One door opens, another shuts behind...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lK5lzyd37A

My mantra for the day: this song.

Over the past couple of years, I've been working on making scarves, arm warmers, and other accessories from upcycled felted cashmere sweaters, as well as getting into canning and making jams after being taught the basics by my neighbor across the street. I gave away much of what I made last year as Christmas presents and it helped my meager gift budget go a long way. People also loved getting homemade goodies, and I got a lot of positive strokes for my work (which is not often the case in performing arts, as we well know....). Too, it was a creative outlet for me in a way that singing hasn't been for a long time: I could make whatever I wanted (fig jam with port? blackberry jam with chocolate? WHY NOT?), without being told what to do or how to do it.

As it turns out, that same neighbor called last night and asked if I wanted to go with her to bring a bunch of our jams and jellies to a market in North Beach...they don't care that we don't have a license, or a commercial kitchen; they just know that we make homemade jams, and that's what they want.

A couple of months ago, a friend talked me into bringing some jams, as well as some of my work in felted cashmere, up to her place in Petaluma for a trunk show. She invited a bunch of people she knew...and only five people showed up.

BUT.

All five of them (plus my friend) bought cashmere AND jam....I walked out of there with $350.

.....and a renewed sense of what was possible.

I don't know whether this is going to turn into anything major for me, but I DO know that this is a potential income stream...right when I'm looking for ways to get out of having to sing full-time.

Maybe the universe really is looking out for me, after all....

RM

PS....thank you, Richard Thompson. I love this song.

Hey! I'm not the only one!

I came across this on my Facebook page (what addiction? I can quit ANY. TIME. I want. Really.) today and it so perfectly describes what it can feel like to be depressed--but with more humor and wit than I could possibly muster up, so instead of whining about how deep in the hole I am and how much I hate my miserable life, check this out and have a laugh instead:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

RM

Meditation on the Possible

(WARNING: Navel-gazing alert. You may wish to skip this entry and move on to something more entertaining....like another blog, for instance.)

I was reminded this evening of a documentary I had watched a few years ago on Henry Darger, a reclusive, eccentric man who worked a menial job, never married, lived in the same small apartment for forty years....and spent his time creating a fantastic alternative universe, in words and paintings, that were only discovered near the end of his life. I won't say more exccept that the documentary, "In The Realms Of The Unreal" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390123/), is pretty powerful stuff (in fact, I think I need to watch it again myself).

Around the same time, I saw another documentary, also about an artist, but this time a living artist who is not only recognized but celebrated--Andy Goldsworthy (Rivers and Tides-- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307385/).

What blew me away at the time (and still impresses me now) was that both of these men were following their creative impulse against the tide of culture and society--one secretly, one openly. They weren't worried about what anyone thought of them--they simply did what they were compelled to do, which was to create. These films expanded my sense of what was possible in the world--that one didn't have to follow the same straight lines, or even stay within them, to be able to survive--and thrive. The little boxes one would check when asked, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" in school probably didn't include "Oh, I wanna write a fifteen-THOUSAND page epic complete with watercolor and ink illustrations about seven little girls who lead a civil war against their abusers, even though I was an orphan, never went to art school, had no formal training, had no family and no support for my work" or "I think I'll go out in the woods somewhere and build works of art out of whatever I find there--ice, clay, straw, branches, leaves..."

(I mean, I remember being JEALOUS of Andy Goldsworthy while watching this, thinking, "You mean, the type of shit I used to do as a kid just screwing around, he gets to do every day? --and gets PAID for it?!? OODLES OF MONEY???!? GAAAHHHHHH!!!")

It's funny that I'm reminded of these films tonight, when I'm circling back around to trying to figure out what it is that I want to do with myself, and more importantly, getting over my fears of actually DOING it.

A better question to ask, I should think, instead of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" (who wants to grow up, after all?) is, "What did you love to do when you were ten or twelve?" ...back when you didn't give a shit about what anybody else thought about what you did, when everything was done in a spirit of play, and creativity was as natural, as fearless, as unintimidating, as breathing?

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that when I was twelve, I wanted to be one of two things: either a writer for Isaac Asimov's science fiction magazine (a friend had loaned me several back issues and I was hooked) or a Not Ready For Prime Time Player. Still, it's interesting that expressing myself in words and fantasies, and being funny, have been a through-line in my life, even though I'm not currently working for Mr. Asimov OR Mr. Michaels. Neither of these through-lines have generated income....yet.

I'm not sure yet what, exactly, all this means, or where it will lead. That's why the title reads "meditations on-" as opposed to "things I know for sure about-". But I think that it's the meditation--and the exploration--that will eventually show me the next step.

RM

Consciousness shift

I was sitting in the terrace at Davies Symphony Hall last night at two minutes to seven, with the rest of the chorus, score in hand, waiting for the rehearsal to begin. All of a sudden, very clearly in my head I heard a voice (my voice):

"I don't want to do this anymore."

Huh? Wha-? Really? I thought.

It's the Verdi Requiem, I told myself. One of my all-time favorite pieces! It's got a dream team KILLER quartet of soloists (Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Frank Lopardo, Ain Anger)! It's with one of the best orchestras in the world! It'll be awesome!

--and my mental response was

......'shrug'. 'So?'

I know I've vented my frustrations many times here with my choice of career, but this was the first time I'd really gotten such a clear message from my Self telling me it was long past time I considered moving on. I've joked about accounting, but (laugh if you like) there's something about a regular day job with a regular paycheck that's awfully attractive when you've done freelance all your life. Too, I know too well that singers, like any other person who relies on their body to do their job, have a finite shelf life, and that, now that I'm over 40, I should begin to at least consider what I want to be when I grow up, what I want to do with this one wild and precious life before my voice starts to veer into Florence Foster Jenkins territory....

So, the question in front of me now is the big cosmic, the one everyone asks, the one everyone MUST ask, whether in small scale or writ large in their lives, and more than once:

OK...Now what?

I don't have an answer to that yet. I have an idea of what I'd LIKE my life to look like, but the pesky issue of sustainable income casts a pall over my rosy domestic picture.

I am pretty sure of one thing: I no longer will be a full time singer. I feel better, not worse, when I say that, like a little popcorn jolt of YES! in my solar plexus.

I don't think I'll quit completely, either, especially without another source of income ready to go (anybody know a good sugar daddy?, she asked, only half-joking....

'sound of crickets'

OK, never mind....).

What is obvious is that I need to give this some serious thought. I'll keep ya posted.

And no, I won't be changing the blog title anytime soon. :-)

RM

Bad day at work

Just got home from a rather brutal sitzprobe which was going well until the conductor suddenly decided to rehearse approximately eight bars of music (which, in the grand scheme of things, would take something like, oh, MAYBE twenty seconds of a three-plus-hour opera in performance) for an. entire. HOUR.

The LAST hour. Of a three hour rehearsal. Which had sounded JUST FINE up to that point.

....all of which will ultimately prove useless because once we are actually singing those eight bars on stage with the staging given to us by the director, on set, in costume, it will sound totally different anyway--all the precious little adjustments the conductor asked for will be diffused into nothingness.

I would rather receive an anal probe from angry aliens than EVER have to relive that hour again. The only thing that kept me (and, probably, several other people as well) from either nervous breakdowns or (in my case) psychotic episodes was the mantra I repeated over and over in my head: $44.10. (This is, in case you were wondering, the hourly rate of pay for non-tenured chorus at the major opera house where this rehearsal took place. Looks great on paper until one realizes that due to budget cuts there are MAYBE three to ten hours per week that one receives this princely sum....for the privilege of rehearsing eight bars for one hour.) When I asked a colleague, only half-joking, why he was doing this to us, she sighed, "...because he CAN."

Seriously....there is no headache quite so bad as the one engendered by the repeated bashing over one's head with the blunt instrument of a conductor's ego.

I'm in my happy place now (which involves a BIG glass of a refreshing alcoholic beverage, so I hope that this post will maintain coherence, though somehow I doubt it...).

Seriously....is it too late to go into accounting?

RM

Random Thought

Number of clear, non-foggy days in the past ten years for the Gay Pride parade: 10
Number of clear, non-foggy nights in the past ten years for Fourth of July fireworks: 1

Still think God hates fags?

Journal of a Silence, Day 7

....and the LAST day! w00t!!

Only my brother and ex-husband made the obligatory "why couldn't you have shut up sooner?" joke (and the ex at least had the decency to preface it by saying, "Do I get to make the obvious joke?" and immediately apologized for it afterward), and I got asked "Did anyone think you were deaf?" a lot--but oddly (or not), only one person MIGHT have mistaken me for deaf; the salesgirl at ISDA&Co. wore a big smile but I could see the gears turning in her head as I mouthed at her, thinking, "Is she....?"

It's been interesting. It's made me realize all too clearly that, even though I may be more conscious of the fact than many of my colleagues, I STILL derive a large part of my identity from my voice, and were I to quit, it would be difficult, but necessary, for me to find work that would give me the same positive validation (especially as I don't have a partner or family to give me that mirroring)....

I'm not talking quite yet--I'm holding out till this afternoon, 'cause I'm anal like that and to start now would feel like I wasn't strong enough to make it the WHOLE WEEK. So there.

I have no idea how well this has worked. I won't know until I vocalize later today--and more specifically, after tomorrow morning, when I have a 9:30am three-hour rehearsal call for the B Minor Mass. (Well, it could be worse--it COULD have been a Wagner opera...)

RM