Songs of Thankfulness

 This past weekend I had the opportunity to sing solos for RVW’s Dona Nobis Pacem.  This was with a neat little community choir in Magnolia, a beautiful part of Seattle.  When the piece was done, and I was back sitting and listening to the group sing “Racing the Moon,” the tears of thankfulness just started leaking out. 

I do not know if more will come of this, or if I will ever do more solo gigs like this, but the experience of this was a gift, practically a rebirth for me.  I am so thankful.  Let me explain.

 

A year ago, I was visiting the what I might call the battered remnant of my alma matter with my friend Elizabeth. We saw old friends, we heard what remained of a once amazing choral program, we sang in the alumni choir for the ghost of what had once been a very meaningful annual commencement ceremony, and we cried a bit.  In the midst of this, I was having major anxiety singing as a soprano in the alumni choir.  At the age of 48, I had vibrato and no longer sounded like I had when I left at 21, or even when I left the east coast at 29.  I felt so discouraged by experiences living in Kansas City where I was hired not for the voice I had then but for the voice I had at those earlier ages so that I truly felt that what I had to offer vocally was – if not worthless – not desired.  I hadn’t sung a professional gig (where I was actually paid to sing and not singing with my husband) since before the pandemic.  I believed that other than the occasional recital I could put together myself, that my singing life was over.

 

Fast forward to the August recital I put together with Paul.  In this program of 20^th Century pieces, I sang the last piece from Lili Boulanger’s Clariers Dans le Ciel.  An old friend from Guildhall had recorded the cycle and told me at some point that I would love them.  Mental note recalled, and yes, I did love them.  And they suited my voice.  My voice, undesirable and full with vibrato and color.  Yes, I could sing these with the voice I have now, and it felt connected and amazing. 

 

I love to sing.  Really, in this world, it is one of the only things I think is intrinsically worth doing.  A harpsichordist I used to work with once summed me up fairly well by saying that I am a singer with a pianist personality.  I love singing.  I love the now it can create.  I love the beauty and the potential for connection with what is behind, inside and beyond the sound.  That is when music happens.  All of the posturing and puffery and judging and ridiculousness, and sometimes back stabbing, that is a part of the singers’ world is something that I have never really wanted any part of. 

 

What I see in retrospect with regard to my singing is that in many ways I had given up. 

 

Nine days after that recital, what I might call Change descended upon our lives.  Purposely skipping details here, but I came out of a health crisis with still having my voice and having been saved from a potential terminal issue.  About 24 hours after good news, Paul’s job went to hell yet again.  This next crisis and personal attack gave him the impetus to apply for an interim position near his family in the Pacific Northwest.  It would give us at least 6 months of health insurance and income while we cut ties with KC and tried to figure out how to move on with our lives in a hopefully less toxic soup.  He got the job and was gone less than a month later.  I stayed to work, sell the house and figure out how to close up shop on our lives there.

 

Two months later, I am in Seattle and working to start over yet again.  With time to practice and nothing to lose, I start auditioning for anyone that will hear me.  Through this process I find myself hired for a gig singing Vaughan Williams.  Midway through the rehearsal week it is confirmed that I should indeed “dress like a soloist.”  Nothing I see in my closet fits, as I lost about 20 pounds through the summer and early fall.  Plus, what I do see there isn’t for this type of gig.  When I am out shopping, I remember that I never got rid of a few dresses from earlier times, but where are they? Square necklines are back, and my old red dress from 2001 had a square neck.  I loved that dress and would have remembered getting rid of it.  I found it high up in a box in the entry closet for our apartment underneath a stack of old VHS recordings from former performances that I couldn’t quite part with as well. 

 

And here I laugh.  I don’t know what is coming next for my life.  I feel like I’m living in a strange limbo while staring at a giant scary blank slate of possibilities.  The one thing this weekend tells me is that since my heart of hearts still loves to sing more than about anything, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to close the door. 

Fall of the Word-Slingers

 I feel like the days of the relevance of Word-Slingers is over.  Days when a writer of conscience could write about the injustices of the world and expect something to happen in response seem to have passed.  The World of Action remains unaffected by so many eloquent pleas for justice. 

 

Is it that our empathy that is gone?  This quality once referred to as “humanity” seems to be absent.  Perhaps the truer definition of humanity is what we are experiencing now.  The behavior of the human race one to another seems to be quite terrible on the whole.  Perhaps the idea of “humanity” being a word to describe empathy and decency was always aspirational rather than a descriptor.   

 

Maybe it is also that words seem to be losing their meanings.  Various agendas use them to arouse feelings and passions regardless of their past meanings.  “Freedom” used as freedom to dominate others.  Equality with no recognition that we all do not start with the same ability to compete.

 

I am a small wrestler with words.  I use them as I seek to express and define my thoughts.  Words used to contain and direct my thoughts, words that help me create tiny pools of clarity in the overwhelmed muck of current events in my mind. 

 

I would suggest that part of the reason for the loss of power by the Word-Slingers is that words become divorced from their meanings.  When a word can mean anything a manipulator says, they have trouble ringing true.  Thoughts of truth or justice get stuck in the muck of a sticky lake of lies that seems to be surrounding us.  How can anything ring true when up has become down and down up?

 

And yet some of us still seek for truth and for stillness that might enable us to perceive more truth.  My political camp or yours; both lie.  We just find the consequences of one side’s lies or their goals more palatable than the other. 

 

And when we wake, what can we find that is actually real?  We see that a tumor in our democracy has metastacized. (My apologies to John Dean.)  Something has grown up in the heart of representative democracy that should not be there.  It has been fed by a system captured by the unaccountable rich.  It has been fed by inequality, and old grudges, and hopelessness, and the easy answers found in lies and partial truths.  It has been nutured with the arrogance and condescension of the educated.  And it has been brought to flower by the greedy and the hateful, those who seek to destroy the good in others because they themselves cannot possess it.  And as it continues, it will surely and inevitably kill what is left of our society, our body politic, and one by one, it will take the individuals that we love and the lives we enjoy.   

 

And I want to write of a solution, but I don’t know what that might be.  Truth.  If only we could see clearly!  Each side has its own version, but there are so many perspectives!  Since we’ve lost the ability to even talk to each other, where is the hope?  Where is the path to reintegration?  Where is the path towards compassion?  Respect?  Love?