The Lavender Scare, Bohemia, and How I Got Where I Am

In this post, I wrote about how my life was when I first met my partner; the Never Never Landishness of it all.  How exciting it was to me as a 25 year old with no education and no work history (but now sober and madly in love) to be embedded in a community where "real" jobs and careers seemed optional.

More than 30 years later (in fact for the past 10) I have bemoaned in a big way the hole in my life resulting from not having and never really having had, meaningful work.  Yes, I had jobs, and thankfully most of them were good jobs with benefits, so I am now semi-retired with a nice little nest egg and good health insurance subsidized by my last employer.  I have a lot of former colleagues, who are friends in a way, some of whom are a source of the modest amount of freelance work I do to supplement my Social Security.  But I never trained for a profession that I loved, even one I eventually failed at.  Jobs were a necessary evil.  The one thing I really wanted to do, sing classical music, seemed totally out of reach (largely, but not entirely, as a result of my own self destructive behavior). This post (by way of the "not entirely") describes (in my rather immature voice of almost 10 years ago LOL) some of the battles I would have had to fight in my chosen community if I went down that route.  So if I wasn't going to sing, I could be a professional Lesbian.  What did that mean exactly?  To me it meant taking any job, the "low-hanging fruit", which for me meant working as a secretary at a publishing house, being out, letting the chips fall where they might, and raising people's consciousnesses.  Because typing, organizing an office, proofreading, and copy editing were skills I had learned at my mother's knee, and the publishing business seemed the least unfriendly place to be "out", particularly if you were willing to stay in a lower level job (which I did for quite some time, but not permanently), I more or less stayed there, until all the life was sucked out of the industry and if I hadn't retired, I probably would have become a living, breathing, machine doing the same mindless things over and over.

A few nights ago I watched this film and suddenly had an "aha" moment.  Although I knew that when I was growing up all gay men and Lesbians were in the closet at work (although for many it was an open secret), I had no idea of the mass firings that had occurred in the early 1950s.  That would have been when I was a small child, but the fallout lasted for decades.  These were people who were the cream of the crop, with advanced degrees, people who had indeed trained themselves for professions that they loved, working in the State Department.  Not only were they summarily fired, they were not allowed to speak in their own defense or hire attorneys.  For most of them their careers were ruined.  Many fell into poverty.

One thing I noticed when I first became involved with the Lesbian Community (this was about 5 or 6 years after Stonewall) was the big time "work-aversion" of so many of these women, my partner included. A lot of them were on Welfare.  Whenever I hear the phrase "welfare cheat", I don't see the face of a Black woman with children, I see "Blue", the butch Lesbian who somehow managed to bilk the government out of SSDI for decades by telling them she was going to AA meetings (true) and that the idea of working made her clinically anxious (not).  Those not on Welfare worked odd jobs: babysitting, dog walking, house painting, being a typist sent out to different places by a temp agency. Poverty was a badge of honor. Maybe a number of these women had been cruelly fired by establishment organizations or were afraid they would be.  My partner, who had had several high level jobs at photography magazines in the decade before I met her, said that she lost the will to show up for work after she broke up with her parther (the one before me) and couldn't talk to anyone about her unhappiness because she had to stay in the closet.  She never recovered or worked in a professional job again.  A number of these voluntarily underemployed women had had a "Seven Sisters" education.  There was a former librarian who became and exterminator (she claimed she actually made more money as an exterminator but she had no benefits).  Of course there were several exceptions.  There was the doctor who treated patients at the free clinic who also had an ER job (no one in an ER really cares whom you sleep with), and her partner, an accountant, who did people's taxes (mostly in the gay community).  And there were lawyers and a tiny handful of academics.  And of course all those women, like me, working in the publishing industry.

By the time I had my first full-time job, "out" gays and Lesbians had been around for a while so I doubted that I would get fired for having a picture of me and my partner on my desk and answering honestly if anyone asked about it, but until the mid-90s, I never saw any "out" gay person in a higher level job.

So that's the story.  Careers were not the Holy Grail in those days for gays and Lesbians, apparently we had learned our lesson in the early 1950s and it stayed in our DNA for a long time.

As for my dream of becoming an opera singer while being "out"? That was in 1977-1980 and Patricia Racette, the first "out" Lesbian opera singer, to my knowledge, didn't appear with her coming out statement in Opera News until 2002.

ETA: I began singing, the second time, in 2004.  Coincidence anyone?

Plans for the Fall and Plans for the Future

I now have two concerts planned for the Fall.  The first is in late October and will be at the nursing home with the large theater, where I have already sung twice.  So far this has been my favorite place to sing because it is large enough to invite guests and we usually get a large audience.

The second is in early November at a facility on the Upper East Side, near Sotheby's, where I have never sung.  It apparently only has an upright piano but I was told that there would be room to invite guests.  I will go take a look at the room some time in October.

What will be on the program is not definite yet.  My teacher had some minor surgery so I have not wanted to bother him about the dates. I made the November date definite because as I have never sung there, I can do my solo recital, if necessary with piano solos in between the sets. 

If my teacher is available and in good health, we will be singing two operatic duets, the one from Anna Bolena and the one from Samson et Dalila, and then we will each sing an aria and about three lighter pieces (mine would be "Vanilla Ice Cream", "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", and "Home Sweet Home").  If he is not available (or only feels up for singing a few musical theater songs) I will do the solo recital but will swap out "Tanti Affetti" for "Bel Raggio Lusinghier" from Semiramide (it's going well so far) and swap out "Jubal's Lyre", which I've been struggling with, for Prince Orlofsky's welcome aria which is the perfect thing to start with and would make a nice pair with the "Drinking Song".

As for plans for the future, I finally think that I feel things falling into place in a way that makes me feel that my life has meaning and holds together.  I still hate what I do for a living, but it is the most convenient way for me to make an adequate amount of money working the hours I want or need to work any given week.  At the age of 68 I have accepted that I will never be willing (yes, I have to use that word) to put in the superhuman amount of work (and expense) necessary to train for a career that I would love.  I hate academics, for one thing.  This took me over 60 years to realize, but yes.  I am smart, have a high IQ, have always done well on standardized tests (the kind that require that you think fast on your feet), and love to read fiction; I'm well versed in current events and am "cultured" (and not just in my own area of classical music), but I simply don't have the mental fortitude to plow through "academic blather".  I always wondered if I had ADHD, which I very well might.  Coffee calms me down, for example.  In any event, I want to spend my golden years out and about.  I spend enough time cooped up with articles to edit and that's enough.

Harder and sadder than giving up the idea of a "career", is realizing that I will never be able to sing leading roles with any of the "amateur" opera groups around here, not even the most humble (the one where people sing through an opera from books in someone' living room).  Producing something similar involves too much administrative work (and rejection by people who get better offers and do a bunk, not to mention that they never invite me to do anything), so I have settled for solo recitals in nursing homes.  I have already written at length about that, and I have made a decision to love it, not see it as "second best". I love working with the elderly (I think I'm better at that than working with children although I want to continue what I'm doing with children to broaden my life; I don't have any children who might have children or any siblings who might have children and grandchildren.)

And I have decided that when my Angel gets her wings, if I am still mobile and of sound mind, I would like to work with seniors with dementia.  There are all sorts of things I can do with them, including broadening out from doing concerts (which I will still be doing if I am in good voice and good health) to singing their favorite songs with and for them at their bedsides.  This is a long-term plan, and not one I want to delve too deeply into, because right now I have my Angel and can do these things with her, but it is a assurance to me that life will go on.  I don't think I would need academic credentials to do this as a volunteer; I'm sure my life experience with my partner and my musical background would be enough.

So this will be a life.  Not a boastworthy Upper West Side life, but a good one.

2018 Recital, Take Three, and How I Got Happy

This afternoon I sang my 2018 recital program for the third time.  It was at a new senior residence, with a room that was too small for me to invite guests, although the piano was good.  I didn't feel that I sang as well as the first two times (my highest notes didn't sound as good) but my teacher said that the problem was that the room had a low ceiling which muffled the sound, so that my voice didn't "spin".

But the audience was appreciative, except for one woman who glared and only applauded selectively (she did not applaud for "Tanti Affetti" but did for "Cruda Sorte" and "Mon Coeur"), and then left.

I certainly would be happy to sing there again.

I think this is the last time for this particular program, and I may retire "Tanti Affetti" for quite some time now.

My teacher and I are discussing reviving our 2015 concert of duets.  We may replace the Gioconda material with a duet from Favorita, which means that I will sing the aria from Favorita as well.  Actually, I should call it Favorite, because my teacher is singing one of the bass roles in French, so he will give me a copy of the music for the duet and my aria in French.

And if we do that particular concert we will do the Enrico/Giovanna duet from Anna Bolena, which I love.

Something I realized yesterday is that I am probably happier now than I have been in close to 15 years.  I was very happy for the most part in my 30s and 40s (I was not singing then, but did a lot of traveling and socializing and had one "fun" job, which, although mainly about paper pushing, had all sorts of meetings, lunches, and business trips interspersed between the dull work, which was how things were back before the Internet.  I mean I love the Internet, but it definitely drained all the "social" out of a lot of boring jobs.)  In my 50s I was happy somewhat, but my relationship with my partner definitely had begun to deterioriate.  I was working very hard at a senior management job, and coming home and making dinner because - what - she had arthritis??? And she was becoming more and more disagreeable.  Then I discovered singing, and The Mentor, and all bets were off.  I became someone else.  I don't want to rehash all that here; I have done it enough.  During that period I was often euphoric, so I suppose that was a form of happiness, but then everything came crashing down.  My relationship with him became abusive, I found the minister to be unsympathetic, and she decided to do away with all the classical music.  So I was pretty much vocally homeless.  I discovered (over a period of 10 years at least) that no matter how well I thought I sang, I would never be competitive on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where as soon as one group of "emerging professionals" moved on, another took their place.  No "amateur" opera group wanted me; they could get professionals.  And I felt beset on all sides.  If I wanted to produce something myself it was hard to get people to come (who would want to come to a homemade concert of opera scenes if they could hear real music - aka someone's senior recital at one of the three conservatories here?)

And on top of all that I had taken early retirement from my job (which I had come to hate) only to replace it with working at home, alone, at my laptop hour after hour, taking breaks by reading blogs of real singers who were never in the same city for more than a few weeks and endlessly posted pictures of themselves in costume or solicited feedback on their latest head shots.  And I felt totally misunderstood. If I posted or blogged things about how unhappy my colorless life was making me, I was told to just "pull up my socks" because of all the people who had suffered major tragedies who nonetheless always had a full social calendar (I am thinking of one woman in particular who trashed me in a comment to a personal blog - not this one - when she hardly knew me). 

Things began to improve when I turned 66 and could collect Social Security.  I decided that I would never have a "dream career" (musical or not) so I just had to hold my nose, spend 20 hours a week at home copyediting, and then fill my life with nonremunerative activities that I found fulfilling.  Then my partner got on Medicaid.  In some ways, my life as a caregiver looks harder, because I am responsible for coordinating her round the clock care and managing her business affairs, but it really isn't.  I'm an unpaid Geriatric Care Manager, which is certainly a much more interesting "job" than being a full-time freelance copyeditor (being a part-time one I can stomach) and more importantly, I feel that what I do matters.  I am making the end of someone's life more comfortable and sweeter than it would be otherwise.

As for singing, ironically, despite the fact that I keep singing better and better, that singing is easier and easier, my range is wider, and I have more stamina, I have made my peace with the fact that there is no place for me in the "world" of singing as singers (I mean the "Forum Crowd") experience it.  That's OK.  I have made a specialty now of singing in nursing homes.  The audiences are appreciative and I don't have to worry if my friends do or don't come.  Some of the facilities are large enough to accommodate guests, others are not, but for the ones that are, if five of my friends come, that's enough.  And I even got some nice videos.  I don't go to the opera, even though it's around the corner.  And while I would go to something at Lincoln Center if someone bought me a ticket (or someone wanted to go and we made it a social thing), I will never go to any performances by all those opera companies that rejected me.  And except for a handful of people who have gone out of their way to be supportive and nice, I have unfriended all the singers I once friended because I envied and admired them.  My mornings with Facebook are much happier now that most of my interactions (usually with people from church or former coworkers) involve more parity and less of a feeling that I am an unwanted tagalong, only suffered if I know my place.

For now, anyhow, I am contented being a small town girl who just happened to be born in a big city and never moved.

Why You Haven't Heard from Me

These days I have a lot of worries, beyond the usual existential distress (actually I have had less of that because real life worries trigger actions and actions preclude same old/same old, which is what usually causes the distress).

1. I have waited seven years (since I stopped working full time) to collect my full retirement amount from Social Security.  Because of bureaucratic snafus, it feels like it is hanging in the balance.  I know it really isn't; everyone gets their Social Security, and I have gotten letters for years telling me how much I will get.  I applied online in April.  I went to their offices in May and was told I would get my first payment in August because my birthday is in July.  To date, however, when I check my application online, it says "we have not yet made a decision".  Huh?  I called the office twice (which meant being on hold for more than 30 minutes - ok since I have a land line and can stick it under my ear and do something else) once in June and once at the beginning of this month.  I'm told that everything is ok - they have huge backlogs and they will get to my application in time.  So I am sitting on pins and needles (I plan to check online again tomorrow).
2. The (boooring) work I have been doing at home ever since I left my last full time job has started to dry up because it is being outsourced to India.  This is happening just at the moment I had thought everything would be ok - that the money I would get from Social Security plus the small amount I had been earning should enable me to live decently without taking any more money out of savings, which is what I have been partially living on for the past few years.  So now I have to scrounge around for more work.  If I didn't have caregiving responsibilities I would try to find a part-time job outside the house, and may even do that yet, although I doubt I would make the hourly rate that I can make freelancing. The irony (reference lack of distress above) is that I am actually enjoying myself more than usual because I am not stuck here at the laptop.
3. My lease is up for renewal and I haven't gotten the letter.  That's a false worry; I have lived here for 30 years and I am entitled to a lease renewal.  My renewal date got pushed from September to October last time (which yielded me a huge savings as the new rent increases beginning in October of 2014 were tiny) so now I guess it will get pushed ahead to November, which won't change the increase, just have it kick in later.  This afternoon I will write to one of my neighbors who is a lawyer, and ask her how to craft an email to the landlord (I have the old one, I think).
4. My 20 year old cat is dying.  I don't know how long that process will take.  Right now she is not suffering, so I want to keep her here, but she is behaving differently (sleeping on the rug in the kitchen instead of in my bed, for example, and eating less).

Other than that my life is pretty much the same.  I feel guilty that I don't make posts about all the tragedies/horrors/disasters that keep happening in this country but really what is there to say? There is nothing I can say that hasn't been said hundreds of times by other people, so what I do is read, watch a good news station (MSNBC) and keep myself informed.  I don't really feel anything about all this although I do have strong opinions; I just don't express them as well as the micropunditocracy (by that I mean some of my friends and acquaintances - usually younger and with advance degrees) who know how to pontificate and spew out data.  I can't think of anything I can personally do (other than vote!!!) to have any impact here, so I might as well tend to my own garden which is way too spare and needs seeding.

Singing is basically going well.  I keep singing better and my voice keeps getting bigger and freer.  The only downside to this is that singing certain kinds of coloratura is harder than it used to be.  I now wish I had not chosen Handel's "O Had I Jubal's Lyre" to sing at my birthday concert (and twice in church) but I will cope.  I certainly have as much breath control as I always did, my voice just no longer skates on the edges of notes if I want to sing fast, the way it used to.

One minor disappointment is that the cost of the Leo Moon Circle in the park (which I had seen as a small birthday present to myself) has been upped from $25 to $39 because they are turning it into a big Lammas celebration.  I feel that that's just a tad too much for me to spend particularly if I am not working and don't have a definite answer about my Social Security payments.  So I may have to forego it, which is just one more reason I hate being poor.  I am going to pay the accompanist for my birthday concert, which is quite a bit beyond my budget, but something I would not deprive myself of (so that will have to be it).

ETA: This afternoon's mail brought a letter from Social Security confirming that I will start getting payments at the end of August.

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.

Who Needs to Sing When Life is an Opera?

I very rarely have disruptive physical health problems (my migraines stopped after menopause) but last night I kept waking up and tossing and turning and had mammoth sinus drainage and a headache.  I hadn't used my neti pot yesterday because I hadn't felt the need, and I have been, perhaps, eating too much Greek yoghurt (I still haven't decided whether or not the connection between dairy and mucus is a myth or not), and also, I found myself in the middle of a little online drama.

For whatever reason, I seem to be a magnet for opinionated managerial women, the way some of my female friends and acquaintances have said they are a magnet for creepy guys.  I have no idea why.  Do I seem like I need mothering?  (What I do need, is a little "fathering" as in having someone rich, strong, and physically protective in my life, whatever their biological gender!)

The good news is, that all this tossing and turning led to my having a huge insight (although what I'm going to do with it is anyone's guess).  I realized that my love of all the interpersonal drama that, as a matter of course, happens in groups that are stuck together in any setting, e.g., an office, masked how utterly meaningless I found what I actually was doing for a living.  Now that I am stuck with that and only that, it is frustratingly clear.  Actually this happened before I began working at home.  The last few years at my last job, which I had initially loved because I was supervising between 15 and 20 people and spent a lot of time hiring, training, and evaluating them, became Hell (the only time I ever seriously wanted to kill myself was my last few years there) when the lower level staff was replaced with an outsourcing service and my interaction with lower level staff was replaced with hours spent scanning Excel spreadsheets looking for error patterns.

I love group dynamics and interpersonal drama.  That's why I love opera.  That's why I was happy at 12 step meetings when I went regularly and knew everyone, and why I was happy at the LGBT counseling center.  I stopped going to the caregiving group because I was tired of the dysfunctional people and the lesbian bi-phobia, but even there there was something I could sink my teeth into. That's why I was happy in the writing class and at the Moon Circles. (I got to go to one Monday night and actually have fun in the rain!)

Now it's only me and some misplaced modifiers, more or less.

Quite frankly, if I have free time and money, the last thing I want to do with it is go somewhere to "network".  On the other hand, I may be missing something.  When I think of "freelance editorial work" I think of what I, personally, do for a living: read technical articles and clean them up, which occasionally (particularly if it's a social science publication) has the fringe benefit that I learn something about the world that might be of use to me in it.  But there's all kinds of freelance work.  Maybe I might meet someone who edits steamy romance novels.  If I could get a toe into that world maybe I would feel less dreary.  Or maybe someone would be interested in my writing.

So, OK.  I spent an hour last night on drama, and several hours tossing and turning and brooding.

Now it's back to work.  I used my Neti pot and took a migraine pill for good measure, and was pleasantly surprised at how the latter seemed to clear up my sinus headache.

My reward can be doing some work on Carmen.  That B in the "Seguidilla" is getting better and better, whether I decide to sing it in the public performance or not.

Better

I thought several times about deleting my last post but decided to let it stand.  On the other hand, I felt it would be unfair to let that hang as my most recent post, which is the reason for this one.

I am feeling a little better than yesterday.

I think I have to give some credence to the fact that yes, I do have a very depressing life, and it takes its toll.  I have many blessings, things that many people don't have: a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood for very little rent, good health, people who love me, people who like me, good looks (people are always asking me if I'm an actress, which is nice), talents.

On the other hand it is very wearing to spend all day editing medical manuscripts and then have to be constantly dealing with the problems of someone elderly, ill, and often disagreeable.

Most people I know who are my age have a lot more fun than I do and it isn't because they're more imaginative and more optimistic people.  It's because they either have another breadwinner (helpmeet) in their life or they have no one and can do what they please, they do something for a living that fulfills at least some of their spiritual needs, they see, hear, smell, taste, and experience a much broader range of things than I can right now.

But I am going to have my Requiem.  I am going to do what I can to neutralize my fear about that note in "Liber Scriptus" (it is a bear of a note: you have no set up time) and otherwise I am going to enjoy myself.  This is a huge opportunity even if it is one I organized myself.

And I am going to sing "Qui Sedes" in the Spanish Good Friday service and sing an art song called "Asturiana" by de Falla on "El Salvador Sunday".

I will live to strut my stuff another day.

Groping for a Resolution

This title, I see now, is actually a double entendre.

New Year's is almost upon us, and there is the pressure to make a New Year's resolution.  But what?  I have just about finished with the Artist's Way commitment. I mean, I believe that that program changed me forever. It is right up there with AA and the Well Spouse. Actually, a lot of what I learned from the Artist's Way is similar to what I learned from The Mentor: to make my life a feast for the senses even if my daily circumstances are not. I feel that I had made a lot of headway, particularly at Christmas. I knew I wasn't going to get any presents (and hence not give any, except to the needy) so I would have to find something else to do. I bought a small tree and decorated it, and got one for my partner. I put the expensive plaid sheets on her bed and made bean soup with red tomatoes and green basil. And I sang in a Christmas Eve service. Even though I wasn't a soloist (there weren't any), still, being a part of something that beautiful made Christmas Christmas.

I am trying to learn what my triggers are for getting depressed.  The first is spending too many hours indoors working.  So I made the choice to work no more than 30 hours a week, even if it means taking money out of savings.  In four more years I will be able to collect my full retirement amount from Social Security and if I add that to my earnings I will have almost as much as I had when I worked full time in a management position.

But today I realized another trigger, which is hearing what I call simplistic, dismissive,  "anything is possible if you want it enough" talk.  Someone posted something on Facebook saying "if you don't love what you do find another career" huh???  So I saw this just as I was telling myself to be grateful that I had a paycheck, a cheap and decent place to live, a small safety net, and that there were many people in this country now who had lost all of the foregoing, not to mention the many many people who never had it to begin with.

But every time I hear something like that I backslide spiritually.  I think: what's wrong with me? Why am I still trapped with dull work?  How did I end up here?  Am I a failure because I sit for hours cleaning up punctuation when what I dream of doing is strutting my stuff "out there" some way, some how.

I did all I could.  I got a year of career counseling.  I don't blame the counselors, or myself.  Repackaging a 60 year old with a time limit before her severance pay runs out, and eldercare responsibilities, in a bad economy, is not like redecorating your living room. It is something for which there is a slim likelihood. I was lucky there was work of any kind to be had, so I grabbed it - what they call "the low hanging fruit".

So now I am depressed again.

The Artist's Way tells me that it doesn't matter what I do for a living if that is not something that it is easy for me to change.  I can express the artist in myself in other ways.

So how does that translate into a New Year's resolution?  I think I'm a bit burned out with morning pages and artist's dates, although I think I take the latter from time to time instinctively now.

I am really really enjoying my new iphone.  I have made it a goal to photograph myself in every sexy outfit that I have.  So here are some shots in the drop dead red leotard that I wear to my Pilates class when everyone else is wearing black.

And my final bit of surprisingly happy news is that people love my "Angel" Youtube video.  One of my Facebook friends shared it with a lot of her friends.  It sounds lovely, although I sound like a lyric soprano, not a dramatic mezzo.  Well, I guess it doesn't matter what I call myself.  For me the world ends at A natural for the most part so anything that doesn't go higher than that I can sing.  I would post the video here, but I really can't trust random readers to understand how to put a positive spin on feedback.  I always am happy to receive constructive criticism but as I wrote here this seems to be a learned skill that is less intuitive than I thought. If you know me in real life (or online) and want me to send you the link, just give a shout.

I Need to Get Back to The Artist's Way

When my partner was taken to the hospital, I had finished reading and rereading The Artist's Way and was about to sign a contract to do the program for another 90 days.

I decided to take a break from it until things were settled.

Well, she is coming home Friday with an array of services including a home attendant (no schedule or time frame was specified, but anything is better than nothing) so my plan is to sign that contract on Sunday and get back to the program on Monday.

I have noticed that now that the terror and sadness have left me (my partner will definitely live another day, if not another decade), and the depression (which really had gotten into my bones) has lifted, I am back to my same old same old feeling "cranky" and resentful.

What's important to note here, is that I realize I felt much less cranky when I was involved with The Artist's Way.

First of all, the fact that I chose that as a self-help program to involve myself in, rather than, say, fitness or veganism or meditation or reading the 100 great books, says something about me.  Just as someone's wanting to lose weight or quit smoking says something about them that makes them different from other people who are overweight or who smoke.

When I say "cranky",  here is what I mean (and this is something different from how I feel when I get frustrated when I can't sing something as well as I would like to).

For good or ill, I have a number of working singers and other working artists on my friends list on Facebook.  So every time I read about someone's opera performance, costume fitting, trip, onstage flirtation, detailed character analysis, etc.  it's like a knife going into my heart.

And I feel like a failure.

Not because I am not a professional singer (very few get to be that) but because after all these decades, someone with as big a diva personality as mine (and it is huge) has ended up sitting at a desk cleaning up people's grammar, sending work back to people who don't even know what I look like and could care less, even if they did.

I did all the right things.  I went to career counseling.  I did a self-assessment.  I spent a year there.

When I was involved with the Artist's Way I brooded less about these things.  First of all there was the Artist's Date.  Sometimes I cheated and did something in my apartment, but even in that instance, I made sure it wasn't part of "business as usual" (e.g., if it involved music, it had to entail looking at music that I had no commitment to sing anywhere, which therefore would broaden my horizons).

It taught me that choosing the most beautifully colored heirloom tomatoes at a farmer's market, having a bath with an expensive bubble bar from Lush, or spending time pondering which top, which neckline, and which eyeshadow color I was going to wear that day to Duane Reade made me something.  (And in fact, one day when I stood on the checkout line at Duane Reade itself, a young woman told me how much she loved my makeup and hair.)

The Artist's Way says artists (and by artists they don't just mean "professionals") are cranky when we are not being artists.  So I guess I am not that unusual.

Back "Into" Singing

I think I am finally "into" singing again. I still don't have a lot of time. Even though I've made a decision to turn the task of dismantling my mother's apartment over to professionals (which means that when their fee plus the rent and utility payments on the apartment are deducted from the gross sales it will zero out)I still seem to be busy busy busy.

I think I finally do have enough work to keep me busy for 30 hours a week, I just need to be left alone to do it! So as singing breaks no longer naturally occur (breaks like running out of work until the following morning or the following Monday, or, in the old days, coming home from the office) I need to take at least one a day on days when I'm not rehearsing or having a lesson.

My small role in Carmelites is coming along. I can't believe how hard it is to memorize two bits of extended recitative and a choral section that mostly repeats itself over and over, on the other hand it is totally unfamiliar (unlike, for example, excerpts from Carmen, which I've had in my ear for over 40 years!)

My solo yesterday went well. One of the other singers there, who hadn't heard me for close to a year, told me I was sounding good. I said I had been working hard and she said she could tell. I just wish I were 20 years younger (I'd kill to be 40 again, never mind 28) so that I could do something with all this.

Saturday I gently broke it to my partner that I would be in an intensive rehearsal period and she wasn't thrilled but didn't do something ugly like refuse to have Thanksgiving with me, which she might have. It's sort of like here's where I came in 35 years ago - arguing with her about making time to sing.

What I haven't had time for is work on my big pieces, like the Amneris/Radames duet. That went very well at my last lesson, but I see I have a lesson tomorrow and I haven't touched it. Well, maybe that's for the best. I made a note in my 2011 calendar that in February, after Carmelites is over and after my mother's apartment is empty and "broom clean" (we promised the landlord to be out by January 31) that I need to start planning the concert with my teacher, the Carmen with this guy, and the Amneris/Aida duet, which I am planning to sing in one of my evening classes.

Storm Has Passed

So OK, Gentle Readers. I owe it to you all to let you know I'm feeling a lot better.

First of all, my check came in the mail. The downside of being a freelancer is you never know when you're going to have work and you never know when you're going to get paid for the work that you did. But I wouldn't trade it for the world. Even with all the anxiety, this sure beats the mind-numbing boredom (not to mention all the infantilizing rules) of working in an office, even in a fairly high level job. Believe me, I know.

And second of all, I had a really good practice. Am I really winning the "Battle of the B flat" this time? Well, if nothing else, I am deconstructing this piece way in advance of when I'll have to sing it. When I use some of Agnes Baltsa's tricks, it seems easier. She doesn't take a breath in the middle of the upward progression and she also doesn't sing any words!! Just "Ahh". And she doesn't really do a portamento at the end of the first "Or dal ciel si compira". That's where I was needing a good breath and the portamento didn't allow time for it. Now I have no idea if my teacher will be ok with these tricks, but at least they're helping me get through it. And my voice is a lot more like Baltsa's than like Simionato's or Cossotto's - or Zajick's. I don't have a big chest register and my instrument is more wiry and slender, possibly because however big my hips are on a given year, I have a long narrow head (hence the need for all the big hair).

After singing through the scene beginning at "Ma, s'io ti salva" (which is where you have no breaks) and being happy with it I sang through the Judgment Scene which really, now, is like rolling out of bed.

And I seem to have more stamina singing with the choir. One good thing about having a conservatory-trained soprano sitting next to me (no one else in the section would ever sit next to me - LOL!) is that I can sing with my larynx down and she isn't going to tell me to shut up. Also I can hear her, whether we're singing the same part or she's on soprano 1 and I'm on soprano 2.

One of the pieces we're singing is a spiritual where the whole soprano section sings quite a few high G sharps. Not a difficult note for me but it is if I've got people hocking me to keep the volume down. Also I used to get tired singing in that tessitura but I noticed I didn't last night. So all that is good.

More from May 17, 2008 Samson et Dalila in Concert

OK. this came as a total surprise. I had expected to receive the earlier one seen here, because my friend, who took it with a digital camera and then had to figure out how to make a print of it, told me it was coming. But this one was a complete surprise.

If I haven't mentioned it already, this performance was the culmination of over four years of planning and dreaming of singing this role. It should have allowed me an afterglow lasting several weeks, at least, where I could have been the person who sang that role, talking about it to friends, the way one talks about a prom or a wedding, but it just so happened that the very next day there was some ugliness at work, caused by mistakes that, yes, I was partially responsible for, but that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't outsourced a lot of work to the Philippines! So that work problem ended up front and center on my screen (and everyone else's) which meant no one asked about or was interested in hearing about my special day. (Even I didn't have the energy to deliciously daydream about it.)

I don't know about other people, but for me, a major achievement is special not only in and of itself, but also in that it affects my feelings about myself. So no matter how dreary my daylife was (and believe me, it was dreary!!) to a handful of people on one afternoon, I was a real diva. I mean what I did wouldn't bear discussing with the Forum crowd, who are off auditioning for C and D houses for a paycheck, but to laypeople, I'm a singer.

I've often thought if I had lived in a small town, I would really have been a diva doing something like that, since it would have been the extent of most people's exposure to opera. But not here in the Big Apple, alas.

So now it's back to work. On my art, I mean. And yes, on my freelance editing, which is nice because it's something I do but it doesn't define me. If I walk into the supermarket with all my makeup on, no one knows if I'm a copy editor, a paid performing artist, or a lady of the evening in the morning (apologies to Rogers and Hart).

You Don't Have to "Feel Like"

People who know me in the real world know that I have two elderly family members in a medical crisis at the same time that I'm looking for paying work (either freelance, or a full time job with a somewhat flexible schedule). This does not leave a great deal of time or energy for singing. When I took an "early retirement buyout" from my last (extremely boring and stressful) full time job ("early retirement" means I get health insurance from them not that I get a pension I can live on) I had envisioned spending a lot of time singing, learning music, and "making my own opportunities". It turns out I have had a lot less time for this than I had hoped due to family issues.

However this does not mean that I don't practice every day!!!

Yesterday I had spent the day at my mother's, had several lengthy phone calls with my S.O. about her upcoming surgery, engaged in numerous email exchanges about work, did a grocery shopping and a laundry, and then before I knew it it was 8:30 pm. I had planned to watch and listen to Carmen on P.B.S. (I will post about that later today or tomorrow) so at first I thought, "Oh, heck! I'll skip practicing and just go have my lesson on Friday [which is now today]"

But then I thought, well, "every little bit helps" and I remembered my Handel audition at the end of the month and how the aria is not memorized, the da capo ornaments are not completely sung into my voice and that when I get up there in two weeks I am determined to sing the expletive deleted out of this piece since I will be competing with women 30 years younger with YAPs and conservatory degrees on their resumes.

So I sang a few arpeggios and sang through the aria from start to finish. It's coming along, I'm able to do all the long runs without breathing (the woman on my recording isn't, FWIW!), it's all starting to fall into place, and wow! I felt really happy to have gotten something accomplished!

And I was done by 9:00. And yes, that half hour made a big difference in bringing me closer to my goal.