Thoughts on Making Lemonade

I had probably one of the worst birthdays ever, particularly as this was supposed to be a big one, and it's one for which other people have had parties (thrown for them by others or not), been given expensive presents, or taken the "trip of a lifetime".

I basically got nothing.  Four cards, two ecards, probably at least 25 Facebook messages, and an outing to the Morgan Library that was more about caregiving than about enjoying myself (although I suppose I did some of that).  (They were having an exhibit of manuscript and drawings from Alice in Wonderland, one of my favorite childhood books, and what better way to spend my first official day as a senior citizen than by revisiting something from my childhood?)

But the worst was yet to come. As sort of an afterthought, my partner said she would like to take me to lunch on Saturday (after my birthday).  In decades past, it had been possible to get together at least 10 people for such a lunch, both on a personal level, and then again (with different people) at the office.  Since then, two of my close friends have died, as has my mother, three or four have moved permanently, and the rest were traveling and really couldn't have given a flying fig if it was my birthday or not and didn't even bother to send me a card or even an email.

Because I knew I wasn't going to get any presents, I bought myself a summer dress at Land's End (it had been extremely hot and I needed another sleeveless dress).  Here is what it looked like.

Considering the things women wear these days, I would hardly call it shockingly risque, but apparently the fact that it showed some cleavage (I am busty, I have cleavage, I look good in this style of dress, and it was hot out) caused my partner to have a nasty meltdown over my "displaying myself".  Things got so ugly that I did not sleep all night last Friday and spent three hours crying on Saturday.  I said I did not want to go to lunch.  I cried not over being "slut-shamed" (really who cares what is showing when you're 65 anyhow) but because it hadn't seemed possible for anyone to set aside any time to see that ****I**** had a special day. Just for me.  Just for me to wear and do what I felt like without my having to either take care of them or apologize for entangling with their pathologies.

The upshot of it all was that my partner apologized, yes we did have lunch, I put a napkin over my chest while we were eating, and I made a "deal" with her that I would not wear that dress again if she bought me something else (I had found a cotton dress in a catalog for $40 that had a high neck).  I wasn't able to save the image, but it is a lightweight cotton dress that is not too long (no mean feat as I'm now between 5'2 and 5'3 which is apparently off the charts short these days) and that I can hand wash.  It arrived today and looks good.  I really really love the other dress though and by gum I will wear it when she is not around.

On a more positive note.

When I mentioned my despair to a friend of mine (she lives in another state and has health problems, not to mention very little money, so she is not someone from whom I expected fireworks on my birthday although it is of note that she is one person who did take the time to send me a real card) she said that if what I wanted more than anything was a special birthday, I should plan a concert next year on or near my birthday.  Nothing makes me feel more special than singing, right?  And I can do my second favorite thing in the whole world: get dressed up!!

So now I am really excited about this.  I am keeping an "idea book" with notes on repertoire.  It will be purely upbeat.  No heavy opera (except perhaps Dalila's aria, which to me is like a second skin and is in a range as comfortable as most musical theater pieces).  I don't want to post more about it now, because I don't want to spoil it (of course once I have the plan completed all details will be revealed.)

I am still going to try to do Carmen at the LGBT senior center, though.  That can be in April (I think Easter will be early in 2016) and my birthday is at the end of July.

And you will never guess what the best (belated) birthday present that I got today was!!

At my voice lesson I. SANG. A. HIGH. C. SHARP!!!  That is the highest note I have ever sung since I was 13, before I started smoking.  My teacher was absolutely speechless.  Here I am at the age when singers are losing range and I am gaining it!!  Maybe I will turn out to be the Benjamin Button of singers?

Young Venus

I am loathe to post anything negative on my birthday, on the other hand, when better than the actual day of my 65th birthday to call out yet another egregious instance of ageism in opera.

When I get the Times in the morning, naturally the first thing I read is the arts section, and today the first thing I read was this.

Yes, it's wonderful that someone had the ambition, imagination, and vision to mount a Wagner opera on a shoestring, with an orchestra no less.  And if this person was a 25-year-old conducting student, bravo!  I was just about waking up, putting down my last glass of bourbon, and rubbing my eyes at that age.

But why in Heaven's name do the singers in this production have to be young???  Does Wagner have to be hijacked by YAPPers too?  OK, so most of these no pay opera companies (the ones that rejected me out of hand for the most part) want to use young singers, so they produce things like The Marriage of Figaro or La Boheme, occasionally making a foray into heavier operas with large female casts (you always get more women than men interested in these things) like Suor Angelica or Dialogue of the Carmelites, using, by choice a heavily made up 30something in roles like La Zia Principessa or the Old Prioress.  But Wagner???  Yes, there is an outlet for older people to sing Wagner, I know.  The pay to sing that my teacher is involved in does concert productions of Wagner and Strauss (as well as other things) and many of their stalwarts are singers in their 50s (and some of the men, like my teacher, are in their 60s) who have been singing for decades and have moved into this repertoire slowly.

But how about something new and exciting for older singers who may be new and exciting?  Reading the article the word "young" was used 8 times; 6 times to describe the singers they wanted to use and gear this new company toward, once to describe the tenor singing the role of Tannhauser, and once as a synonym for "new" as in "young opera companies".  Their source of singers to cast this Tannhauser with?  YAP tracker.

This made me really really really angry.  Yes, I am way too old to play Rosina (nor would I want to).  But I am not too old to play Venus!!  I even have a usable B natural now.   And it doesn't matter if I have physical challenges.  All she does is lie on a couch. Marjorie Lawrence played Venus after she had polio for Pete's sake.

I am not saying that I am such a stellar package that I would have been cast in a role by that company.  But I would like to have known about it!!

An Old Resentment

After my meltdown in February (posting something on Facebook about how angry I was at the choir director, although I did not say who, what, where, so I have no idea how he knew it was about him) I have tried to chill out about feeling resentful over all the attention that "Little Miss" gets.  I think that however tactless and tacky I was (and I apologized and deleted the post), it did some good because after that compliments and attention were distributed a little more equitably.  I got a coveted solo spot on Good Friday and he gave me a lot of compliments for it.  And I noticed after that he has backed off complaining that if, when I warm up to a high A it is L.O.U.D. that the note is "not in my range".

Of course if I paused to think about it, yes, it rankles that Little Miss is doing an "internship" with the very opera company that rejected me for not being a future investment (I mean I might not have gotten a role anyhow but not getting one role is different from being written off out of hand for what I consider to be an unacceptable reason).  And this is one of the most well respected small no-pay opera companies in the city now.

Anyhow, yesterday we got an email from the choir director forwarding an announcement she sent him about the performance.  One of the things that has really ranked over the past year or so is that he never ever forwarded any emails I sent him about performances I was doing.  It's like he didn't want his imprimatur on anything I did.  He has always been nice about "letting" me hand out flyers during rehearsal and I think the reason a surprisingly large number of people from the choir came to my May concert was because one of the other women in the choir handed out my flyers the day before the concert (when I wasn't there).  To protect against any hard feelings if the wrong people read this, this whole thing may be a coincidence (his "flogging" her performances and not mine), but I don't think so. (Or it may be an unconscious choice.)

Anyhow, the fact that the performance is at that opera company just rubs salt in the wound.  Needless to say I am not going, for a variety of reasons.

After being rejected by all the no pay opera groups in the city, and by some who wanted me to pay them (except two: in one instance I decided I did not want to pay and in the other I paid, to sing a tiny role, and was treated so badly I walked out and let them keep the money as a tax-deductible contribution), I have cut that world off.  I don't attend those performances.  I don't even go to the Met, despite its being around the corner.  If I want "entertainment", I will go to the ballet or a Broadway musical or a play.  If I want to hear "the greats" sing an aria or scene that I am working on, I can look at Youtube.  I don't think watching/listening to people doing something I would just about cut off my right hand to do, but will never get asked, is a way to have a happier life or to sing better, either.  I'm done with that.

So what I need to focus on is: my teacher was thrilled with how the two church solos sound (very different from a few years ago) and now it's just about time I should be hearing from the woman who produces the September 11 concert.  Or if not that maybe this year she will do something for Hispanic Heritage month.  And then there's the social service agency that I contacted about Carmen.  It's getting to be just about time to send a follow-up email.  Oh, and my teacher said "Don't forget about Amneris!  When you don't have something on your calendar to work on, go back to those scenes."  The thrilling thing is he said that; I didn't.

On Ageism

Over a year ago, I wrote a post on Sexism. So as I am now less than a week away from my 65th birthday, a post on ageism is way overdue.

For whatever reason, ageism has stung me in ways that no other "isms" ever did.

Sexism, to me, anyhow, can be taken to be in the eye of the beholder. Other than laws preventing women, for example, from voting or practicing medicine or law, a lot is subjective.  Yes, I'm glad we have a lot of women doctors (I usually prefer them) but is life better now that there are practically no full-time "homemakers" to take care of not only children and elderly parents but also distressed or homebound neighbors? And maybe life was sweeter and more humane when for women, at least, there was still the option, married or not, to be unambitious.

Then there was homophobia.  I never looked gay, so I never encountered it in public places.  Much as I clung to my older (and butch-dressing) partner, people were mind-bogglingly clueless as to the fact that we were a couple.  And regarding those who knew (many of whom were not only embarrassed, but embarrassed that they were embarrassed), hey, it was fun knowing that people thought you were a bit louche.

But ageism has smarted and stung (and often come as a surprise).  My first encounter with it was when I was in my mid 40s, finally feeling my oats as someone mature enough to be a good boss, and was told that I had been turned down for a management position because I was too "stuffy".  Mmmm, isn't being a bit "stuffy" part of being a boss?  (And this had nothing to do with technology, which wasn't yet around then.  And I'm the last person in the world that most people would consider "stuffy"...it was only a corporate persona I had adopted).

Then there's the feeling of being ignored.  Women who refer to "catcalling" as a universal scourge have no idea that the statute of limitations runs out when you're about 45, not matter how great a body you have.  For example, I wore this

one day when it was close to 100 degrees, here, there, and yonder all over the city and no one gave me a second look.

And of course no one thinks you have any sort of a future.  As I've written before in these "pages", the most hurtful rejection I got after an audition had nothing to do with my singing, my acting, or even that I looked to old for the part (it was La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica), but rather to the fact that I was "not a future investment".  That was about 7 years ago and I sing 200 times better now  OK, I probably am no longer mobile enough to do certain kinds of staging, but I can sing a concert opera from a book, and in a fully staged production of Suor Angelica the Principessa often has a cane!

Worst of all are the jokes.  People who would never make sweeping generalizations about racial, ethnic, or sexual identity groups in polite company (or in a public post on Facebook) think it's perfectly OK to do this about "old people".  Yesterday I was outraged by a woman (probably in her 30s) who not only said she hated the condescending tone that "old people" use, but, when I tried to make a teachable moment by commenting that condescending is an attitude not an age, she got herself into deeper and deeper doo doo by explaining why old people are condescending.  Then she said "well not all of them, but everyone I know who's condescending is old".  Can you imagine the uproar there would have been if instead of "old" she had written "black" or "Jewish" and instead of "condescending" she had used some other generic put-down?? And thinking she was getting herself out of the doo doo by saying "not all old people are like that????" (Again, think of a substitution, and read it back to yourself.)

Maybe I am not aging gracefully.  I don't mind having some orthopedic problems (unless it's snowing), and I am ecstatic that I no longer have to throw myself into the ratrace of hateful, stressful, boring jobs to pay my bills and have health insurance.  And I know I'm still hot, even if you think (out of deference?) you have to know me in person to say so.

But I haven't had my moment yet.  I'm still waiting for it.  I have a lot of growing and learning to do.  I'm not yet ready to pass the baton on to the 20somethings fresh out of music school (which I never went to) and kvell over them in a motherly way.  Hey!!!  I still see them as my competition!!

I don't mean something tacky and silly like "I'm young at heart".  There's nothing that makes me squirm as much as women (it's usually women) over a certain age in tv commercials being "cute" about how young they feel,  hoping to elicit the same response that children get.  I'm so not like that.  I'm  not "cute"; I'm a serious woman and a serious artist who can still raise the temperature in a room by playing Dalila.

What's Next

I haven't written anything lately because not much is happening.

My vocal progress continues to solidify.  Like someone who's lost weight or gained muscle tone, I now have a totally new voice: about a minor third higher and 20 pounds lighter, but in no way smaller.  So this is really me.

I have not had much on the calendar.  On August 23 I will be singing both the "Laudamus te" from the Bach B Minor Mass and "Domine Deus" from the Vivaldi Gloria in both church services.  I feel liberated now with the new music director (the original choir director still leads the choir but the new director schedules solos) because I think he has a better understanding of how my voice sounds at its best.  Pianissimi are lovely, and I would love to be able to master singing them above a high A flat (now that I have those extra notes, I might as well play with them) but they are not for everything, and a big voice has its own splendor that goes way beyond that anathema of church music - singing loud.  Anyhow, this will be a big sing, albeit in a comfortable range, so I will need to stay quiet for part of Saturday which is usually my eldercare day.  It seems that fewer people are volunteering to sing stand alone solos because, for example, when I was at church last Sunday (to see friends visiting from Jerusalem) there was no vocal music at all.  The "Domine Deus" feels easier now that I am singing it with my real voice.

I also heard again from the filmmaker who wants me to sing the Bach aria in her film.  She can't afford to pay the accompanist until her grant money comes through, but things are moving ahead with the film, so I may do the recording in the Fall.  This was another pleasant surprise: the piece (despite my having had it transposed down - it is normally sung by high light sopranos like Natalie Dessay) is still in a high-ish tessitura (similar to that of Giovanna Seymour) and I used to struggle with it, enough so that I had planned to only record the "A" section once and dupe it for the reprise.  Now I am sure I can sing the piece all the way through and it felt quite comfortable.

In a funny way my voice feels like a sink that had been bunged up and now that obstruction is gone.  I referred to this as a "gag reflex".  I don't really know what else to call it.  It would kick in if I started to get tired or was singing in a high tessitura or tried to sing at all above a high A natural.  My teacher had said that the reason for all this is that cartilage and small muscles in the throat and palate are not flexible in older people and it takes much longer to train them.

I was also fishing around for something to sing at the September 11 concert if the woman who runs it will be having it again.  Any time she talks about vocal technique I want to scream (no pun intended) because she has no idea how big voices work, and her suggestions are much more counter-productive than those of the choir director, who at least only tells me to sing softly, not to sing sour spread vowels (in fact he always tells the less trained singers to make more space and darken their vowels).  But I like that she provides opportunities for people to sing and she is extremely knowledgeable about various matters of style.  Anyhow, previously I had never wanted to brave singing an aria in one of those concerts, but this time I thought I would take a look at Fenena's two page aria from Nabucco which is deceptively simple, but then has that deadly octave jump up to a high A, which is, if not pianissimo, at least supposed to sound smooth and lovely.  Well, that was 200% easier to sing than it was three years ago when I recorded it, also.  So maybe I will offer that, or Laura's aria, which I could sing in my sleep, and it is short.

So that's about it.  Nothing much else ever really happens.  I can't afford to go anywhere and can't leave my SO alone anyhow.  In 12 months I will be able to collect Social Security on top of what I make working part time, so maybe we can try to go to Maine again.

A Step Forward or a Step Backward?

For the past five years, at least, every time the subject of same sex marriage has come up, it has made me terribly uncomfortable.  So what does that mean?  Am I a right-winger from another era who thinks marriage should only be between one man and one woman?  No.  Do I think marriage is an antiquated institution?  For the most part, yes.  Marriage is about children and about money, and if you don't have either, well then....

In the 1980s, I was a college student majoring in Women's Studies.  (I was in my 30s, in case anyone thinks they can't add.)  In Women's Studies 101, which was for the most part full of straight women looking to define themselves outside the context of marriage and nuclear family building (or realizing that there was more to life than those things) we were told from the getgo: A marriage contract is the only contract in which the state tells you what the terms of the contract are.  If you want to go into business with someone, for example, you can set the terms yourselves, as long as they are not illegal.   In the 1980s many women were re-thinking marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family.  Those who had left all that actually looked up to Lesbians, because we had something different.  We had a community.  Romances came and went, cohabiting situations soured, but community remained.  And often love - or at least friendship - remained.  A woman could have a lifelong "significant other" (often a former lover) by which was meant everything from a healthcare proxy to the person you spent holidays with to the one  person you knew you would want to save first if there was a Tsunami; but perhaps have another lover (or more than one), and yet a third person with whom she shared living quarters (not necessarily a dearly beloved, or even a particularly compatible friend, just someone who fell more or less at the same point she did on the neatness/not neatness scale).

This seemed to be the direction things were moving in, so.....

Yes, there were problems.  If you wanted to have children (or if you already had them) there were legal issues if you couldn't marry.  And if you had a lot of money, particularly if the person with the money was older and wanted to pass it along, tax-free, to her life partner, there were problems.  And there was the pesky little problem of wanting to include your partner on your health insurance (never mind that this is a nonissue in countries with a single payer national health system).  But there are many people to whom these things are simply not relevant.

I used to feel sorry for my single straight friends, who, as they aged, felt more and more like failures if they were into their 30s and hadn't yet found "the one".  And of course "the one" had to be the perfect mix of sexually attractive and socially, intellectually, morally, and spiritually compatible, not to mention that you had to have the same taste in furniture, the same tolerance for noise, and the same limit for how long dirty dishes can stay in the sink.  I felt blessed that I just didn't have to worry about those things.  I could have a life rich in love and friendship, which included a small studio apartment that I could always bolt back to, lock the door, and be free of other people's opinions about how I should live in it when that's where I wanted to be.

Single straight women felt marginalized.  As a quasi-coupled, quasi-single gay woman I did not.

So now of course, I am forced to revisit many things:

1. How did I end up with a significant other who never made a decent living and couldn't keep her surroundings clean?
2. If I had had any self-esteem wouldn't I have dumped her long ago and done the "Jane Austen" thing and found someone more, well, "marriageable"?
3. Is there something seriously wrong with me that I never could figure out how to "set up housekeeping" with someone? (I never thought there was anything wrong with me that I didn't want children, at least.)

Is the world really better now that all the shades of gray (sorry for the bad pun) have been removed from our spectrum of how to have relationships and love someone?

Obviously I can't wish we could turn back the clock on this whole marriage thing.  (And I am truly, truly happy for the man who wanted to be listed as a "surviving spouse" in a way that I never was about Edie Windsor's half million.)

So I suppose it's really that there's a difference between being able to do something, and saying that's what people should be doing.  In a free society, there are many things that people should be able to do, that it's still OK not to want to do.  And that there's more to self-esteem than the perfect nuclear family.

ETA: I was feeling quite alone with this all day yesterday.  Am feeling much better after seeing this article in today's TIMES.

My Fun Home

A few months ago, my partner's visiting nurse, who has become a friend, took us to see Fun Home the musical. We loved every minute of it and not just the subject matter. It was a moving story, the music was original (and melodic, not to be taken for granted in this era of generic scream-belting), the text was witty, and the performances, particularly 11 year old Sydney Lucas, were stellar. Yesterday, in looking for a clip of this song to send to someone, I stumbled upon this clip of Beth Malone and it got me musing about my life as bisexual woman (for years exclusively a Lesbian), about transgender issues (which are in the news a great deal these days), and about my struggles to make sense, years ago, of what it meant to be a Lesbian singing opera.

The first thing I was struck by watching the musical, was that Alison seemed to be at least as much transgender as Lesbian.  Her first inklings of being Lesbian seemed to be all intertwined with not feeling comfortable in a girly party dress. I think I was aware of attractions to women when I was quite young (always older women in positions of power), but I also was happiest in a pink party dress.  In fact I was probably more cis-gender (the current term) than most girls who grew up to be straight.  I loved dresses, dolls, and fairy tales, and hated sports.

One of the highlights of the show (referenced above) is the song "Ring of Keys" about young Alison's first encounter with a butch woman, seeing her from a distance.  I smiled listening to the song because the first time I saw a woman who looked like that I was transfixed as well (I think I was much older - in high school) but in a completely different way.  Recently I imagined what it would be like to sing that song (I would probably need permission) somewhere and I realized that I would have to change one line.  The issue for me wasn't "I think we're alike in a certain way" but "I think we would fit in a perfect way".  A perfect yin and yang.  The first time I saw a woman who looked like that yes, I could see immediately that I would have a lot more fun "under" someone like that than I had had with clueless, fumbling high school boys, or even the slightly older college men I had dated.

I was actually quite shocked to hear Beth Malone speaking about her experiences.  She referred to herself, playing straight women onstage as "being in drag".  Isn't that transgender?  I don't hear gay men in the theater referring to themselves as being in drag when they wear trousers and play a romantic lead.  If you're acting you're not yourself.  And chances are if you're acting the person you're playing a love scene with isn't someone you're madly attracted to, regardless of the person's gender.  I know that over the years it seemed that about 90% of the Lesbians I knew had a visceral negative reaction to putting on a skirt.  To me that seemed so "other".  And what especially confused me was that these very women would be outraged if I referred to them as "butch" or expected them to behave in such a manner with me.  And they didn't even particularly want me.  They wanted someone who looked like them.  I just never got it.  Yes, there was the feminist take on skirts, which I certainly understood when I was working in low paying jobs.  If you wear skirts, you need pantyhose (unless you have gorgeous tanned, slim, legs, or don't care if you look utterly drippy) and pantyhose run at the drop of a hat and are expensive.  So pants make more sense.  But pants are functional (which is fine at work, because work is functional) and feeling romantic and full of desire (which I don't feel in pants) is something else.

I remember when I tried to explain to someone on the Forum about my experiences playing Laura in La Gioconda, and about my feeling that I "shouldn't" want to be onstage playing a woman in a dress (even though I loved every minute of it) someone told me I was being "ridiculous" and that the women telling me these things couldn't be Lesbian, they must be transgender (and this happened to be a gay man).

In any event, I am happy to be shed of all that orthodoxy.  It has only taken me 40 years.  Whom I want to sleep with (the Mentor excepted, of course) is one thing.  What I like to wear is something else.  They are not synonymous and no I don't feel like I'm in drag wearing a dress I feel like a million dollars.  And I would have to act just as much kissing Enzo if I had a husband at home as I would if I had a "butch beau" at home (I will never have a wife; if there's any wife in the equation it would be me).  And I hate very short hair.  It looks God-awful on most women unless they have perfect cheekbones and a slim body like Beth Malone.  Even most butches.