it)but he's a little reluctant to call me a dramatic since I don't have a big middle. He did say that the conformation of my voice is more "old fashioned" (Simionato-like) than Zajick-like in that I don't shift to a lighter position for high notes. I have tried and tried and tried that and all it does is create tension so my teacher has helped me stay with the low larynx position. Actuall I think I figured out how to handle the B flats - if I raise my ribcage (and my arms) that pushes my larynx down and makes it easier to sing up the scale. In any event, the Judgment Scene is going really, really, well. I have always had a big, easy powerhouse A which is the note featured in that scene. And I've also learned to keep the drama in the scene by observing the dynamic markings not by feeling something myself. (I can hear The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed telling me "You're not supposed to feel anything, you're supposed to make the audience feel something.")

Speaking of Himself, rather ironically, it turns out that the pianist who will be playing for us isn't set up with a piano in his studio yet, because he just moved here, so we may be using the basement of the Unitarian Church to rehearse with him. If so, it will be interesting to see what Himself thinks of this duet, if he's around to kibbitz. (If I haven't mentioned it before, we did make peace and he was very supportive and professional with me about my performance of "O My Lyre Immortelle" back in January.)

Am I a Novelty?

Seeing the movie Julie and Julia changed my life. No, I don't cook, but I sing opera. I am not a professional opera singer. I am an almost-60-year-old unpaid choir soloist who is polishing both my oratorio rep, which runs the gamut from "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth" and "Rejoice Greatly" to "Liber Scriptus", and my opera rep, which seems to fall under the Fach known as "baby dramatic mezzo". Seeing Julie and Julia made me realize that you don't have to have a major talent to be a celebrity, all you have to do is chronicle what you're doing and hope someone else finds it interesting. After all, I'm sure even Julie herself would admit that she was neither a great cook nor a great writer - just someone who was passionate about cooking who had a knack for self-promotion.

I have kept a private blog for years under a pseudonym (and yes, you will have to waterboard me to get the link to it). Most of what I wrote about had to do with my singing with odds and ends about my personal life thrown in. Since I want people "out there", whoever you are, to read about my life as a mature avocational singer, I decided to go public.

My Autobiography in Brief

I fooled around in what I now know was known as "the opera underground" in the 1970s when I was in my 20s. Since I had only recently quit smoking and kept myself thin enough to fit into a size 29 jeans by living on yoghurt and peanuts, my voice was quite small and my stamina minimal. So I specialized in "trouser roles". My last hurrah (in 1980)was singing the role of Laura in La Gioconda, by which point my voice had gotten some more heft to it. That was the last time I sang in public until I was "discovered" in 2003, singing from a hymnal from a back pew in my local Unitarian Church, by a charismatic figure who was the main influence on my life and art for the next six years at least. I have written about him at length elsewhere and will not do so here, suffice it to say that I reacquainted myself with solid vocal technique, learned something about the Dalcroze method, shed many tears, retooled my self-image, and decided that I wanted to sing seriously more than anything else in the world.

I was a regular soloist at that Unitarian church for two years and then moved on. I was told that Lutheran churches like operatic voices, so I found a lovely church fairly near where I live with a superb music director. I am not primarily a choral singer so "blending" in the choir while developing what has turned out to be a quite large operatic mezzo voice has been a big challenge, albeit not an insurmountable one. I usually sing second soprano, and sing solos at least once a season.

Since in my new incarnation as a rather more zaftig, larger voiced mezzo I developed an intense emotional relationship with the role of Dalila (people who know me from elsewhere have heard quite a lot about this!) I decided to "actualize" my dream of singing this role and put on a bare bones concert version at the Lutheran church mentioned above.

My current teacher (the one I had studied with in the 1970s, who has done nothing but good things for me) says that even though I am almost 60, I can probably continue to sing the "baby dramatic" mezzo repertoire for another 5-10 years. I take very good care of myself. In fact I am probably much healthier than I was in my 20s.

In addition to spinning my wheels as to where I can put on my next opera in concert, I also audition regularly for no-pay no-fee productions listed as being for "emerging pro" singers. One company out and out said (politely) that I was too old, even though the role I was auditioning for was La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica. The rest have yielded nothing, but the experience of auditioning is good for me. It keeps it real. If nothing else, spending $10-$25 to put on a fabulous looking dress, stand up in front of several people, and sing (and present) an aria as best as I can, is worth a lot more to me than a movie ticket.

Starting this blog is also my way of saying that even if you don't, I take myself seriously as a singer.

A bientot.