In my last post, I told you about the bio I sent off for a concert I sang with the Sanford Dole Ensemble mid-February, and how I'd written similar bios for the last several gigs I've done, where the last line-invariably cut by discerning (if humorless) proofreaders-is "....she hates writing bios."
I got my hands on a copy of the program at the concert--and smack my behind and call me your wee bitty bitch, if the mutant bio, in its entirety, hadn't made it in! Turns out the guy in charge of the programs for this particular concert (who was, by the way, also one of the members of the ensemble--good on ya, Jim!) has a sense of humor after all. He even left in the line right before the end where, after listing my dubious accomplishments, I said: "When pressed, however, she prefers walking her dog on the beach to singing." God, I love it when stuff like that happens. Restores my faith in humanity, it does.
I enjoyed the heck out of singing with a small chamber group again, especially after years of doing opera chorus, and in spite of the fact that, in addition to myself, my newly-minted ex* was a part of this hootenanny as well. OK, well, that last part, actually, was excruciating, but it didn't alloy the pleasure of singing with a small, gifted, dedicated group of singers nearly as much as I thought it might.
A couple of weeks ago, on a Tuesday morning, I got a frantic phone call out of the blue from a friend/colleague who's recently taken over as temporary general manager of a well-respected organization (oh, OK, if you must know--American Bach Soloists). Another colleague had taken ill and couldn't do the upcoming series of choral concerts that week--could I step in? Well, sure, I guess, I mean, maybe I could...and the next thing I knew, I was cramming the music for the two-hour 'Vocal Visionaries' concert, which included Strauss' 'Der Abend', Victoria's Requiem mass, and a couple of pieces each by Eric Whitacre and Sven-David Sandsstrom.
I got the music Tuesday afternoon--and the dress rehearsal was Wednesday night. No pressure, though....
...although there WERE more moments than I care to recall where I literally had to get up and walk away from the music so I could bang my head against the nearest wall to stop my eyeballs from vibrating...."too...much...information! Can't-process-ANY-MORE-NOTES!"
(Six straight hours of mostly twentieth-century choral writing will do that for a girl.)
.....and then I'd remember the paycheck, and invariably wander back from whichever wall I was banging my head against, to start in again on the music.
Since I was almost literally hired last-minute, there wasn't time for fun and games with the proofreaders, alas. I DID, however, have a wonderful time, once I felt I had the music (somewhat) under my belt; the group has had many of the same singers working together for several concerts (many of whom I'VE sung with here and there), so there was a sense of their being like a loosely-organized family, and they all welcomed me with such gratitude and warmth, I thought, "My God! I remember this--this singing with people who are there because they WANT to sing, who are uniformly good at what they do, who genuinely enjoy working together, when it's a collaboration and not a crab-bucket--YES! I remember what this feels like!"
A week later, I did one aria at my voice teacher's studio recital. It was all I could do to drag myself to the hall and sing. I love my teacher--but I hated every moment of it.
What the hell?
I've been dealing with ambivalence over singing for years--essentially, ever since I started doing it as a 'career'--mainly, over what I felt I SHOULD be doing, as opposed to what I COULD be doing that would satisfy me and make me happy. What the events of the last few months have helped clarify, though, is that all these years I was fighting my truth. I was fed the line everyone with a voice hears at some time or another; "You have a gift, you have to use it." For years I believed that meant I was obligated to do whatever it took--go through every audition, take every gig offered no matter how poorly-paid or miserable the working conditions--because I had a GIFT, and I was obligated to USE it, by God, because how many people would KILL to have the voice and the opportunities I had, and...um....because there are children starving in China, dammit! Yeah...that's it...
It became harder and harder to put aside everything else in my life to do all that it took to market myself, to work on music, to put myself out there again and again and deal with rejection on a regular basis (as all performers do!)...and I found that, increasingly, I avoided doing it at all. Case in point; apart from the recital and the two concerts, I haven't even LOOKED at a score since the end of the opera season last December. I haven't contacted any companies. Haven't put together the demo I keep threatening to do. The website hasn't happened, either. Haven't sent a single resume or headshot. Haven't sung any arias (although I DID wail on a Nina Simone song last week...).
Instead...during this off-season, among other things;
I've written all or part of six poems. I've done dozens of loads of laundry. I've jotted notes for a libretto I'm thinking about writing. I looked into the possibility of becoming an MFT (oh the irony!). I've been improving my cooking skills and moving my diet in a direction more inclined toward whole foods and away from processed foods (and have lost five pounds in the process!). I've danced like a squirrel in a blender in the middle of my kitchen. I've read four books. I've caught up with most of my friends (some of whom I haven't seen in over a year). I've walked my doggie on the beach. And in the woods. And on the hill. I've gotten much of the work done on getting my back yard turned into a garden (oo! ooo! Organic veggies for meeeeee! Yippee!). I went to L.A. for a few days and surfeited myself on fine art (the Getty, Norton Simon, and LACMA--all in three days!). I've tracked down, tagged, and bagged the rest of the furniture for my bedroom. I've gotten a couple of massages. I picked up a few apples to see if I could still juggle. (Yes.) I even cleaned my house. (Once.)
In other words, I've been having a blast--and I haven't missed singing a bit. Which tells me there is a serious disconnect between what I am doing and what I want to be doing with my life. I don't plan on walking away from music entirely; as the two concerts showed me, there are musical experiences I do enjoy and need to do more of. It's just that...well...it seems that opera chorus isn't the be-all, end-all, Holy Grail joyride I'd thought it was...maybe getting knocked off tenure-track was the best thing that could have happened to me after all--what if I'd come to this conclusion about my life AFTER I'd made tenure? (Yeah, OK, I could still really have used the medical benefits, but....just sayin'.)
SO. The next couple of weeks, until I go back to opera chorus, are going to be about having as much non-operatic fun as I can scare up, and figuring out the answer to my own philosophical kick-in-the-ass question (which I also present to you, as a manifesto):
Your life is your greatest work of art. What do you want it to look like?
RM
*Yep; we broke up at the beginning of February. I won't go into gory details in this post, save to tell you that we were able to work through it all like adults, that I totally understood his reasons for needing to go it alone, and we still love and respect each other enormously (how fucked-up is it that we had such a good thing going that even our BREAK-UP was healthy??), and....well....stay tuned for further developments.
