So. The reason I went for a vocal assessment in the first place is that Nancy told me to do it.
Nancy is my voice teacher. You have no idea how proud I am to be able to say that. She taught the best and the most committed vocal students for decades, on both the West and East coasts. She’s sent more students to the Met finals, including the soprano who won the National Metropolitan Opera competition. She’s won it herself, and has sung at the White House, and when she goes to New York for a week there are students lined up to work with her. When she came out of retirement last year to teach a limited schedule, I was waiting outside on her stoop, panting.
And Nancy’s from Texas, and has a wicked sense of humor, and a realistic sense of who she is, and you do what Nancy says.
When you study with Nancy, you work with her accompanist, who happens to be a friend of mine. Signe and I have been friends for 35 years and, from time to time, have shared an almost telepathic bond. I once dropped an entire page and a half in a recital and there she was, right with me, even though the music was impossibly modern. We’ve seen each other through some pretty tough stuff. Signe plays like the pianist angels in heaven play. Not only does she play Brahms so that you want to sink onto the floor and sob aloud, she is probably the best accompanist I’ve ever seen. No matter how good you are, if you are singing with Signe, it makes you better.
So these two women, working together at the height of their powers, are my mentors and friends, in a very powerful Cosmic Sense. I see them at least once a week.
And as much as I love them and as much as I know they love me, I’ve felt a little guilty about taking up very much of their time. Because I’m in my fifties now, and even with the Big Arytenoid Scare of ‘10, I’m still not sure that I’m entirely behind this singing thing, and I’m going to be a club singer anyway so I don’t exactly need to be coached by the A Team. I’ve heard Nancy’s students, we gather in master classes fairly regularly, and they’re top-notch. They study with her because they are preparing for serious performing careers.
(I don’t feel very guilty. It’s akin to how you feel when you get away with eating half of your mom’s warm chocolate chip cookies, right off the cooling rack. Should have saved more for your brother, but ha! You got to them first.)
Last week, Nancy told me to prepare three or four jazz standards for my next lesson. I gathered 35 songs and prepared five of them. Overachiever! Double ha! See, I learned my lesson! I’m rolling on wheels now! New career as a club singer, three gold dresses and all! Who knows where this will end – I might stop biting my nails and get a manicure! I might even pop for the hair highlights! I’m relieved of the high wire act of concert singing, there’s no way I could do that now anyway. It’s a young person’s game, everybody says so. You can’t even take part in competitions, one of the main routes into the singing game, after the age of 35 – and I am way, way past my mid-thirties.
I have to admit to a tiny bit of trepidation because Nancy pointed a bony finger at me last Sunday and made me sing in the master class (not really, she just said in her warm, casual way, “Buh-ray-un-duh, you’re on after Claire,” but I’m telling you what it felt like), and I sang surprisingly well, and she came over to me later and said, “You have one of the great voices,” and I thought for a fleeting moment, is she really going to let me get away with just singing club songs or is there a little more Handel in my future? But then I thought, Nah.
Well. Four days later I brought in my list of 35 songs and five prepared pieces and we didn’t even glance at them. Signe was there. I’m always so happy to see Signe. But it usually means that Nancy has some repertoire that she’d like you to see. And it’s not going to be Stormy Weather.
She proceeded to introduce me to some of the most difficult, melismatic (think Queen of the Night on steroids) music I’ve ever seen. Bach arias about coffee, now that’s kind of funny! But it’s in a really problematic part of my voice and how many sixteenth notes are there on this page? Then some lovely 20th century Italian arias written in the antique style, okay, that’s fine.
Then she unfurled a piece of music and balanced it on the piano rack. It’s so old, it doesn’t have a title page anymore. Bits are crumbling off the brown edges of the score. I’ve never heard of this composer. He sounds like he’s from Japan or some Arabic country or Brooklyn or something. It’s a very non-standard size, even stranger looking than French music (French music publishers have never heard of 8 ½ by 11). I’m looking at sixteenth notes, thirty-second notes, sixty-fourth notes. I don’t think I could even play the melodic line. Call that a melodic line? Signe starts to play it for me.
I can tell that when these notes are translated into the human voice, the effect will be otherworldly. The piano is a percussive instrument and vocal music, even when played by the most skilled and intuitive of pianists, can’t have the same effect on the listener as when it is sung, but I’m getting chills. What is this? There’s something about it that makes me think it’s Spanish, there’s that exotic blend of Mediterranean and Arabic that you find only in Spanish music, but I’m not sure.
Nobody has this music. It’s more than a collector’s item, it’s like finding the buried treasure on Neahkahnie Mountain off the Oregon Coast. It’s like being given the Mystic Black Diamond of Koh-ih-Noor or the ruby slippers. It’s impossibly difficult. I know that I said I would do what Nancy says, said it in front of a half-dozen of the best singers I know, but I just can’t do this!
Nancy is laughing. She has the warmest smile in the world. I have to disappoint her. “Nancy. I can’t sing this!” “Yayus, you can! You have NO IDEA what you’ll be able to do.” And Signe adds, “I can hear it now.”
It’s like going to a doctor because you have balance problems and she prescribes learning how to walk a high wire, because if you survive that, you won’t have balance problems anymore.
No, this is what it’s like. It’s like rowing out on the New York harbor in the middle of the night to have a once-in-a-lifetime view of the Statue of Liberty. You’re bobbing around out there in the dark, looking up at the green bronze giantess a thousand feet away, thinking deep thoughts. Suddenly her terrifyingly Athene-like head turns and she looks sternly at you. Her lamp ignites and the flame shoots straight up into the sky. The arm holding the lamp sweeps down in your direction and points the lamp right at you like a searchlight. You’re blinded, just like when you’re standing on the stage of the Hult Center and can’t even see the front row of the audience.
Like Charlie Brown, I scream, “AUGH!!”
So this music is sitting in my living room, waiting for me to go make copies of it. Signe is going to make a recording of the melody, both fast and slow, for practice purposes. I have my little tasks lined up. If I learn to sing this, there won’t be much of anything I can’t sing.
At the last master class, I told Nancy that I was fifty-four, just as if she didn’t know it, just so she would know that she shouldn’t waste her time on me. And she said, “Perfect timing!”
I guess it is.
Lights. Camera. Action.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Getting Old As My Mother
George Harrison was a genius.
The first time I heard him sing this line, I thought I knew what it meant. Ha! That was twenty years ago. What did I know?
I fell into sudden, uncontrollable weeping the other morning because I tried to say the words, “I’m getting old now and I’m afraid of dying,” and I could hear my mother’s voice saying the exact same sentence a few years ago.
A close friend told me that I was getting more harsh with him, being critical and snippy, and that it was hurting his feelings and more than that, wearing him down, after a close and foundational friendship that’s lasted a couple of decades. I wasn’t even aware. I’ve struggled all my life with my shoot-from-the-hip manner, working to temper it with empathy and slowed reflexes, and can point proudly to a warm circle of friends and students as proof that I’ve succeeded, but apparently the closer you are to a person the easier it is to let yourself be…a natural bitch? I don’t want to be this person.
I remember my mother saying, “I don’t want to be this person.”
Yes, and I remember saying to myself, “I don’t even think she’s aware when she’s being critical and harsh.”
I would say yikes, but that’s being funny and this isn’t funny.
If you don’t want to be happy, don’t tell my husband what your heart’s desire is. (This works for me, our children, and the friends who’ve tried it – I don’t know if it would work for you, but it might.) Because the minute he knows what your heart’s desire is, he starts trying to figure out how to get it for you.
A year ago, I wrote that if I had just a year to live, I’d get enough sleep. Well, that wasn’t rocket science. I sleep more now. Several days ago I wrote about my perfect day, the one where the first action of every Endless Day was to pick up a hardbound journal and start writing. I swore that if I ever retired (this is defined, for me, as nobody needing to eat in the morning) I’d have mornings like this. Boy, I thought, this would be heaven, but then I thought that probably I’d get to the actual heaven before I felt that I didn’t have to get up and make breakfast for everybody. For the past week now, Ed has brought me coffee and oatmeal, our kids have gotten themselves out the door, and I’ve been writing, learning new songs, and building a web page…from six in the morning until about noon. Then I get up.
Yep, it’s heaven. But it’s confusing. I do have a list of goals, wouldn’t know how to go through a day without one, but Ed pointed out that the list is too long to finish in a day or a month and I shouldn’t worry too much about a timeline. After a lifetime of breaking goals down into tasks and creating a scope and sequence of work, and scheduling the tasks into little fifteen minute increments in my calendar, it feels funny to swim from thought to concept to essay, to these lyrics and that jazz arrangement. Yesterday I spent half an hour on a website entitled, “The Fifty Most Sexy Women Over Fifty.” It’s important. I want to be a club singer and have to believe that I’m not all washed up. Then I went to Red Light, a local consignment store and bought three really tight gold dresses for $68. Then I came home and sang along with a bluesy accompaniment to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and put together a list of songs for a coaching session.
This is my job now?
I’d like to say that I haven’t been so snippy in the last few days and that I’m more tuned into what’s coming out of my mouth. I can say that I’m trying. And as much as it hurts, it’s good that I have friends who will tell me that I’m hurting them. I’d like to think that the harshness comes from a place of disappointment and feeling like it’s too late to create a life that fits – and that when I’m given the chance to live that life, the sharp edges will melt away. Last night I heard myself saying, “This was a great day.” I don’t say that very often.
Working on it, working on it. In the meantime, just in case they don’t all know it already, and while I still can, this is what I want to say to those closest and dearest to me, especially my mother,
I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all, when snowflakes fall
I wish you love.
The first time I heard him sing this line, I thought I knew what it meant. Ha! That was twenty years ago. What did I know?
I fell into sudden, uncontrollable weeping the other morning because I tried to say the words, “I’m getting old now and I’m afraid of dying,” and I could hear my mother’s voice saying the exact same sentence a few years ago.
A close friend told me that I was getting more harsh with him, being critical and snippy, and that it was hurting his feelings and more than that, wearing him down, after a close and foundational friendship that’s lasted a couple of decades. I wasn’t even aware. I’ve struggled all my life with my shoot-from-the-hip manner, working to temper it with empathy and slowed reflexes, and can point proudly to a warm circle of friends and students as proof that I’ve succeeded, but apparently the closer you are to a person the easier it is to let yourself be…a natural bitch? I don’t want to be this person.
I remember my mother saying, “I don’t want to be this person.”
Yes, and I remember saying to myself, “I don’t even think she’s aware when she’s being critical and harsh.”
I would say yikes, but that’s being funny and this isn’t funny.
If you don’t want to be happy, don’t tell my husband what your heart’s desire is. (This works for me, our children, and the friends who’ve tried it – I don’t know if it would work for you, but it might.) Because the minute he knows what your heart’s desire is, he starts trying to figure out how to get it for you.
A year ago, I wrote that if I had just a year to live, I’d get enough sleep. Well, that wasn’t rocket science. I sleep more now. Several days ago I wrote about my perfect day, the one where the first action of every Endless Day was to pick up a hardbound journal and start writing. I swore that if I ever retired (this is defined, for me, as nobody needing to eat in the morning) I’d have mornings like this. Boy, I thought, this would be heaven, but then I thought that probably I’d get to the actual heaven before I felt that I didn’t have to get up and make breakfast for everybody. For the past week now, Ed has brought me coffee and oatmeal, our kids have gotten themselves out the door, and I’ve been writing, learning new songs, and building a web page…from six in the morning until about noon. Then I get up.
Yep, it’s heaven. But it’s confusing. I do have a list of goals, wouldn’t know how to go through a day without one, but Ed pointed out that the list is too long to finish in a day or a month and I shouldn’t worry too much about a timeline. After a lifetime of breaking goals down into tasks and creating a scope and sequence of work, and scheduling the tasks into little fifteen minute increments in my calendar, it feels funny to swim from thought to concept to essay, to these lyrics and that jazz arrangement. Yesterday I spent half an hour on a website entitled, “The Fifty Most Sexy Women Over Fifty.” It’s important. I want to be a club singer and have to believe that I’m not all washed up. Then I went to Red Light, a local consignment store and bought three really tight gold dresses for $68. Then I came home and sang along with a bluesy accompaniment to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and put together a list of songs for a coaching session.
This is my job now?
I’d like to say that I haven’t been so snippy in the last few days and that I’m more tuned into what’s coming out of my mouth. I can say that I’m trying. And as much as it hurts, it’s good that I have friends who will tell me that I’m hurting them. I’d like to think that the harshness comes from a place of disappointment and feeling like it’s too late to create a life that fits – and that when I’m given the chance to live that life, the sharp edges will melt away. Last night I heard myself saying, “This was a great day.” I don’t say that very often.
Working on it, working on it. In the meantime, just in case they don’t all know it already, and while I still can, this is what I want to say to those closest and dearest to me, especially my mother,
I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all, when snowflakes fall
I wish you love.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
The Endless Day
Lately I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I want out of life. I’ve had a little extra time to think, and realized that I would have a better chance of getting what I wanted if I only knew what “it” was, so I’ve been asking myself, “What do I WANT?”
And I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really want is the Endless Day. Not the Never-Ending Day, that’s different. The Never-Ending Day, even for a Lady of Leisure like myself, is full of making breakfast, lunch and dinner for four people, shopping, planning, cleaning the bathroom, writing (but somehow that doesn’t count because then I don’t have time to sell anything), coaching voice students, listening to and learning music (that doesn’t count, either, if I don’t then perform it), paying bills, checking e-mail, working out, doing laundry, raking leaves, pulling weeds from between little rocks, planting garlic, manipulating my son into doing his homework and then remembering to turn it in.
In contrast, the Endless Day goes like this: Wake up. Drink coffee while writing with a fountain pen in a large hardcover journal. Read until starvation forces me out of the bedroom. Eat breakfast. Read some more and think about taking a nap, maybe really taking a little one but probably not. Get dressed. Take a walk, maybe to a place that has more coffee and probably a newspaper. Listen to music on the stereo.
The whole day goes like that – read, write, eat, nap, walk, read some more. It would be even more perfect if I didn’t have to waste time sleeping at night. I suppose it would be okay to start talking to people, nice people, people I like, after the first day and a half or so.
I was looking at this description of The Endless Day and realizing just how out of it I apparently am. This isn’t how life is lived any more. There’s too much interaction with the real world in my Day. We’re talking about writing with a pen that you hold in your hand, books that have weight and are held in the lap, feet hitting pavement, not a treadmill.
More and more lately, I’ll arrange to spend time with a friend and we will sit or walk while my friend bends their face close to … a small electronic device that has everything interesting in the entire world in it. We’ll be in Disneyland or a restaurant and the most interesting thing is to check the weather on the iPhone, or find a review of a record or a restaurant, or check e-mail, or take a picture and post it on Facebook so their seventy-two friends can share this moment. Another friend has got a game room with a ping-pong table – but it’s covered with laundry, because the kids are playing ping pong on the Wii. The nearby used book store doesn’t purchase children’s books anymore. There’s not very much call for them. Kids either don’t read or they want a Kindle.
I like to sit and listen to records with friends – remember that? Sounds like something you’d do after the taffy pull. But there’s something about having the same sound waves washing over skin, drumming into hearts, and your eyes meeting.
So they can keep their little fifteen-inch back-lit world. I’ll keep the rest of it, the impact of my feet on pavement or trail, the long views, the hand holding the chopping knife, Pete Seeger’s voice vibrating the length of the living room, the warmth of my husband’s hand, the weight of the book in my lap. Especially if I can have it all for an Endless Day.
And I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really want is the Endless Day. Not the Never-Ending Day, that’s different. The Never-Ending Day, even for a Lady of Leisure like myself, is full of making breakfast, lunch and dinner for four people, shopping, planning, cleaning the bathroom, writing (but somehow that doesn’t count because then I don’t have time to sell anything), coaching voice students, listening to and learning music (that doesn’t count, either, if I don’t then perform it), paying bills, checking e-mail, working out, doing laundry, raking leaves, pulling weeds from between little rocks, planting garlic, manipulating my son into doing his homework and then remembering to turn it in.
In contrast, the Endless Day goes like this: Wake up. Drink coffee while writing with a fountain pen in a large hardcover journal. Read until starvation forces me out of the bedroom. Eat breakfast. Read some more and think about taking a nap, maybe really taking a little one but probably not. Get dressed. Take a walk, maybe to a place that has more coffee and probably a newspaper. Listen to music on the stereo.
The whole day goes like that – read, write, eat, nap, walk, read some more. It would be even more perfect if I didn’t have to waste time sleeping at night. I suppose it would be okay to start talking to people, nice people, people I like, after the first day and a half or so.
I was looking at this description of The Endless Day and realizing just how out of it I apparently am. This isn’t how life is lived any more. There’s too much interaction with the real world in my Day. We’re talking about writing with a pen that you hold in your hand, books that have weight and are held in the lap, feet hitting pavement, not a treadmill.
More and more lately, I’ll arrange to spend time with a friend and we will sit or walk while my friend bends their face close to … a small electronic device that has everything interesting in the entire world in it. We’ll be in Disneyland or a restaurant and the most interesting thing is to check the weather on the iPhone, or find a review of a record or a restaurant, or check e-mail, or take a picture and post it on Facebook so their seventy-two friends can share this moment. Another friend has got a game room with a ping-pong table – but it’s covered with laundry, because the kids are playing ping pong on the Wii. The nearby used book store doesn’t purchase children’s books anymore. There’s not very much call for them. Kids either don’t read or they want a Kindle.
I like to sit and listen to records with friends – remember that? Sounds like something you’d do after the taffy pull. But there’s something about having the same sound waves washing over skin, drumming into hearts, and your eyes meeting.
So they can keep their little fifteen-inch back-lit world. I’ll keep the rest of it, the impact of my feet on pavement or trail, the long views, the hand holding the chopping knife, Pete Seeger’s voice vibrating the length of the living room, the warmth of my husband’s hand, the weight of the book in my lap. Especially if I can have it all for an Endless Day.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Angels in Portland
I'm a rationalist. You can tell that some of my ancestors are from Iowa -- show me, who did the study, was it peer-reviewed, was there a control, were the subjects self-selected? I don't believe in miracles.
So here's the thing. On September 20th, I went in for a vocal assessment and saw a devastating video of my vocal structure and heard the words, "There's nothing I can do." I cried for a week. After two weeks of blank grieving, I asked my walking buddy, "When will I feel better?" (I'm also impatient with all natural processes.) She answered, "When you start a course of treatment."
All right. A Plan. I need A List! Now we're in business. I made appointments: naturopath, acupuncturist, speech pathologist, voice coach. I took homeopathic remedies and researched food sensitivities and did the vocal equivalent of physical therapy exercises. For two more weeks.
On October 18, I watched a new video of my larynx. Absolutely no pathology to be seen. We're looking at a textbook-perfect larynx. I hear the words, "The nerves have regenerated."
In less than a month.
As Emily Litella of Saturday Night Live would say, "Never mind!"
What do I do with this?
Be fearful that life seems so random, both the good and the bad?
Give thanks (thank you. THANK YOU)for a gift that I never appreciated before?
Be ashamed that I created a big hoo-ha and it turned out to be a big nothing?
Notice the love and support that came from friends, family, and strangers? That was a lesson, all in itself.
Make plans to use my voice (My Voice!!) in every style and venue that I ever craved to try?
Wonder who's pulling the strings? Sometimes I think there really are small snickering household gods who like to kick my booty and make me pay attention. They live behind the woodstove, they listen from behind the siding. Or is there really a Bigger Plan?
Yes to all of the above. In the meantime...
I'm going to get a Handel on this. Then I'm going to fly me to the moon and sing among the stars.
So here's the thing. On September 20th, I went in for a vocal assessment and saw a devastating video of my vocal structure and heard the words, "There's nothing I can do." I cried for a week. After two weeks of blank grieving, I asked my walking buddy, "When will I feel better?" (I'm also impatient with all natural processes.) She answered, "When you start a course of treatment."
All right. A Plan. I need A List! Now we're in business. I made appointments: naturopath, acupuncturist, speech pathologist, voice coach. I took homeopathic remedies and researched food sensitivities and did the vocal equivalent of physical therapy exercises. For two more weeks.
On October 18, I watched a new video of my larynx. Absolutely no pathology to be seen. We're looking at a textbook-perfect larynx. I hear the words, "The nerves have regenerated."
In less than a month.
As Emily Litella of Saturday Night Live would say, "Never mind!"
What do I do with this?
Be fearful that life seems so random, both the good and the bad?
Give thanks (thank you. THANK YOU)for a gift that I never appreciated before?
Be ashamed that I created a big hoo-ha and it turned out to be a big nothing?
Notice the love and support that came from friends, family, and strangers? That was a lesson, all in itself.
Make plans to use my voice (My Voice!!) in every style and venue that I ever craved to try?
Wonder who's pulling the strings? Sometimes I think there really are small snickering household gods who like to kick my booty and make me pay attention. They live behind the woodstove, they listen from behind the siding. Or is there really a Bigger Plan?
Yes to all of the above. In the meantime...
I'm going to get a Handel on this. Then I'm going to fly me to the moon and sing among the stars.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Crackles and Pops
One of my earliest memories is singing the entire score to the Wizard of Oz, over and over again, and being so pleased with myself. I knew that I was singing it right and well and beautifully. My mother probably about lost her mind. I think I was four or five.
It was the beginning of a long life of singing in choirs, and shows, and recitals, and opera choruses, and the occasional mainstage production, and churches. From time to time, I’ve paid my bills as a singer and I’ve had a few nice successes. My college degree is in vocal performance.
But recently I lost my voice. Well, I haven’t lost my voice, but I’ve lost my Voice.
I thought it was post nasal drip, or vocal abuse from too much teaching/talking/singing/shouting, or not singing high notes correctly, or allergies.
The gravel in my speaking voice wouldn’t go away, my singing voice felt stiff, there were hisses and stops and starts in the voice that weren’t there before. So I went to see a friend who is a leading laryngologist here in town.
And after a relatively uncomfortable encounter involving a camera down my throat, what’s the news? Nerve damage, most likely caused by a virus that I didn’t even notice at the time, to the arytenoid cartilage – not the vocal folds themselves – causing the vocal cords to close asymmetrically. Yeah, yeah, what’s that mean? It means that my vocal cords don’t vibrate at the same frequency and they aren’t in contact all along their length as they vibrate. Air escapes and creates holes in the voice. It feels and sounds like being on the edge of laryngitis. Except that it’s permanent.
The gravelly voice and the stiffness and the crackles and pops in my singing voice are permanent.
What? Excuse me, WHAT?
My doctor says that nerves can regenerate to some extent over the year following the damage, and that exercising a muscle weakened by nerve damage can help to prevent further loss of function and perhaps even help me to modify how I create sound, thus allowing me to keep some useful singing function – he doesn’t know. I can come back in a year and he’ll look and we’ll see.
In one season, I’ve gone from being too much of a soloist to sing in a chorus to being not good enough to sing in a chorus.
I’ve lost my fluid, solid, beautiful voice that I have had since before I could speak. Every time I talk and it’s gravelly and I feel like apologizing for the scratchiness, I realize that it’s the way it is now. It’s structural. I saw it on the doctor’s TV screen.
It never occurred to me to be grateful for my voice. Greta Garbo-like, I’ve reclined on my Chaise of Life, back of the hand to my forehead, and bemoaned the Burden of a Gift that I Don’t Know What To Do With, or Why Didn’t I Do More With It, or What Shall I Do Now? The artistic version of White Man’s Burden. Cry me a river!
But I’ve never stopped and been thankful for a lovely voice that did pretty much whatever I asked it to do. It was part of me, one of my quirky talents, like my ability to read a thousand words a minute or make up a new recipe on the fly or see the one typo on a page at a glance.
So a lifetime of “near misses” with a singing career (my friend Sally says, “What’s a near miss? You were a featured soloist on the stage of the Hult Center, singing to 2,000 people for God’s sake!”) is over. I don’t have to feel badly any more that I didn’t do more with my talent. As Cat Stevens sang, “And if I ever lose my mouth, all my teeth, north and south, oh if I ever lose my mouth, or if…I won’t have to talk.”
It makes me think of other near misses. The eight-year teaching career that never really quite took off (again, what’s a near miss? Four years of teaching fifth grade, two of teaching music, two years of temping and substitute teaching…). My life as a Development Officer (yeah, yeah, I was never vice president of a college but I did raise a million dollars and made a world-class fencing facility in Portland, Oregon possible). I agree, at this late date, I could reset my definition of what’s a near miss. Still, they feel like near misses to me. I wanted to be the BEST at something. I thought that singing might be it.
I guess what bothers me most is that this and that happens, and plans go aft agley. Life is so goddamned RANDOM.
It’s not that the world is a dangerous place. It’s that it’s such a RANDOM place. And some random happens that’s not good.
And some random happens that’s terrific, like my blissful marriage to the Best Man in the World and being the mother of the Best Two Kids in the World, our overall good health, good friends, Ed finding a job he likes through the most unlikely sequence of events you can imagine, all of four of us enjoying intelligence, optimism (modesty, let’s not forget modesty), and stubbornness.
Last year, when I was hesitating over what to plant where and what if things don’t come up? …my friends and fellow gardeners David and Linda let me in on their philosophy of gardening. “Just plant a bunch of stuff, Brenda. Some things will come up and some things don’t.”
Just keep digging, just keep getting dirt under my nails, just keep planting. Ya get dirty. Some things come up and some things don’t.
And maybe I’ll take a few days to cry me a river.
It was the beginning of a long life of singing in choirs, and shows, and recitals, and opera choruses, and the occasional mainstage production, and churches. From time to time, I’ve paid my bills as a singer and I’ve had a few nice successes. My college degree is in vocal performance.
But recently I lost my voice. Well, I haven’t lost my voice, but I’ve lost my Voice.
I thought it was post nasal drip, or vocal abuse from too much teaching/talking/singing/shouting, or not singing high notes correctly, or allergies.
The gravel in my speaking voice wouldn’t go away, my singing voice felt stiff, there were hisses and stops and starts in the voice that weren’t there before. So I went to see a friend who is a leading laryngologist here in town.
And after a relatively uncomfortable encounter involving a camera down my throat, what’s the news? Nerve damage, most likely caused by a virus that I didn’t even notice at the time, to the arytenoid cartilage – not the vocal folds themselves – causing the vocal cords to close asymmetrically. Yeah, yeah, what’s that mean? It means that my vocal cords don’t vibrate at the same frequency and they aren’t in contact all along their length as they vibrate. Air escapes and creates holes in the voice. It feels and sounds like being on the edge of laryngitis. Except that it’s permanent.
The gravelly voice and the stiffness and the crackles and pops in my singing voice are permanent.
What? Excuse me, WHAT?
My doctor says that nerves can regenerate to some extent over the year following the damage, and that exercising a muscle weakened by nerve damage can help to prevent further loss of function and perhaps even help me to modify how I create sound, thus allowing me to keep some useful singing function – he doesn’t know. I can come back in a year and he’ll look and we’ll see.
In one season, I’ve gone from being too much of a soloist to sing in a chorus to being not good enough to sing in a chorus.
I’ve lost my fluid, solid, beautiful voice that I have had since before I could speak. Every time I talk and it’s gravelly and I feel like apologizing for the scratchiness, I realize that it’s the way it is now. It’s structural. I saw it on the doctor’s TV screen.
It never occurred to me to be grateful for my voice. Greta Garbo-like, I’ve reclined on my Chaise of Life, back of the hand to my forehead, and bemoaned the Burden of a Gift that I Don’t Know What To Do With, or Why Didn’t I Do More With It, or What Shall I Do Now? The artistic version of White Man’s Burden. Cry me a river!
But I’ve never stopped and been thankful for a lovely voice that did pretty much whatever I asked it to do. It was part of me, one of my quirky talents, like my ability to read a thousand words a minute or make up a new recipe on the fly or see the one typo on a page at a glance.
So a lifetime of “near misses” with a singing career (my friend Sally says, “What’s a near miss? You were a featured soloist on the stage of the Hult Center, singing to 2,000 people for God’s sake!”) is over. I don’t have to feel badly any more that I didn’t do more with my talent. As Cat Stevens sang, “And if I ever lose my mouth, all my teeth, north and south, oh if I ever lose my mouth, or if…I won’t have to talk.”
It makes me think of other near misses. The eight-year teaching career that never really quite took off (again, what’s a near miss? Four years of teaching fifth grade, two of teaching music, two years of temping and substitute teaching…). My life as a Development Officer (yeah, yeah, I was never vice president of a college but I did raise a million dollars and made a world-class fencing facility in Portland, Oregon possible). I agree, at this late date, I could reset my definition of what’s a near miss. Still, they feel like near misses to me. I wanted to be the BEST at something. I thought that singing might be it.
I guess what bothers me most is that this and that happens, and plans go aft agley. Life is so goddamned RANDOM.
It’s not that the world is a dangerous place. It’s that it’s such a RANDOM place. And some random happens that’s not good.
And some random happens that’s terrific, like my blissful marriage to the Best Man in the World and being the mother of the Best Two Kids in the World, our overall good health, good friends, Ed finding a job he likes through the most unlikely sequence of events you can imagine, all of four of us enjoying intelligence, optimism (modesty, let’s not forget modesty), and stubbornness.
Last year, when I was hesitating over what to plant where and what if things don’t come up? …my friends and fellow gardeners David and Linda let me in on their philosophy of gardening. “Just plant a bunch of stuff, Brenda. Some things will come up and some things don’t.”
Just keep digging, just keep getting dirt under my nails, just keep planting. Ya get dirty. Some things come up and some things don’t.
And maybe I’ll take a few days to cry me a river.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Earthquake
I remember, once, watching the front yard ripple like a wave heading for shore – except it was heading for the living room in which I stood. Then the earthquake met the leading edge of the house and the sound of a freight train filled my ears, and I could hear my mother’s dishes and my father’s cathode ray tube collection crashing to the floor in the dining room. I wanted to sprout wings and fly. Get away, get away!
It’s dangerous out there.
I felt almost the same way today, reading the New York Times. I quit watching the news years ago, when I realized just how incomplete and slanted and “watch the birdie!” it was. Besides, it was really depressing. And I may have to start spooning the print news out into more easily digestible portions, too. Really. Arizona’s new immigration laws, the Birthers, a far-right conservative who isn’t re-elected because he’s not conservative enough. They say that one of the ways to be most at risk to be manipulated by others is to be governed by fear and uncertainty. Well, a lot of us must be scared and uncertain, because a few noisy angry people are having an outsize effect on the rest of the country. Tea Partiers “taking back our country”? It’s my country too, and I don’t want you to have it.
I used to say to myself that when the Homeland Security Act and the far-right made my beautiful home too threatening to live in, that I might take a break and go live in Canada for awhile. Or Europe. But now we’re looking at the collapse of countries, and perhaps of whole regional economic systems. Global warming – yes, I know we like to call it climate change, but it’s global warming, folks – as well as unwatched aging nuclear stores and computer systems – threaten us all.
Jeez, it's not just dangerous out there -- the whole GLOBE is perilous.
And for most people, always has been and always will be. As I sit here, harrowed up with angst about Apocalypse Sometime Soon, I need to remember that for the majority of people on the planet, clean water is a hard-to-come-by luxury and one good meal a day is all you can hope for. That students are walking ten miles to get to a school with no books. They’re not living in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s just home.
It’s a beautiful day. I live in a neighborhood just south of Portland, Oregon, and my city sits down and across a little river, and I can walk to a bluff and admire it from afar. I planted spinach and carrots yesterday. I’ve got a fortune in leeks growing in one garden bed, and the garlic is coming on. The farmer’s market meets today, about five blocks from my house. Today is a good day to be alive.
But I see the earthquake rippling toward us. In times like these, when I see the ground rushing up toward us and I can no longer say, like the guy whose parachute didn’t open, “So far, so good,” it’s taking some mulling over – how do I continue to live with hope and purpose? J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the popular “Lord of the Rings” and a survivor of the First World War, once wrote that the English shared a common attitude – being essentially cheerful people, they can stay happy as long as despair can be postponed. (And, presumably, maintaining a stiff upper lip even when it can’t.)
Meanwhile, I plant my raspberries and asparagus and the new apple tree, teach my daughter how to drive a stick shift and my son how to write a five-paragraph essay – and prepare to enjoy the fruit of my labors for the next forty years or so.
Yes, it’s a dangerous planet, but it’s the only one we’ve got. And it’s home.
It’s dangerous out there.
I felt almost the same way today, reading the New York Times. I quit watching the news years ago, when I realized just how incomplete and slanted and “watch the birdie!” it was. Besides, it was really depressing. And I may have to start spooning the print news out into more easily digestible portions, too. Really. Arizona’s new immigration laws, the Birthers, a far-right conservative who isn’t re-elected because he’s not conservative enough. They say that one of the ways to be most at risk to be manipulated by others is to be governed by fear and uncertainty. Well, a lot of us must be scared and uncertain, because a few noisy angry people are having an outsize effect on the rest of the country. Tea Partiers “taking back our country”? It’s my country too, and I don’t want you to have it.
I used to say to myself that when the Homeland Security Act and the far-right made my beautiful home too threatening to live in, that I might take a break and go live in Canada for awhile. Or Europe. But now we’re looking at the collapse of countries, and perhaps of whole regional economic systems. Global warming – yes, I know we like to call it climate change, but it’s global warming, folks – as well as unwatched aging nuclear stores and computer systems – threaten us all.
Jeez, it's not just dangerous out there -- the whole GLOBE is perilous.
And for most people, always has been and always will be. As I sit here, harrowed up with angst about Apocalypse Sometime Soon, I need to remember that for the majority of people on the planet, clean water is a hard-to-come-by luxury and one good meal a day is all you can hope for. That students are walking ten miles to get to a school with no books. They’re not living in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s just home.
It’s a beautiful day. I live in a neighborhood just south of Portland, Oregon, and my city sits down and across a little river, and I can walk to a bluff and admire it from afar. I planted spinach and carrots yesterday. I’ve got a fortune in leeks growing in one garden bed, and the garlic is coming on. The farmer’s market meets today, about five blocks from my house. Today is a good day to be alive.
But I see the earthquake rippling toward us. In times like these, when I see the ground rushing up toward us and I can no longer say, like the guy whose parachute didn’t open, “So far, so good,” it’s taking some mulling over – how do I continue to live with hope and purpose? J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the popular “Lord of the Rings” and a survivor of the First World War, once wrote that the English shared a common attitude – being essentially cheerful people, they can stay happy as long as despair can be postponed. (And, presumably, maintaining a stiff upper lip even when it can’t.)
Meanwhile, I plant my raspberries and asparagus and the new apple tree, teach my daughter how to drive a stick shift and my son how to write a five-paragraph essay – and prepare to enjoy the fruit of my labors for the next forty years or so.
Yes, it’s a dangerous planet, but it’s the only one we’ve got. And it’s home.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
World Warming
This just in: I'm fifty-three.
No, now, really, this is serious. I know I keep harping on it, but what a shock!
It happened suddenly, too -- kind of like a car accident, which also just happened last week. One minute you're driving at a steady pace down Southeast Ash and the next minute a van has crashed into you and your car doesn't look the same anymore.
I mean, one minute you're forty-three and going back to school and everyone tells you look thirty and the next you're fifty-three and you tell people so and they don't even bother to remonstrate politely. They just say, "Oh."
I know what happened. I was really fat for years and wouldn't look in the mirror or let anybody take a picture of me. So then I lost a lot of weight and I had to look in the mirror to buy clothes that fit and people started taking pictures again and jeez, the face I see in the mirror, well, SUDDENLY it's a -- middle-aged -- face. And you know the saying that fat plumps out your wrinkles and thin people wrinkle more than fat people? It's true.
Now, I wouldn't care if these outward changes weren't accompanied by some inward changes. Well, some things go along with the territory, like how many pairs of glasses do I need now? Readers, computer/piano/dicing onions glasses, distance glasses, bifocals, and then just accepting blurry for awhile because I read for two hours and it will take my eyes two hours to be able to focus on that tree, even with my new glasses on? If you're over fifty you're laughing ruefully, and you over there, yes you, just wait. You'll see!
Or not!
Anyway. Inward changes. The part that didn't change inside is the just-out-of-college part, the me who knows all the slang and is really cool and a little whacky and quirky and energetic and knows obscure topical references that only a few other cool people know, like Klaus Nomi and Eddie Izzard stand-up routines. (Yes, I know these are '80s references.) So this whacky quirky college student is where? Behind the fifty-three-year-old face.
My daughter says that my college-student self is shining through my fifty-three-year-old face and that's what makes me so cool. Aw.
What I notice most though, is that I don't want to set the world on fire anymore.
Big one. Because up to this last year, I wanted to change the world in a big way. Be a famous opera singer or do original research into the nature of sleep or stop global warming or nuclear proliferation or at least inspire classroom after classroom of kids to change the world for me.
But now?
Not so much.
Besides, I kinda feel like I've been changing the world all along. But in quiet, subtle ways.
There's a sidewalk between a middle school and a popular shopping center that's there purely because of my advocacy.
A church has an organ, in part because of my service on a committee.
Several of my friends have jobs they like because I connected some dots.
Dozens of kids are more confident and excited about themselves as learners because of me.
My son loves Star Trek, Mozart and Italian cooking because of me. My daughter is discovering herself as an actress because of me.
Oh, that's right, these two vital warmhearted people are in the world because of me!
But is that setting the world on fire?
No.
Do I still have opportunities to try?
Yes! Yes, I do. And I see Hillarie Clinton and Gail Collins and Nancy Pelosi and I hear all about how we get a second wind in our fifties and you know, right now I'm using my second wind to garden and cook and take eight-mile walks and spend time with friends and sit and write and maybe read a book. Because it's more than 25 years since I've had time to do these things. I've been running for the train, catching hold by my fingertips and hoisting myself aboard since forever, and setting the world on fire looks like too much damn work. It's a big world.
I think I'll just warm it up a little.
No, now, really, this is serious. I know I keep harping on it, but what a shock!
It happened suddenly, too -- kind of like a car accident, which also just happened last week. One minute you're driving at a steady pace down Southeast Ash and the next minute a van has crashed into you and your car doesn't look the same anymore.
I mean, one minute you're forty-three and going back to school and everyone tells you look thirty and the next you're fifty-three and you tell people so and they don't even bother to remonstrate politely. They just say, "Oh."
I know what happened. I was really fat for years and wouldn't look in the mirror or let anybody take a picture of me. So then I lost a lot of weight and I had to look in the mirror to buy clothes that fit and people started taking pictures again and jeez, the face I see in the mirror, well, SUDDENLY it's a -- middle-aged -- face. And you know the saying that fat plumps out your wrinkles and thin people wrinkle more than fat people? It's true.
Now, I wouldn't care if these outward changes weren't accompanied by some inward changes. Well, some things go along with the territory, like how many pairs of glasses do I need now? Readers, computer/piano/dicing onions glasses, distance glasses, bifocals, and then just accepting blurry for awhile because I read for two hours and it will take my eyes two hours to be able to focus on that tree, even with my new glasses on? If you're over fifty you're laughing ruefully, and you over there, yes you, just wait. You'll see!
Or not!
Anyway. Inward changes. The part that didn't change inside is the just-out-of-college part, the me who knows all the slang and is really cool and a little whacky and quirky and energetic and knows obscure topical references that only a few other cool people know, like Klaus Nomi and Eddie Izzard stand-up routines. (Yes, I know these are '80s references.) So this whacky quirky college student is where? Behind the fifty-three-year-old face.
My daughter says that my college-student self is shining through my fifty-three-year-old face and that's what makes me so cool. Aw.
What I notice most though, is that I don't want to set the world on fire anymore.
Big one. Because up to this last year, I wanted to change the world in a big way. Be a famous opera singer or do original research into the nature of sleep or stop global warming or nuclear proliferation or at least inspire classroom after classroom of kids to change the world for me.
But now?
Not so much.
Besides, I kinda feel like I've been changing the world all along. But in quiet, subtle ways.
There's a sidewalk between a middle school and a popular shopping center that's there purely because of my advocacy.
A church has an organ, in part because of my service on a committee.
Several of my friends have jobs they like because I connected some dots.
Dozens of kids are more confident and excited about themselves as learners because of me.
My son loves Star Trek, Mozart and Italian cooking because of me. My daughter is discovering herself as an actress because of me.
Oh, that's right, these two vital warmhearted people are in the world because of me!
But is that setting the world on fire?
No.
Do I still have opportunities to try?
Yes! Yes, I do. And I see Hillarie Clinton and Gail Collins and Nancy Pelosi and I hear all about how we get a second wind in our fifties and you know, right now I'm using my second wind to garden and cook and take eight-mile walks and spend time with friends and sit and write and maybe read a book. Because it's more than 25 years since I've had time to do these things. I've been running for the train, catching hold by my fingertips and hoisting myself aboard since forever, and setting the world on fire looks like too much damn work. It's a big world.
I think I'll just warm it up a little.
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