Well, it seems I am in a writing mode again, although I have not felt like revisiting my memoir.
I thought I was "done" with a lot of the old hurts that I used to write about, but I just found out that once again my teacher is helming a concert with his opera cronies and I am not in it. I am done having an argument with him about this. He will just throw out one excuse after another. I think he began agreeing to participate in nursing home concerts with me because at one point I made noises about leaving him so I could study with a teacher who put on "studio recitals". Then at least I would have something.
Sadly, if I know how to leave "well enough alone", he doesn't. His wife sent me an email about their concert which went out to a large email list of "family and friends". I couldn't help but notice that when she tells people about my concerts with her husband, it's only a few choice people.
Anyhow, when I went for my lesson yesterday I didn't mention the email but when we were done singing my teacher did. So I told him that first, I am not free on Saturdays, and second, that since I resented not being asked to participate, I wouldn't come anyhow. Then he said he knew that. So why did he bring the bleeping subject up???
As I mentioned in my previous post, my anger and sadness about not being able to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies has mostly receded. Partly because of age, as I said. All I really want is to do solo singing in front of an audience, wear something glamorous, and eat up the limelight. So I can do that. Of course it's not all a walk in the park. If I want those things, I have to work hard, which I do. And really church people are a lot nicer than opera people. Interestingly, my teacher and his wife seem to have made a friendly social life in that milieu but I never found those types of classical singers to be a nice bunch.
As to the second subject of this post (I guess it's a "twofer") I got to thinking about Little Women again because of the new movie that has come out. Interestingly, the first chapter of my memoir is partly about my relationship to Little Women and how my mother was bemused by the fact that I did not identify with Jo. "Don't all brainy women see themselves as Jo?" she would ask. Well, first, at 11 or 12 I hardly saw myself as a "brainy woman". I liked to read fiction, but what I liked most was playing the piano and trying new lipstick shades. As for Jo being an "independent woman", well, in 1962 that was not as anomalous as it was in 1862. Most of the young women in their 20s whom I knew worked after they graduated from college. Many eventually married and some stayed home (my mother did that and in fact considered being able to stay home a "privilege") but reading and writing was a calling or a job, not a "lifestyle". I just realized recently that it was probably from reading Little Women and modeling herself on Jo that my mother bought into the trope that "brainy women", women who read and write, don't care about their appearance. I remember her once talking about a close friend and saying "Well Hattie obviously doesn't take herself seriously as an intelligent woman because she dyes her hair." To all these points, growing up I certainly didn't see Jo as "rebellious". She was just like all the "politically correct" women I knew over the years who were always scolding other women for primping, or buying products that they shouldn't. I mean selling her hair for a greater good? How goody two shoes can you get? I mean I think it was a noble sacrifice, but it certainly doesn't fit my definition of "rebellious".
My role model as a 13 year old was Kim Novak's Moll Flanders (and after seeing the movie, I read the book). She looked just like me for one thing (at 13 I was five foot six, weighed 155 pounds, wore a bra size 36D, and despite all that extra weight had a tiny waist). Katharine Hepburn I was definitely not. Recently, I saw the PBS Little Women and decided that if I had to identify with one of the girls it would be Amy. She took herself seriously as a painter and loved pretty clothes, primping, material comfort, and flirting.
Of course I don't think my mother wanted me to grow up to be a literary spinster like Louisa May Alcott. At the end of Little Women, Jo marries a professor many years her senior. My mother did likewise. Was it because she saw herself as Jo, I wonder? Jo loved the professor because he engaged with her writing (even if only to criticize it) not her femininity.
Ironically, I grew up to be a Lesbian who paired off with a butch who loved me for my beauty (in her eyes) and sweetness. When she could afford it she bought me flowers and jewelry.
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
The End of a Decade
I know I owe readers a post (I still seem to have readers, although I have had no new comments for over a year) but I haven't felt much like writing these days. Oddly, I think it's because whether or not I'm happier, I'm more at peace with myself.
First and most importantly, I have found a singing "home": singing concerts and recitals for seniors at nursing homes and other senior venues. I have given up trying to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies. I really am too old. Not from a vocal standpoint, but from the standpoint that not only is my arthritis too limiting for me to run all over a stage (including using stairs and wearing heels), I also don't see myself traveling between the boroughs (or even here in Manhattan) for rehearsals that begin after 7:00 and run as late as 10 pm. These days I wake up between 6 and 7:30 and can barely keep my eyes open by 9:30.
Also church singing. I have decided it doesn't matter whether I am or am not Christian. Church singing is an art form and it's one I am good at. What's important is conveying a message to an "audience" that is meaningful to them. A good high church service is a form of liturgical theater. That is not to say that I am not moved by the spiritual messages (and this church is politically to the far left, so there is a strong social justice message as well). And I have met a nice group of women my age. I am not strictly speaking a "member" of the church, but I do give them money. As I've often said, I feel "too Jewish" to want to be baptised but not "too Jewish" to have a Christmas tree (or to celebrate Christmas in general) or to sing church music. I mean aside from the "star" soloists, the world is full of non-Christians who sing in the sort of big choruses that put on requiems and masses.
As for how church music measures up compared with opera, it requires the same kind of vocal technique but is not as strenuous (the range is more truncated, for one thing) and if you sing in a church you're basically singing one aria or song and the services are in the morning which is a better chronobiological "fit" for me these days.
Right now the most important thing to me is making the end of my partner's life as sweet as possible. All the pieces are in place (Medicaid, hospice) so I just have to stay with her on this journey. I would like to think she will live longer than two months, but I don't know if she will see another Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I am still "orphaned" and can't seem to break through that form of isolation. I have made a lot of new friends, but I am not a priority with them. By the time people are my age they have accumulated a multigenerational family that branches all over the globe, so it seems. My orphan state is the result of 100 years of choices by my forebears.
My father was the only child of an actress who divorced her husband almost immediately after he was born.
My mother had one sister whom she fell out with.
Her sister had one son who isn't interested in "connecting" with me (I made numerous attempts).
His wife is not a "social" being (she is an academic who writes books).
They have one son (he is probably in college by now).
I am an only child.
I have no children.
So I am no one's "obligation". Last year at this time when I was asked what I wanted that I didn't have, interestingly, I didn't mention singing. I said "A birthday celebration that I don't have to plan or pay for" and "someone whose name I can put down on a form as an emergency contact". And both those things are related. I still don't have either. For many people it's a sibling, an adult child, or an adult niece or nephew. They may not be close, but there is duty.
I was told I could have my partner's funeral at the church. If I plan some music, people will come. I don't know what will happen to me when I die. Will I really be in a situation where there is no one left but a lawyer?
First and most importantly, I have found a singing "home": singing concerts and recitals for seniors at nursing homes and other senior venues. I have given up trying to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies. I really am too old. Not from a vocal standpoint, but from the standpoint that not only is my arthritis too limiting for me to run all over a stage (including using stairs and wearing heels), I also don't see myself traveling between the boroughs (or even here in Manhattan) for rehearsals that begin after 7:00 and run as late as 10 pm. These days I wake up between 6 and 7:30 and can barely keep my eyes open by 9:30.
Also church singing. I have decided it doesn't matter whether I am or am not Christian. Church singing is an art form and it's one I am good at. What's important is conveying a message to an "audience" that is meaningful to them. A good high church service is a form of liturgical theater. That is not to say that I am not moved by the spiritual messages (and this church is politically to the far left, so there is a strong social justice message as well). And I have met a nice group of women my age. I am not strictly speaking a "member" of the church, but I do give them money. As I've often said, I feel "too Jewish" to want to be baptised but not "too Jewish" to have a Christmas tree (or to celebrate Christmas in general) or to sing church music. I mean aside from the "star" soloists, the world is full of non-Christians who sing in the sort of big choruses that put on requiems and masses.
As for how church music measures up compared with opera, it requires the same kind of vocal technique but is not as strenuous (the range is more truncated, for one thing) and if you sing in a church you're basically singing one aria or song and the services are in the morning which is a better chronobiological "fit" for me these days.
Right now the most important thing to me is making the end of my partner's life as sweet as possible. All the pieces are in place (Medicaid, hospice) so I just have to stay with her on this journey. I would like to think she will live longer than two months, but I don't know if she will see another Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I am still "orphaned" and can't seem to break through that form of isolation. I have made a lot of new friends, but I am not a priority with them. By the time people are my age they have accumulated a multigenerational family that branches all over the globe, so it seems. My orphan state is the result of 100 years of choices by my forebears.
My father was the only child of an actress who divorced her husband almost immediately after he was born.
My mother had one sister whom she fell out with.
Her sister had one son who isn't interested in "connecting" with me (I made numerous attempts).
His wife is not a "social" being (she is an academic who writes books).
They have one son (he is probably in college by now).
I am an only child.
I have no children.
So I am no one's "obligation". Last year at this time when I was asked what I wanted that I didn't have, interestingly, I didn't mention singing. I said "A birthday celebration that I don't have to plan or pay for" and "someone whose name I can put down on a form as an emergency contact". And both those things are related. I still don't have either. For many people it's a sibling, an adult child, or an adult niece or nephew. They may not be close, but there is duty.
I was told I could have my partner's funeral at the church. If I plan some music, people will come. I don't know what will happen to me when I die. Will I really be in a situation where there is no one left but a lawyer?
Friday, November 15, 2019
Hospitality, Gay Choruses, Waifs, and How All Roads Led to My Weight
Thanksgiving is coming and that is more and more becoming a hard time for me. My partner is dying (I have this on the authority of the hospice nurse; her albumin levels are dropping and her arm circumference is getting smaller). Thanksgiving was our anniversary, although I always celebrate it on November 25 because that was the date. This year the two days are far enough apart that we can have two celebrations. "Celebrating" will consist of figuring out something she is willing to eat and eating it in bed in front of the tv. Probably feeding her as well. She can use her right hand to hold a fork, but she likes being fed. Unless she is eating something sweet, hunger does not motivate her. Thanksgiving is about food and family. For my entire life I had a conflicted relationship with the former, and for good or ill, I do not have the latter. I can't remember the last time I sat at a Thanksgiving table where the people were related by blood. In high school? In my early 20s? When my grandparents were alive and my mother and her sister were still speaking to each other, we all had a meal together. I dreaded these because beginning at the age of 12, I was always on a diet. I had been overweight as a child (actually, certainly by the time I was 12, I was overweight because I was a child; if I had been an adult my BMI at that age would have put me at the top end of "normal") and yearned to be thin. I hated being confronted with mountains of food.
At church last Sunday a friend of mine said that her mother had a "gift for hospitality" and that she had inherited it. (Like so many New Yorkers, she has too small - and perhaps too messy - an apartment to "do" hospitality in, so she cooks for people in the church kitchen.) My mother, too, had a gift for hospitality. Our house was always full of people and she was always serving food. There was a nonstop feast. If I was overweight, my mother was obese. I swore that I would never be like that. My house would not be full of food. Art, yes, pets, yes, books, yes (I did inherit my mother's love of art and books). Food, no. As a young adult things were easier for me. I had learned how to say "no" to food even when it was around. I spent my 20s at Lesbian AA Thanksgivings. None of the women there were on good terms with their parents so we created our own world. I could ignore the food and dance. Or flirt. Finally, I made a modicum of peace with my mother and for years my partner and I would have Thanksgiving dinner at her house. She would invite one or two guests. By then I was a vegetarian and so my mother did not make a traditional Thanksgiving feast. That was not her style of cooking anyhow (I think when she was alive my grandmother had cooked the meal for us.) I am a firm believer that people get the punishments they deserve. Mine, for valuing cultural norms of thinness over family and good fellowship, is spending most holidays with nothing but scraps. Although I cling to how grateful I am that my partner is still alive. When she goes maybe I will leave the country that week, go to a place where no one celebrates Thanksgiving.
This may sound like a non sequitur, but I just found out that my friend Abbie's granddaughter is a Lesbian. She is still in high school. The thrill of her life, according to her mother (Abbie's daughter) is being part of an LGBTQ youth chorus. How wonderful! But here's what I wonder. I got a letter from Abbie's daughter (it was a group email sent to a large number of people, most of whom probably live in the same city where Abbie's daughter and her family live) about the chorus's holiday concert. She and her husband are "patrons". She stressed in the email that her daughter is lucky to have the "blessing" of her parents, that so many of the youth in this chorus have been rejected by their parents and that many are poor and can't get a hot meal, so the chorus serves a hot meal before rehearsal, free of charge. I wonder. When I came out and immersed myself in the Lesbian community, one of the biggest attractions was that it was a world of parent-less peers. Many of those women, too, had been rejected by their parents. Oh, how I envied them! Being a part of that group gave me the courage to push my overbearing Jewish mother out of my life and be myself. When you're a teenager, is something as much fun if your parents approve of it? I don't know, maybe times have changed. I also remember part of the fun being that we didn't have much money (this was in the 70s, when you could still live cheaply in New York) and certainly my partner and I never ate much. Probably only getting one hot meal a week (and living otherwise on nuts and containers of yogurt) at 26 I weighed 20 pounds less than I had at 12.
Was I always looking at everything the wrong way round, I wonder?
At church last Sunday a friend of mine said that her mother had a "gift for hospitality" and that she had inherited it. (Like so many New Yorkers, she has too small - and perhaps too messy - an apartment to "do" hospitality in, so she cooks for people in the church kitchen.) My mother, too, had a gift for hospitality. Our house was always full of people and she was always serving food. There was a nonstop feast. If I was overweight, my mother was obese. I swore that I would never be like that. My house would not be full of food. Art, yes, pets, yes, books, yes (I did inherit my mother's love of art and books). Food, no. As a young adult things were easier for me. I had learned how to say "no" to food even when it was around. I spent my 20s at Lesbian AA Thanksgivings. None of the women there were on good terms with their parents so we created our own world. I could ignore the food and dance. Or flirt. Finally, I made a modicum of peace with my mother and for years my partner and I would have Thanksgiving dinner at her house. She would invite one or two guests. By then I was a vegetarian and so my mother did not make a traditional Thanksgiving feast. That was not her style of cooking anyhow (I think when she was alive my grandmother had cooked the meal for us.) I am a firm believer that people get the punishments they deserve. Mine, for valuing cultural norms of thinness over family and good fellowship, is spending most holidays with nothing but scraps. Although I cling to how grateful I am that my partner is still alive. When she goes maybe I will leave the country that week, go to a place where no one celebrates Thanksgiving.
This may sound like a non sequitur, but I just found out that my friend Abbie's granddaughter is a Lesbian. She is still in high school. The thrill of her life, according to her mother (Abbie's daughter) is being part of an LGBTQ youth chorus. How wonderful! But here's what I wonder. I got a letter from Abbie's daughter (it was a group email sent to a large number of people, most of whom probably live in the same city where Abbie's daughter and her family live) about the chorus's holiday concert. She and her husband are "patrons". She stressed in the email that her daughter is lucky to have the "blessing" of her parents, that so many of the youth in this chorus have been rejected by their parents and that many are poor and can't get a hot meal, so the chorus serves a hot meal before rehearsal, free of charge. I wonder. When I came out and immersed myself in the Lesbian community, one of the biggest attractions was that it was a world of parent-less peers. Many of those women, too, had been rejected by their parents. Oh, how I envied them! Being a part of that group gave me the courage to push my overbearing Jewish mother out of my life and be myself. When you're a teenager, is something as much fun if your parents approve of it? I don't know, maybe times have changed. I also remember part of the fun being that we didn't have much money (this was in the 70s, when you could still live cheaply in New York) and certainly my partner and I never ate much. Probably only getting one hot meal a week (and living otherwise on nuts and containers of yogurt) at 26 I weighed 20 pounds less than I had at 12.
Was I always looking at everything the wrong way round, I wonder?
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Second Concert
Yesterday's concert went very well. I got all the videos and am mostly happy with how I sounded (of course there are a few things that could have sounded better). The only really gauche thing was that I had to stop to drink water (twice!) during the Bolena duet because my throat got dry and there were still plenty of high notes ahead. Lately there have been various discussions (online) about the fact that it's a myth that people always need to have water but I know that when I'm singing my throat gets so dry that I just wouldn't make it up to some of those notes without staying hydrated. So what do the big stars do when they're onstage? All I can think of is that big opera houses and concert halls have a humidfying system of some kind, which regular venues don't. And churches are dusty. And for me maybe it's just my chronic upper respiratory issues.
But I shouldn't dwell on negative things; I am happy with how most of it sounded and I looked lovely in my new dress. It was a splurge (well, for me; it cost $75 and usually I shop at thrift shops for concert wear) but it was worth it and my last semi-formal concert dress is 10 years old.
I really like the site I ordered it from. It's called "Rose Elegant" (I can't seem to find a site to link to) and everything comes from (as distinct from having been made in) China so the sizes are odd. A size 12 maps to XXL, but this fit me perfectly. Since I have gotten shorter and much bigger around the waist (I attribute some of that to the muscle and fat "donut" that singers are supposed to have around the waist and back) I have stopped buying anything fitted around the waist. I wouldn't wear a tent dress but there are a lot of dresses like this one that are shapely, but not tight at the waist.
Unfortunately I can't seem to be able to download the videos individually (when I do that there is sound but no picture) but I can see them (and I guess show them to people) by posting a link to the original drop box file. Maybe the videographer can fix the problem. I hate to bother her because she never charges me anything; apparently making these videos is part of her volunteer work creating "lasting impressions" for seniors.
So now I can retire the Bolena for a while and start planning 2020 concerts. At least three of the places want us back; I just have to pin them down about dates and times. I think next time we may revisit the "Judgment Scene" from Aida and the "Vengeance Duet" from Samson et Dalila.
I am going to be 70 next year but have no sense of slowing down. I sing a lot better than when I started at 54; even than I did a few years ago.
To end on a humorous and flattering note. There is a sustained high A at the beginning of the Bolena duet. It ends the opening recitative, and after I sang it, the audience here broke into applause. I have never had that happen.
But I shouldn't dwell on negative things; I am happy with how most of it sounded and I looked lovely in my new dress. It was a splurge (well, for me; it cost $75 and usually I shop at thrift shops for concert wear) but it was worth it and my last semi-formal concert dress is 10 years old.
I really like the site I ordered it from. It's called "Rose Elegant" (I can't seem to find a site to link to) and everything comes from (as distinct from having been made in) China so the sizes are odd. A size 12 maps to XXL, but this fit me perfectly. Since I have gotten shorter and much bigger around the waist (I attribute some of that to the muscle and fat "donut" that singers are supposed to have around the waist and back) I have stopped buying anything fitted around the waist. I wouldn't wear a tent dress but there are a lot of dresses like this one that are shapely, but not tight at the waist.
Unfortunately I can't seem to be able to download the videos individually (when I do that there is sound but no picture) but I can see them (and I guess show them to people) by posting a link to the original drop box file. Maybe the videographer can fix the problem. I hate to bother her because she never charges me anything; apparently making these videos is part of her volunteer work creating "lasting impressions" for seniors.
So now I can retire the Bolena for a while and start planning 2020 concerts. At least three of the places want us back; I just have to pin them down about dates and times. I think next time we may revisit the "Judgment Scene" from Aida and the "Vengeance Duet" from Samson et Dalila.
I am going to be 70 next year but have no sense of slowing down. I sing a lot better than when I started at 54; even than I did a few years ago.
To end on a humorous and flattering note. There is a sustained high A at the beginning of the Bolena duet. It ends the opening recitative, and after I sang it, the audience here broke into applause. I have never had that happen.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Ageism is Bad, but Older People *Are* Different
About four years ago I wrote this essay Now, because of an upsetting incident that led to my receiving some upsetting (along with some helpful) feedback online, I started thinking about a number of age-related issues from a different perspective. As I've written before, ageism has upset me in ways that sexism or homophobia never did. But I'm also upset by its absence, or rather the absence of a level of deference and respect that I just assumed I would be getting once I was over a certain age.
On the same site where I posted my query (it was about the infantile man - my age - in the laundry room whom I have come to detest to a degree that is beginning to scare me; I just shouldn't let him rent any space in my head, but then of course he's my "ghost of bad choices past") a woman posted a question as to whether people become more conservative as they age. My answer to that is a resounding "yes"! Although I am not speaking politically. I'm not even speaking socio-politically; I still feel the same way about reproductive choice and the separation of Church and State, for example. What I mean is that I really really really think the world would be a better place if people behaved more formally in public (which includes treating older people with concern and respect) as well as more formally with each other if they are not close friends.
When I speak of the absence of ageism upsetting me, I mean things like the prevalent idea that if a school age child (one too big to ride the bus for free and sit on one's lap) wants to sit on the bus, everyone else can go to Hell. And often the worst offenders are "grandmas" my age!! On several occasions I have seen a woman my age stand up so that her ten-year-old granddaughter can sit. What is going on there?? And it isn't just a question of abstract politeness. From the time I was a grade schooler my mother drummed it into my head that people "grandma's age" (this meant over 50 back then) have a lot of "aches and pains" and need to sit down, in fact need to be comfortable generally, and that I , a healthy able-bodied youngster, did not. It didn't matter if I was "tired". Many of these oldsters had worked hard for their whole lives. My grandmother had stood on her feet all day in Macy's and my grandfather had been a waiter. Now I am lucky to get a seat and to do that I have to keep an eagle eye and be relatively fleet of foot. I remember once trying to board a bus when a woman and her 8-10 year old tried to push ahead of me and I pushed ahead of them and said "Age before Beauty and before 'cuties' too." I feel perfectly justified in doing that. On the other hand, if I see someone who looks older than I am (or who is walking with a cane) I will step back and in fact will gladly stand on my arthritic hips for the entire bus trip so that they don't have to.
Then there's language. I mean if young people are talking to each other that's one thing, but I really don't think it's appropriate to get into an online quarrel with someone twice your age and say things like "tough s**t that you're so butt-hurt". My oh my, have things deteriorated. I still might cuss if I dropped hot coffee on myself, or got all the way somewhere suddenly realizing that I left my phone (or my music binder) at home, but that's about it. Now I hear people using the word "s**t" to mean everything from "belongings" to "life affairs".
Then there's the issue of generation, which is different from age. I suppose since we're the first generation that refused to grow up (remember "Don't trust anyone under 30?") we deserve what we get. If a large number of us don't behave like gracefully aging older adults, I guess the rest of us won't be treated as such.
Someone in the online forum asked me why it mattered that Laundry Room goon didn't "get" that I didn't like him? A good question. It isn't that I don't like him really, it's that I don't like the whole hipandcool boomer "gestalt" that he keeps shoving at me trying to make common cause. An analogy would be if someone Italian-American found out that I was Italian-American and kept shoving Andrea Bocelli at me or kept throwing the odd bit of Italian slang into the conversation thinking it was a "bond" no matter how many times I said I didn't like Bocelli and was not a "paisan" (apologies to my Italian American friends, I'm just using this as an example). For example, I remember the first time I yelled at him for playing what I later found out was "the Velvet Underground" at an ear splitting volume he asked me with genuine surprise "You don't like the Velvet Underground?" Then I said I mostly listened to classical music, but did like certain popular music like the music from Motown in the 60s. So he said "so when you hear that you start grooving to the beat, huh?" which made me reflexively want to run to the loo and barf.
Someone on the online discussion board made a nasty comment to me about "pearl clutching". That is supposed to be a pejorative, I know, but it conjured up a rather nice image. Yes, I'm going to be 70 so why not? I like the image of myself in a tasteful dress with a string of pearls. I've earned the right to be offered a seat and be shielded from the worst of the bad language young people use. I'd rather be a "pearl clutcher" than someone making a fool of himself thinking he's cool (and yes, the people who do this are mostly male; aging female hippies are mostly quiet and sweet, with an interesting fashion sense).
Now I should say that this man is in no way "the norm". I have a large circle of friends (mostly women and gay men, and a few married couples) who are my age and none of them blast loud music from the 70s (or from anywhere) and very few of them pepper every sentence with profanity. We go to chamber music concerts, have book discussion groups (mostly about Barbara Pym or Jane Austen) and go to museums. But we are not stick in the muds. More than half of my friends went to the women's marches wearing "pussy hats" and some even travel to El Salvador or go to the border to help immigrants.
On the same site where I posted my query (it was about the infantile man - my age - in the laundry room whom I have come to detest to a degree that is beginning to scare me; I just shouldn't let him rent any space in my head, but then of course he's my "ghost of bad choices past") a woman posted a question as to whether people become more conservative as they age. My answer to that is a resounding "yes"! Although I am not speaking politically. I'm not even speaking socio-politically; I still feel the same way about reproductive choice and the separation of Church and State, for example. What I mean is that I really really really think the world would be a better place if people behaved more formally in public (which includes treating older people with concern and respect) as well as more formally with each other if they are not close friends.
When I speak of the absence of ageism upsetting me, I mean things like the prevalent idea that if a school age child (one too big to ride the bus for free and sit on one's lap) wants to sit on the bus, everyone else can go to Hell. And often the worst offenders are "grandmas" my age!! On several occasions I have seen a woman my age stand up so that her ten-year-old granddaughter can sit. What is going on there?? And it isn't just a question of abstract politeness. From the time I was a grade schooler my mother drummed it into my head that people "grandma's age" (this meant over 50 back then) have a lot of "aches and pains" and need to sit down, in fact need to be comfortable generally, and that I , a healthy able-bodied youngster, did not. It didn't matter if I was "tired". Many of these oldsters had worked hard for their whole lives. My grandmother had stood on her feet all day in Macy's and my grandfather had been a waiter. Now I am lucky to get a seat and to do that I have to keep an eagle eye and be relatively fleet of foot. I remember once trying to board a bus when a woman and her 8-10 year old tried to push ahead of me and I pushed ahead of them and said "Age before Beauty and before 'cuties' too." I feel perfectly justified in doing that. On the other hand, if I see someone who looks older than I am (or who is walking with a cane) I will step back and in fact will gladly stand on my arthritic hips for the entire bus trip so that they don't have to.
Then there's language. I mean if young people are talking to each other that's one thing, but I really don't think it's appropriate to get into an online quarrel with someone twice your age and say things like "tough s**t that you're so butt-hurt". My oh my, have things deteriorated. I still might cuss if I dropped hot coffee on myself, or got all the way somewhere suddenly realizing that I left my phone (or my music binder) at home, but that's about it. Now I hear people using the word "s**t" to mean everything from "belongings" to "life affairs".
Then there's the issue of generation, which is different from age. I suppose since we're the first generation that refused to grow up (remember "Don't trust anyone under 30?") we deserve what we get. If a large number of us don't behave like gracefully aging older adults, I guess the rest of us won't be treated as such.
Someone in the online forum asked me why it mattered that Laundry Room goon didn't "get" that I didn't like him? A good question. It isn't that I don't like him really, it's that I don't like the whole hipandcool boomer "gestalt" that he keeps shoving at me trying to make common cause. An analogy would be if someone Italian-American found out that I was Italian-American and kept shoving Andrea Bocelli at me or kept throwing the odd bit of Italian slang into the conversation thinking it was a "bond" no matter how many times I said I didn't like Bocelli and was not a "paisan" (apologies to my Italian American friends, I'm just using this as an example). For example, I remember the first time I yelled at him for playing what I later found out was "the Velvet Underground" at an ear splitting volume he asked me with genuine surprise "You don't like the Velvet Underground?" Then I said I mostly listened to classical music, but did like certain popular music like the music from Motown in the 60s. So he said "so when you hear that you start grooving to the beat, huh?" which made me reflexively want to run to the loo and barf.
Someone on the online discussion board made a nasty comment to me about "pearl clutching". That is supposed to be a pejorative, I know, but it conjured up a rather nice image. Yes, I'm going to be 70 so why not? I like the image of myself in a tasteful dress with a string of pearls. I've earned the right to be offered a seat and be shielded from the worst of the bad language young people use. I'd rather be a "pearl clutcher" than someone making a fool of himself thinking he's cool (and yes, the people who do this are mostly male; aging female hippies are mostly quiet and sweet, with an interesting fashion sense).
Now I should say that this man is in no way "the norm". I have a large circle of friends (mostly women and gay men, and a few married couples) who are my age and none of them blast loud music from the 70s (or from anywhere) and very few of them pepper every sentence with profanity. We go to chamber music concerts, have book discussion groups (mostly about Barbara Pym or Jane Austen) and go to museums. But we are not stick in the muds. More than half of my friends went to the women's marches wearing "pussy hats" and some even travel to El Salvador or go to the border to help immigrants.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
First Fall Concert of 2019
Again, it seems a long time since I've written. I seem to have lost interest in writing, pretty much. I have left my memoir to languish (although if I ever want to return to it, it's there!) Maybe because my friend Abbie didn't like it, and then shortly thereafter, she died, which I'm still in shock over. Finally I did find an obituary online. It seems to have been written only three weeks after she died (it was in an Oregon newspaper) but did not show up as a Google "hit" until last week, when I decided to google her granddaughter, who has a rather unusual name, just to see what she is doing these days. Who knows? The obituary might not have shown up simply by Googling Abbie.
Friday's concert went well. I nailed all the big notes in the Bolena duet. So now I get to do it all again on Monday the 14th. Something strange happened, though. After singing the duet I experienced such a huge adrenaline drain that I didn't sing the next two (quite easy) numbers as well as usual. Then I did get my groove back and sounded great in the Gioconda duet - and of course everyone loves "Let Me Call You Sweetheart".
My partner is getting home hospice services which is great. Both the GP that regularly comes to her house and the hospice nurse thinks she could "pass at any time"; that she might not go through the readily identifiable "active dying phase" that I saw my mother go through.
So it's just a day at a time. If things reach an obvious crisis point I will hit the "pause" button, pack a suitcase, get someone to feed my cats, and cancel any commitments for the immediate future. But that time is not now.
Friday's concert went well. I nailed all the big notes in the Bolena duet. So now I get to do it all again on Monday the 14th. Something strange happened, though. After singing the duet I experienced such a huge adrenaline drain that I didn't sing the next two (quite easy) numbers as well as usual. Then I did get my groove back and sounded great in the Gioconda duet - and of course everyone loves "Let Me Call You Sweetheart".
My partner is getting home hospice services which is great. Both the GP that regularly comes to her house and the hospice nurse thinks she could "pass at any time"; that she might not go through the readily identifiable "active dying phase" that I saw my mother go through.
So it's just a day at a time. If things reach an obvious crisis point I will hit the "pause" button, pack a suitcase, get someone to feed my cats, and cancel any commitments for the immediate future. But that time is not now.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
The Sad and the Sweet (Which Are Often the Same)
I haven't posted anything in almost two months: a record, I think.
My partner's situation is up and down. One hospice nurse came to see her (she perked up pretty quickly after taking the antibiotics that she had been prescribed for the UTI) and said that they don't put dementia patients in hospice if they are eating and talking. But when the doctor came back to see her about six weeks later he said we should try again with another hospice. He thinks she is continually getting worse. I don't see her physical situation declining; she is eating small amounts (and mostly prefers sweets and liquids) but she has been eating that way for several years. But the doctor seems to think that she is getting weaker and frailer. Her legs have totally atrophied now, for example. Mentally she continues to get worse. I suppose that is what I was referring to as a situation that is both sad and sweet. I miss her intellectual companionship so much: talking about art and movies, for example. On the other hand, I have to remember that a lot of our seemingly innocuous talks would end with her accusing me of "arguing" when I thought I was just talking. So in a way it is sweet to be with her in dreamland. She is like a young child. She asks for her mother and "daddy", thinks she is in a hotel, assures me that we both have just gotten back from a vacation. A nurse who called about something asked me what her favorite thing to do was and without any hesitation or embarrassment I said "snuggle".
As for my singing, life goes on. I sang an aria from a Bach cantata ("Es halt es mit der blinden" from BWV 94) this morning at church and it went really well. I got a lot of compliments on it. The church was largely empty because of the lack of air conditioning and the lack of subway (the MTA shut down the entire Upper West Side line) but the people who were there were important because they were there.
And the Music Director gave me a sheet of paper that made me feel really honored; as if I had "arrived". It was a list of all the Sundays through the end of the year indicating which ones have choir and which ones have empty anthem spots. He asked me to pick something!!! Wow! So I told him I had a piece that I wanted to do on December 29 (that's usually one of my regular solo dates). It's something a dear friend (who is a voice teacher and lives in Michigan) picked out: the "Lullaby" from The Nativity According to St. Luke by Randall Thompson. I also see that Advent 1 is open so I may offer to sing "Bereite dich Zion" from the Bach Christmas Oratorio. One really lovely add-on to my solo this morning was that someone played the viola da gamba, so I asked him if he could play a cello line and he said yes. So I am going to email him a copy of "Hochster mache deine Gute". That was the piece I recorded for a friend's film. Sadly, it ended up on the cutting room floor, but it's still a lovely piece and it has a cello accompaniment. The Music Director can tell me what Sunday it might be suitable for.
Lastly, I now have recitals coming up in September and October. The featured number will be the Bolena duet. I sang through the two most difficult phrases a few days ago (one has a high A that you hold for 8 counts) and it all went smoothly. Of course it helps that I don't have asthma. It seems to arrive after Christmas and disappear after tax day.
And after that I'll start planning for the Spring of 2020.
My partner's situation is up and down. One hospice nurse came to see her (she perked up pretty quickly after taking the antibiotics that she had been prescribed for the UTI) and said that they don't put dementia patients in hospice if they are eating and talking. But when the doctor came back to see her about six weeks later he said we should try again with another hospice. He thinks she is continually getting worse. I don't see her physical situation declining; she is eating small amounts (and mostly prefers sweets and liquids) but she has been eating that way for several years. But the doctor seems to think that she is getting weaker and frailer. Her legs have totally atrophied now, for example. Mentally she continues to get worse. I suppose that is what I was referring to as a situation that is both sad and sweet. I miss her intellectual companionship so much: talking about art and movies, for example. On the other hand, I have to remember that a lot of our seemingly innocuous talks would end with her accusing me of "arguing" when I thought I was just talking. So in a way it is sweet to be with her in dreamland. She is like a young child. She asks for her mother and "daddy", thinks she is in a hotel, assures me that we both have just gotten back from a vacation. A nurse who called about something asked me what her favorite thing to do was and without any hesitation or embarrassment I said "snuggle".
As for my singing, life goes on. I sang an aria from a Bach cantata ("Es halt es mit der blinden" from BWV 94) this morning at church and it went really well. I got a lot of compliments on it. The church was largely empty because of the lack of air conditioning and the lack of subway (the MTA shut down the entire Upper West Side line) but the people who were there were important because they were there.
And the Music Director gave me a sheet of paper that made me feel really honored; as if I had "arrived". It was a list of all the Sundays through the end of the year indicating which ones have choir and which ones have empty anthem spots. He asked me to pick something!!! Wow! So I told him I had a piece that I wanted to do on December 29 (that's usually one of my regular solo dates). It's something a dear friend (who is a voice teacher and lives in Michigan) picked out: the "Lullaby" from The Nativity According to St. Luke by Randall Thompson. I also see that Advent 1 is open so I may offer to sing "Bereite dich Zion" from the Bach Christmas Oratorio. One really lovely add-on to my solo this morning was that someone played the viola da gamba, so I asked him if he could play a cello line and he said yes. So I am going to email him a copy of "Hochster mache deine Gute". That was the piece I recorded for a friend's film. Sadly, it ended up on the cutting room floor, but it's still a lovely piece and it has a cello accompaniment. The Music Director can tell me what Sunday it might be suitable for.
Lastly, I now have recitals coming up in September and October. The featured number will be the Bolena duet. I sang through the two most difficult phrases a few days ago (one has a high A that you hold for 8 counts) and it all went smoothly. Of course it helps that I don't have asthma. It seems to arrive after Christmas and disappear after tax day.
And after that I'll start planning for the Spring of 2020.
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