Replenishing

Hello!
I know this is the first blog entry in a long time but there is a very specific reason for that, I promise.

So...my graduate recital was two weeks ago. I didn't want to write an entry between Christmas and now because I knew they would all be along the lines of "I'm nervous about my recital" or... "I'm busy preparing for my recital and I'm stressed out." Who wants to hear that after a while? I mean, I'm a singer, y'all know that... I didn't want the singing to be responsible for all of my thoughts and outpourings.

That said, I'm gonna put a little bit about the recital in here, mostly so that I can look back on this someday. It's a very big, very emotional, very self-indulgent day...so I just want to jot down a few memories and then be done with it so I don't sound like too much of a diva.

First thing I have to say is that I had high expectations for myself with regards to this recital. Too high. This whole thing is looked at as a "culmination" of your education. I somehow took that to mean that this should be the greatest bit of singing I had ever done or would ever do. What's funny about this is, in reality the recital is as far from a culmination as possible. It's a total and complete beginning; a moment were you say to your friends and family "here is the work I have been doing...now I'm gonna take this work, build on it, and try to make a career from here on out." There is no possible way I could have done my best singing ever. And I didn't. I made mistakes. I sand incorrect lyrics. My voice actually broke mid-phrase at one point. I belted out one particular note as if I had no training whatsoever...it was an ugly sound. Ew.

Yet my coach always says not to be afraid of ugly sounds, that they are necessary and sincere when made at the right time. So that's that. And there were some pretty sounds. There were great moments, moments were I was proud and moments were I felt like a singer. That's all I should have asked for for myself. In that way, my recital was successful. Here are some of the memories I will always have of that day:

-Tripping as I walked up the steps to begin the recital...and realizing in that moment how very human I was and how I would always always make mistakes.

-Realizing that my friend and I were creating a unique and intimate experience for my audience as he strummed his guitar and I sang my way through a Spanish song set.

-Placing my hand on the piano as I prepared myself for my final piece and saying very clearly to myself in my head "This is the last piece, enjoy this...take this moment in and it will all be worth it."

-My Dad standing up and presenting me with flowers as I took my first bows. He had tears in his eyes and he said "You're the best, toots!"

-My friend Laura leading a standing ovation for me.

-The procession of people that came to hug me afterwards and made me feel like I was a new bride.

-My Mom hugging me tightly and crying that she was filled with so much love and admiration.

-My Aunt Soph hugging me and crying, saying she was so proud.

-Walking down some stairs into our own little private section of Vinny T's restaurant and having my Dad get up from his seat and start the whole table applauding for me.


Okay...that's out of the way. I cringe as I write this because it sounds so self- indulgent and self-congratulatory. I just want to preserve these memories, really. I'm not writing this out to puff myself up in any way. I hope you all understand.

So...that's that. My first full length recital. Hopefully the first of many. By no means a culmination.


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Leaving the diva me behind,

I have to just sound off on this whole Dick Cheney/ "So?" thing that was in the news recently.

For anybody who hasn't heard, Dick Cheney was asked what he thought when faced with the reality that the majority of American citizens feel that this war is no longer worth fighting. He literally gave a smirk and said "So?"

Now, Michael Moore wrote a great editorial in response to this, much better than anything I could ever write, but I feel I have to say something and I'm very sorry but I feel that profanity is in order:

Listen Cheney: F**k You. You have absolutely NO right at all in any way to play fast and loose with people's lives. Not Iraqi lives, not American lives. You are a citizen of this world, no better than anyone else on this planet in any way. WHO besides your own money-grubbing, blood-hungry, penis-envied self, gave you the right to decide who lives and who dies? And who gave you the right to treat death and destruction with such flippancy as if you were stepping on an anthill rather than destroying an entire country? I feel I have to join the million-voiced chorus that keeps having to remind you that your office is an elected office. For all intents and purposes, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE PUT YOU WHERE YOU ARE. Don't get me wrong, I sure as hell didn't vote for you. And I'm pretty damn sure your election into office was rigged. But how dare you, a man who conjures up the image of "democracy" as though it were sacrosanct, hold the voice of the people in such ridiculously low esteem? You're not even making a decent show of PRETENDING to love democracy. If it weren't so abominably appalling, it would be funny. "So?" SO?!?!?!?!?!
So this: "All men are created equal...they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

You swore on the Holy Bible to uphold these principles Mr. Cheney. And your actions suggest that you either do not care for these principles, or do not care for the holy scripture which you so doggedly cling to with regards to your policies and rhetoric... or that you do not care for either. The level of hypocrisy is mind-blowing. You do not care that we the people find your war to be a direct violation of these unalienable rights, and you do not care that you deny these rights to our foreign brothers and sisters and our men and women overseas on a daily basis. And what's worse, far worse, is that you think you are getting away it. You always seem to be slyly congratulating yourself on pulling the wall over our eyes; that somehow we won't figure out that this all has to do with greed or that those of us who do figure it out won't have enough of a say to do anything about it. You are thriving on the OPPOSITE of the American principle, which is so very ironic considering you have taken it upon yourself to uphold "Patriotism" and "Americanism" in this country.
I say to you, HOW DARE YOU? How dare you take away our rights under the pretense of knowing what is best for us? How dare you allow the slaughter of hundreds of thousands on both sides? How do you lay your head down at night on your Halliburton pillowcase?

I see your "So?" and raise you three. So what if you think the American voice is inconsequential? It is not. So what if you think you have succeeded in quieting all dissenters? You have not. So what if you think your neat little retirement package will ensure a bright and happy future for you despite your past sins? It will not. I am a heathen Agnostic but I shall tell you this: at some point we all have to pay for what we do (that was Oscar Wilde who said that, you probably don't know him, he was too gay and too witty for you).I hope that when you beg for mercy, some terrible demon looks down on you and says "So?"

Holiday hopes and such

I have had a request to change my blog...and I'm overdue for a post anyhow. Hi all! The holidays are coming! I'm very excited. I get so upset when people say that they hate the holidays, that they've become so commercialized, that they're too stressful, etc. Okay so they are stressful and yes, our economy has done a bang up job of making them a big extravaganza, but here's what I've discovered; the holidays are what you make them. If you want them to be stressful, they'll be stressful; if you want them to be a religious celebration, then they'll be about miracles and messiahs; if you want them to be about fun, then they'll be about fun; if you want them to feel commercialized then, chances are they'll feel commercialized. I prefer to think of them as a lovely time to see my friends and family and to give out gifts that say "thank you for being a part of my life, I celebrate you for who you are." Getting gifts is fun too, I won't lie. I also love how the winter holidays seem frozen in time for me. Ever notice how holidays seem to blend into each other? I think its because we do our best to recreate past holidays every year. Of course there will be variables and things will be different from time to time, but the essential ingredients seem to be always there. They are for me, anyway. I like that I get to be a kid again come December. It's cathartic and uplifting and it also gives me a chance to reflect on where I've been and who I am as an adult. The kid me and the adult me are essentially the same; they still need to be fed love and comfort in the same way, and both of them are very satisfied in front of a fire on Christmas Eve. People tell me I'm young and naive and that when I get older I will feel different. Well...who knows how I'll feel? I certainly don't and I certainly don't care to force myself into disliking the holidays just because its the more "adult" thing to do.
So this is why I fill my room with Christmas music and colorful lights after Thanksgiving. I really love the holidays because I love what they represent to me personally. If I see a really gaudy window display or something, I tend to just laugh. Clearly an oversized snowman doesn't define Christmas for me. I don't need it to get into the holiday spirit and so it doesn't bother me.
So I'm looking forward to family, friends and food this winter as I relax before what will be an eventful 2008.


That said...I have tons of work to do before then. Juries are scaring me as always. I've actually succeeded in memorizing all of my music, but somewhere in the back of my mind I've convinced myself that I'm not as prepared as I should be and that somehow I'll fail. Standard response from me, I feel. I guess the key is tremendous preparation, as the divine Ms. Renee Fleming says. I saw her at the Boston Symphony last Thursday...so lovely. It's funny, when you idolize someone, you're happy just to be in their presence. Renee almost doesn't have to sing for me to be happy with her. She sort of just has to be (although the voice is so warm and lovely it feels like a homecoming for me, same with Betty Buckley's voice). As with many other women I've encountered in my life, I have an immense desire to do what she does, to create as she creates and to have her experiences. I saw her in "La Traviata" last month and it was such a gorgeous experience I wanted desperately to be Violetta in the way that Renee was Violetta; to embody and live the life of a beautiful and tragic heroine. Thus the title of my blog, I suppose. And so I have my work cut out for me with juries and with operatic music. People before me have paved the way so deeply and beautifully that it will take all my strength and courage to "walk their walk," as it were. Ha ha...all of my blog entries seem to have a very common thread. MUST CHANGE SUBJECT.

So...winter break. I'm looking forward to it immensely. Tons of movies (Sweeney Todd!) and books (finally! Books!) and fun. Yay, fun. But first, work work work. Eight pieces; two French, two German, two Italian, one English and one Spanish. *Phew* German is especially kicking my bum. German is kind of a spitter's language. You feel like you're stuttering constantly. Oh well. Es geht!

Bleh

So kind of an icky day. I cried in my voice lesson. This was the first time I've ever cried in a lesson since I've been at BoCo so I guess that's good. I hate that singing is such a physical endeavour. I wish it were entirely up to my brain to produce sound, but, as it stands, I have to rely on and trust my body. I also have to wait for my body. I'm training a very precise muscle that I can barely see and can hardly feel. I hate that. The process is ever so slow and then there are times when I make a gigantic leap forward and then I lose it and it doesn't come back for weeks. Boo. My coach says that I'm talented but there's some faulty mechanism between my mind and my voice that gets in my way; he says its like trying to program a very smart computer with a very small amount of RAM. Its good to know this but the knowledge doesn't help me any really. I am my own worst enemy. Thanks. Now what? How do I even begin to go through the process of becoming my own best friend? My voice teacher is very kind and says that I have lots of time to grow into my voice and that she's not worried about me or my development at all. I really want to believe her. Not so sure though.
I'm a little saddened by things around me as well. I marched this weekend against the war in Iraq. It was a good feeling (and Howard Zinn was there, which was amazing)but at the end of the day I still felt somewhat ineffectual. The administration doesn't care that thousands of us marched. They won't really pay attention. It seems that everything is in vain- the lives lost, the money spent, the anger that I share with millions of other Americans. It's so frustrating to want to make a difference but to feel that your voice is very very small. Ha ha. I suppose vocal troubles are plaguing me in more ways than one.
I'm reevaluating relationships as well. Trying to come to terms with my place in the world within my family and with my friends and so on. I'm just now coming to terms with the fact that people are very very hard to change. I always thought that if I expressed my feelings clearly enough, I could always help people to understand me, if not agree with me. Very naive of me. I'm hurting because of this. I keep telling myself that I have to lower my expectations of people, but what ends up happening is that my expectations remain high and I just get angry and frustrated. So right now I'm trying to shelve the hurt alittle bit...but that's not working so brilliantly...as my breakdown early today has proved. Oh well.
My Mom tells me that one of the marchers in New York said that our everyday frustrations are so trivial compared to the pain and devastation occurring in the world. He was very right. My experiences seems so trivial when stacked up against these thoughts. And so they are. I'm currently taking a deep breath and reminding myself to be thankful for all it is that I do have, for the opportunities I've been given and for the voice I was born with. It may be small and ineffectual and rough and not quite up to shape but its mine. I think I love it.

Being the change

"My job is a decision making...job. And as part of it I have to make a lot of decisions." -our President

"Mandela is dead." - also our President

I am so very sick of this. Beyond sick. There are no words to describe how appalling I find this administration. Which is why I plan to participate in a march against this God forsaken war. I have to sit up. I have to do something. I've been passive for too long.

On a more hopeful note, I've created a team for Lee's National Denim Day for Cancer Research (which is tomorrow!). If you are reading this and are so inspired, please try to donate to my team which is entitled "For Das" in honor of my mom :o) It's at denimday.com.

I keep seeing a magnet at Whole Foods that says "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Trying to take a few small steps towards that.

Fatigue

My feet hurt so so much. Stupid high heels. I had to dress up today to sing in class. It felt good, though. I felt prepared and a bit more together than usual. It's nice because every once in a while I get these flashes of self-acknowledgment ... I'll have this moment where I go "Hey, I can sing...I'm not so bad...I belong here in a conservatory." Those are good days. Today was a good day. I love love love my repertoire teacher. He's amazing. He's sarcastic, biting, sometimes even cutting, but he's also brilliant and caring and sincere. Pretty awesome. I like laughing and being inspired while still keeping my feet on the ground. It's good times in his classes. I'm working with him one on one this year; this scares me but it's also kind of thrilling. I want to see what I can achieve with his help.
So now I'm reeling from a busy day and a horrendously long (and ridiculously taxing) train ride yesterday. Dear God. I was stuck with a fellow passenger who was more than annoying and had no concept of personal space or social graces. So my feet are tired and my brain is tired. I know, boo hoo, I live such a tortured existence, right? I have to sing in class and be nice to people on trains. Wow. Ha ha. It's just the business of living that makes us tired I guess. It's all normal perfectly reasonable stuff but it often knocks us off our feet and makes us totally fatigued.
Incidentally, I went home to see Ian McKellen in "King Lear." This was such an important production for me to see. I was all set to go to England to see it, but then they happily announced it was coming to the US. I felt like I was witnessing history. Somewhere, years from now, someone will ask me "What's the best performance of 'Lear' you've ever seen?" and I'll be able to say "I was present at Ian McKellen's performance" and there will be awe and admiration. Hee hee. Well at least this is how I envision it in my head. It's been said a million times but he's phenomenal. I so want that from my own performances; the sense that everything, every line, note, whatever, comes out of something real and necessary...not out of something on a piece of paper. Sir Ian never reads Shakespeare off a page, you know? You get the sense that he's internalized it to the point that its second nature, so organically a part of him and his character. I'm sure this has been said about all great actors and one point or another, but it's no less true. The research and the understanding has to be there, but there also has to be passion and intention. That was the topic of my lecture in class today. Must....be....more...passionate. Too academic, Len. Start feeling in your music as well as in your life.
I never much liked "King Lear" it always seemed so sad an unnecessary to me. As a daughter who loves her father I always have such trouble with that play. The relationship between the father and his daughters is so dysfunctional and indicates such a lack of communication that makes no sense to my 20th/21st century mind. And yet, there it was, real and heartbreaking and fabulous. I love drama...I love the gamut of emotions it takes us through. Sir Ian's "Come, let's away to prison" speech was so beautiful. It was one of those moments that makes you believe that love between two people (filial, romantic, platonic, whatever) is enough in the face of anything. So lesson #2: The love is enough. The love is enough and the music is enough. Astoundingly simple. I'm really a deep thinker, aren't I?
So yes, Ian McKellen is my God. He and Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Lindsay Duncan, Renee Fleming, Olga Borodina, Frederica von Stade, Dmirti Hvorostovsky, Ramon Vargas, and the incomparable Luciano look down from my own personal Mt. Olypmus.

Surprises

Life is pretty amazing. When you're having the worst possible week you can think of, small little things pop up that make you very glad; glad to be alive, glad to be doing what you're doing, glad of the friends and family you have, and glad to be you.
My weekend had two very lovely surprises. The first was that I went to see Betty Buckley sing for the first time in about five years and nothing about her had changed. This was a nice surprise. For some reason I was expecting her to look different, sound different...to remind me that time had passed and that I'm older and that the same comforts I had when I was younger no longer have the same meaning. Like in "In My Life" by the Beatles..."There are places I remember/all my life, though some have changed./Some forever, not for better..." I was preparing myself for Betty to have changed. But she hadn't. She was phenomenal as always. She looked absolutely lovely (yet another one of my favorite people in their 60's who looks stunning) and she still had the same plaintive voice that I find so friendly and welcoming. It was a lot like coming home for me. It felt extremely natural to be there listening to her and watch her turn songs into little stories. So... Brava, Betty Lynn...I never should have doubted you for a moment.
I learned something from her too. Something incredibly simple and obvious but very necessary for me and something I had either forgotten or never really conceptualized. The music is enough for her. She seems so very happy just to be singing a song and it's what keeps her going and, I think, is what makes her so good. If the music is enough for you then your audience is no longer a group that passes judgment on you, its a group of people experiencing life with you. I want to get to the point in my singing where the music is enough. Not the accolades or the prizes or the amount of roles I've done or how fabulous I sounded or how terrible I sounded. That is my motto for this year and (hopefully) the rest of my life: The music is enough.
Surprise number two came this morning at about 11 when I was awakened by a phone call. I let it go to voice mail because...well I'm really lazy sometimes. It was Marina saying that she'd forgotten to mention that she was in Mass for a wedding this weekend and asking if we could get together for lunch. That made me really happy. That is one fabulous thing about getting older; no matter how far away your friends are, if they are your true friends you'll always find ways to see them and share with them. It was so lovely to see her and Adam (and their friend, Jim, who was also in town for the wedding). That felt like homecoming for me too; we laughed and swapped stories as if we lived right next door to one another and it was comfortable and effortless. It reminded me why Marina and I are friends and why we always will be. It also reminded me that I have a lot of fun with Adam and that I love them both a lot. So...good day, good weekend. Nice to have a few days to combat the awful ones. Thank you, life, for keeping me on my toes.
First day of classes tomorrow, should be a fun week. Looking forward to getting my music assignments and such. Also seeing King Lear next weekend! Hooray for the Bard and Sir Ian.

Don't think I'm getting out of bed today

Today is an awful day. Yesterday was an awful day. I'm feeling depressed and very inadequate. Very second-rate. I've always worried that the work I do is not enough, that at heart I'm very lazy and have little talent and that it's just a matter of time before people discover this. I'm definitely believing in that today. I don't really know what I have going for me. I sing songs. Apparently I don't even do that very well. My voice teacher says I have a big voice that "takes a while to organize," implication being that most of my colleagues at the conservatory are organized but I am not. I have friends who write, teach, are becoming doctors, work with people in need...things that change the world. All I do well is sing. And again, I'm not even very good at it. I feel that any contribution I have to make is very small and limited.
This was how I was feeling yesterday and this morning, they announced that Luciano Pavarotti had died. That's reason enough to stay in bed. It's a big blow to me, to the opera world and to my family. My parents fell in love to the opera that Pavarotti sang. They followed him to Italy and back. When I was born, they played me his recordings and took me to see him.
His death scares me on several levels. After an opera singer dies, even a hugely famous one as Pavarotti was, what's left? They leave behind recordings which capture some lovely memories. But beyond that, what is their legacy? The New York Times today thought they did the world a service by discussing Pavarotti's life in all of its glory...and all of its shame. They had no scruples about mentioning those times when he appeared "unprepared," or had trouble moving about the stage or failed to put over a character as best he could. How awful. How awful that The New York Times acts as our own personal Judgment Day....stacking up the good against the bad, as if God needed some help deciding whether or not to let you into heaven, so the NYT thought they would just give Him a hand. That's not your job, Bernard Holland. You have no say in who makes it into heaven. I defy you to sing even one note with the clarity and depth that Pavarotti had. It's not honorable to give audiences an unflinching look at someone's life the day after they died, it's tacky.
I know I can't even touch what Pavarotti accomplished. And there's no guarantee I'll leave behind any memorable recordings. So what do I leave? At the end of the day, what do I have to offer? I'm not feeling as though I have much today. Therefore I think I'm sleeping in. I've rented some movies. Escapism seems the way to go. Maybe some junk food. Not looking forward to looking any of my friends in the eye today. The weight of the day is making me very tired.