From time to time I think about this blog and what I have written, and I want to share it. Yet, I feel that if I knew certain people were looking at it I would feel the urge to censor what I write. Part of me longs to be known yet another part of me feels a great freedom in what and how I write by virtue of the fact that I have told no one I know about the blog. Which is of greater value to me? For the time being, it is still the freedom. If I stranger were to read what I write, this doesn't seem to scare me. For those I know to read what I write feels like an act of public exhibitionism.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Being Chosen
My recent singing enterprises, and certainly since I last wrote in my Blog Inconnue, have been more successful by a certain standard. I've been working to focus my energies in better directions, and lo and behold, good things just started happening! I've been singing much more, being paid for it and/or appreciated much more and the work I have been doing is in general much more fulfilling than the majority of projects that had been occupying my time before. I am very thankful for all of this.
Within one of the organizations I sing for I have recently been what you could call 'promoted' for next year. This means many more concerts and more money. Again, I am delighted, but this organization has a very stratified hierarchy amongst it's singers. For me to make this jump means that someone else is still waiting. It also means that those already of the higher status may now be looking at me as a potential threat to their own status as defined by number of gigs, solos, 'first calls', etc.
The major difference for me between this year and previous years, is I've been working not to look at the world so much through my lenses of desire for the esteem of others. I've been able to focus more in the moments of music making without so much of this other crap consuming my mind. I've been a lot happier.
Today in this organization's last commitment for the season, I was singled out as one of a few to double another part. Normally the same groups of people do these things, but today I was suddenly one of them. This is not a big deal, but in a large and status conscious group, I know that I would have been thinking things if someone I didn't know who had been quietly singing away for a while but not sticking out was suddenly named instead of me! Why her? I am a better singer than she is. I have a better voice. I KNOW I would have been thinking these poisonous things or wondering then if she had been promoted in some way, because those on the lower levels don't know who is joining the higher ranks for the coming year until they go to sign in for the first gig of the new season, see their name on the same old side of the roster and see their friend's name on the other side.
Even in this moment I think to myself, what madness this is! Worse than this is the fear that I will come to perceive myself as somehow 'special' because of a move up the totem or a singling out.
I've been down this path before. I've been the 'flavor of the month' with solos and opportunities I may or may not have been ready for and I've been a vocal pariah held responsible for many things out of my control. Truth has never been in either of these extreme perceptions, but I fear falling under a spell. I love singing and singing with others, but a choir can be a seductive organism. They have their own codes and ways of speaking. They often develop great pride in themselves and think that others see them as importantly as they see themselves. How I have been down this road!! I don't want to do it again. I want to sing, connect to God through that song, maybe move someone and then leave it there. I don't want to start valuing myself again based on the skewed criteria of the choral mob. Oh, how I've done this before, and how hard it has been when it is all gone - the community, the job, the reinforcement, the sense of who I believed myself to be! I know I am not that. I enjoy singing and the act of singing makes me feel great joy, but I AM NOT anyone else's view of me or my perception of their perception of me. Can I jump onto this wheel again, enjoy the ride but yet stay centered in my awareness that I am not any of this??
Within one of the organizations I sing for I have recently been what you could call 'promoted' for next year. This means many more concerts and more money. Again, I am delighted, but this organization has a very stratified hierarchy amongst it's singers. For me to make this jump means that someone else is still waiting. It also means that those already of the higher status may now be looking at me as a potential threat to their own status as defined by number of gigs, solos, 'first calls', etc.
The major difference for me between this year and previous years, is I've been working not to look at the world so much through my lenses of desire for the esteem of others. I've been able to focus more in the moments of music making without so much of this other crap consuming my mind. I've been a lot happier.
Today in this organization's last commitment for the season, I was singled out as one of a few to double another part. Normally the same groups of people do these things, but today I was suddenly one of them. This is not a big deal, but in a large and status conscious group, I know that I would have been thinking things if someone I didn't know who had been quietly singing away for a while but not sticking out was suddenly named instead of me! Why her? I am a better singer than she is. I have a better voice. I KNOW I would have been thinking these poisonous things or wondering then if she had been promoted in some way, because those on the lower levels don't know who is joining the higher ranks for the coming year until they go to sign in for the first gig of the new season, see their name on the same old side of the roster and see their friend's name on the other side.
Even in this moment I think to myself, what madness this is! Worse than this is the fear that I will come to perceive myself as somehow 'special' because of a move up the totem or a singling out.
I've been down this path before. I've been the 'flavor of the month' with solos and opportunities I may or may not have been ready for and I've been a vocal pariah held responsible for many things out of my control. Truth has never been in either of these extreme perceptions, but I fear falling under a spell. I love singing and singing with others, but a choir can be a seductive organism. They have their own codes and ways of speaking. They often develop great pride in themselves and think that others see them as importantly as they see themselves. How I have been down this road!! I don't want to do it again. I want to sing, connect to God through that song, maybe move someone and then leave it there. I don't want to start valuing myself again based on the skewed criteria of the choral mob. Oh, how I've done this before, and how hard it has been when it is all gone - the community, the job, the reinforcement, the sense of who I believed myself to be! I know I am not that. I enjoy singing and the act of singing makes me feel great joy, but I AM NOT anyone else's view of me or my perception of their perception of me. Can I jump onto this wheel again, enjoy the ride but yet stay centered in my awareness that I am not any of this??
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