Stage moms

I really need new headshots.

I keep putting off getting new ones until the magic day when my hair is trimmed, I've gotten enough sleep, my skin has stopped being weird, and I have the right outfit to wear.

On the train into NYC today, across from me were two girls. They boarded somewhere on the shoreline with their mothers, and took out binders that had their headshots slid into the clear pockets on the outside. My first emotional reaction was the familiar self-disgust I feel when someone who should have fewer survival resources than I do accomplishes a simple task that I have yet to master (yes, I feel that way a lot. A LOT.) They were teenagers, though, and were being pretty cute about agonizing about their 16-bar cuts, so I smiled to myself while I tried not to eavesdrop too obviously.

The mother of one of them was little more vocal and a little more vulgar, and she proceeded to harangue her daughter for her choice of 16-bars, criticize everyone the four women knew, and conclude by saying "your hair looks like sh*t" to her daughter as they exited the train. Charming.

I'm pretty sure my mom never told me my hair looked like sh*t. In fact, I'm pretty sure my mom never gave a sh*t what my hair looked like. I had the opposite of a stage mom. She and the rest of my family were always my biggest fans and continue to be, but they never bought into the myth that any sort of recognition or even success really matter. They made sure I knew how to tell a joke, do a crossword, push in my chair, enjoy a book. They never got me headshots.

In some ways, I paid for it. Whenever I was trying to really pass in music circles during high school or college there was a lot I didn't know. I missed out on some training I can't make up for (for instance, I'm sure both of the tweens across from me on the train are better dancers than I will ever be).

Still, I'll take it. Being perfect, being a star, is overrated. There are things I've lost and things I've gained because I didn't have an artsy upbringing. But what I have is better than what I can imagine.

The stranger in the mirror

With some reluctance I spent this holiday going down and back to New York for an audition, splitting the trip between the car and a train and a night at my parents’ house. This morning I got into the city with enough time to warm up, and I hustled uptown to the practice room I’d reserved in order to wake up my voice (my audition was before noon) and get myself settled a bit.


I tend to use warm-up rooms as dressing rooms as well, running some scales while I’m layering on more mascara, and sometimes even perching on a piano bench to hoist on some hose. The room I was in today was a little dark, so it is possible I put on way too much makeup, but there was a nice mirror taking up one entire wall that I used to make sure I was presentable.

After sprucing up and warming up, I started running my arias. I took advantage of the mirror, which I don’t always have in my practice spaces, to examine posture, tension, gestures, and the like. I stood across from myself in an expensive dress, fashionable sweater, cute heels, with my hair all fluffy and my face coated in paint. Even as I was singing I heard a voice speak in my ear so clearly that I was surprised not to see my own self saying it in the mirror. It was my own voice in my mind’s ear, and it was looking in the mirror and saying “Who is that?”

My reflection was everything it is supposed to be: pretty, chic, pulled together. I was more than presentable, and yet I’d never felt like more of an imposter in my whole life? I’m wild and spastic and out of touch. I wake up with unimaginably large hair. My clothes are covered with spills and full of tears. I don’t cut an impressive figure. Who was I trying to fool?

Which one of those is the myth? The sloppy spaz who always dressed and acted like a tomboy? The polished performer who has finally figured out how to use eye-makeup? Are neither of them myths? Can I be both?

I’ve written before how easy it is to feel out of place when trying to pass in professional music circles, and what a challenge it is to stay authentic while being your own brand. My guess is this is a challenge for everyone, not just singers or artists - how do we mature without losing who we were?

Is it somehow inauthentic to grow up? How much of a façade can I put up before I lose myself? Why does success make me feel like I am betraying someone?

There’s a photo I keep on my fridge because it reminds me of who I am - silly and wild and intense and honest, with a little food on my face. I need to remember that’s who I always am.

All the drawers are wide open, all the doors are unlocked

Apparently it is Monday.



My system is so thrown off from travel and change of scenery that I am not entirely sure what day it is, and I don’t think that really matters. The next few weeks involve going where I’m told when I’m told to.


I was surprised at how easily I jumped out of bed this morning when the alarm went off. Despite fears about altitude sickness I wanted to run the first morning I got here, so I drank lots of water, had a banana and tied up my running shoes, heading down the path towards the road in the still-cool morning. Luckily the road we are on isn’t too hilly, and I was able to run down the road and back without having to scale the side of the mountain.

I warmed up in the shower, which I absolutely hate to do because I feels like it bothers people around me. But we were told that our cabins were our warm-up spaces, and I wanted to give myself a proper warm up after last night’s middle-voice-less raggedy aria debacle. I was very relieved to hear that my voice still worked. I had been raspy the previous two days, and I am still paranoid enough to think that my voice is never coming back every time I can’t sing perfectly for an hour or two.


Coaching was exhausting. I have a few coaches back in Boston with whom I work, and they know me very well. To go in and work with a stranger changes the dynamic, because you are trying to reveal yourself to a new artist even as you are trying to work on character and phrasing. Working on something like Steal Me Sweet Thief, I felt like I was exposing everything about my voice - the most personal, sensitive thing about me - and trying to communicate deep need and longing - because that’s what the piece requires, all the while cognizant that we were only about twenty minutes past “Hi, my name is Margaret”. I guess that’s no different than in an audition, but in an audition you have that extra layer of competition (or is it antagonism?) to keep yourself from being so vulnerable.


Afternoon chorus rehearsals were very long, and I was ready for a bowl of soup, a nap, and a Fudgesicle. Unfortunately when I finished my nap and grabbed a Fudgesicle it was completely melted, and I, appropriately, had a meltdown myself. Now at least my roommates know what happens when you come between me and my delicious icy chocolate treats.


Sang Steal Me Sweet Thief one more time in the evening for a dress rehearsal for tomorrow night’s concert. Because people tend to hate Menotti I feel like I really need to sell it, and I get myself all worked up in to a lather about dying alone in order to find an appropriate emotional state. Good times, eh? But the more I sing (and the more I watch others sing) the more convinced I am that if you don’t need to lay down by the time you are done singing, you haven’t left enough out there. Go big or go home.

When the sun rises

Visiting my parents earlier today I heard of a terrible incident of violence quite close to where they live. All morning and afternoon the area was abuzz with the news of an employee, his co-workers, and the many families who will go to bed tonight in a different world from the one they woke up in this morning.

There’s a tactic with which my singing friends may be familiar, of trying to choose an opening aria in an audition that will result in the panel choosing the second aria that you want them to pick. It’s a hopeless tactic, and it rarely works, but we are all tempted to try to crawl into people’s heads and manipulate them into choosing what we want.

What do starter arias have to do with workplace violence? Not a lot, thankfully. But I thought of that today when pondering that people are not predictable. I become more convinced every day that we are all universes unto ourselves, full of good and evil, impulses and control, and often as likely to break out in unexpected heroism as unexpected malice. At first that’s scary: if people are their own universes, then we cannot predict what they will do or manipulate them into doing what we want. People are not predictable. The more I’ve lived with that scary truth, the more liberating it has become. If we cannot predict what people will do, then we can stop trying to do so.

Even if I’ve lost most of my capacity to be shocked, I haven’t lost my capacity to be moved, and I was deeply moved today – my eyes overflowing with tears today almost before my brain had processed what I was hearing on the news, and long before I realized how closely this would touch my hometown. We have lots of words to describe this sort of feeling-along-with – compassion, empathy, sympathy, etc – and clinicians and linguists parse them all a million ways to be specific to certain reactions. For me though, those terms don’t begin to describe what is truly prayer for me, this spontaneous heart-opening (and often heart-breaking) that I feel in times of sorrow.

Along with this heart-breaking often comes a longing for something else, for a world in which tragedy does not occur, and a readiness to be swept up in God’s presence before we make any more of a mess than we have. There must be a goodness we were made for: we weren’t made for what happened today. If we were made for this, I wouldn’t have felt like I got kicked in the stomach all morning. If we were made for this, the news wouldn’t be exploding with attempts to explain and describe this morning’s perpetrator. If we were made for this, people wouldn’t be shocked or angry or mystified. If we were made for violence and tragedy, everyone would accept this as if it were perfectly natural, an expected closing-of-the-door on the future. If we were made for this, the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow.

The sun will rise tomorrow, and when the sun rises people will comfort each other, and grieve, and love stronger than ever. People will try to put back together what has been broken and comprehend the incomprehensible. What greater signs of hope than that we naturally move to comfort one another, to heal and to repair? When the sun rises tomorrow we will be brave enough to seek out the universe of others, to find the places our orbits cross and our stars align, with that foolish, blessed hope that in light of each others’ galaxies we can better know ourselves and each other.

Being my own brand

Every time I walk into an audition, it’s my job to make people think I am fabulous. If, in those five minutes, I can show the panel an arresting stage presence, a clear well-tuned voice, and that I’d be a pleasant colleague, I’m more likely to be hired. So once or twice a week I turn myself inside out, carefully deciding how I will manipulate my image in order to get people to like me.

But who I am I kidding? I don’t just do this at auditions: none of us do. How do we determine where marketing ends and identity begins? Although singers may be more susceptible, we all spend most of our lives trying to win the admiration of others. We subconsciously prioritize our jumble of traits. Will we be most loved for our candor or discretion? Bravery or caution? Humor or sobriety? We decide, and we put it all together, and we wait for the reaction of others that will reward or chasten us, and teach us how to do it better next time.

When I was in college, the equation seemed pretty simple. People would hear me sing, find out I had talent, and admire me – and then my life would be easier and happier. Even then part of me knew this was foolishness, but I was young and confused and hadn’t yet learned the more subtle forms of foolishness that I would use to form my adult relationships.

A lot has been written about how personal a singer’s instrument is, and to be frank few of the things I have read have satisfied me, because they usually stop with some trite observation like “a horn player can put down her horn but a singer can’t ever put her voice down.” I know there is more to it than that, but unfortunately I can’t do any better than trite observations myself. I do know this: among my dearest friends who are also gifted singers, there is not one whom I love because of his or her giftedness. We don’t care for each other because of our talent, or even because of our goodness.

This reflection was prompted by something as simple as spending too much time with other people, trying to manage my image and win more admiration. And after what by all accounts should have been a good week – lots of accomplishments, some great singing, and every singer’s (and extrovert’s) favorite reward: plenty of praise – I got to Friday afternoon and only felt shallow. I had done well. Big deal.

I am lucky to have people in my life who care for me not because of my voice or image, but just because of who I am. There’s no way to quantify what it is that makes us who we are. Knowing that there are people who know and love that indefinable core may be my greatest solace. Once all the talents and charms are stripped away, there is a spark of who we are, created and loved by God. My greatest peace is when I am at my simplest, closest to that unadorned core. Dressing up who we are is the price we pay for living in the world. My challenge is no different from anyone else’s: leaving space for my simplest self to breathe and grow among the thorns of pretension and pride.

Watch, therefore, for you know not the hour.

I really didn’t want to go to New York today. ‘Tis the season, as they say, but when “they” refers to singers, we’re not talking about being jolly but about heading down to New York, to a narrow building on 54th St with dingy bathrooms, in hopes of catching the eye and ear of one of the numerous auditors who park in those studios for hours at a time hearing aria after aria.

Last night was New Hampshire for a gig. When I got back to Boston in the late evening I took some time to wind down, packed a bag, laid out some travelling clothes, and hit the sack.

I woke in the middle of the night, as I tend to, and saw that the power was out in my apartment. Immediately I saw in my mind’s eye the letter from the electric company warning me it might be out this morning. My phone, which could have told me the time, also serves as my alarm clock. Therefore it was far across the room in the only place where I can guarantee I will have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Not knowing what time it was bothered me a lot. For whatever reason when I wake in the night I like to know how long it will be until I actually have to get out of bed. On days like today, when I needed to be up at 5:30 on the dot to make my 6:30 am train, it seems even more crucial. But last night I realized I had to live with the uncertainty and be ready for the alarm when it came.

ADVENT THEMES ALERT!! I thought to myself in the drowsy night, as I fought off the insomnia that I seem to have caught from my brother over Thanksgiving. Watch, therefore, for you know not the day nor the hour. (Mt 25:13)

When the alarm sounded at 5:30 I swung out of bed, wove my way across the room, hit the button on my phone, lit a candle, and got moving. I followed the plan I had determined the night before, was in a cab at 6:00 and on the road at 6:30. At some point during the 10 hours I spent on the Megabus today, I realized I was able to get out the door not because I’m wily or because of any exceptional night vision, but because I knew what I wanted to take with me.

What do I want to take with me when the trumpet sounds? Faith, hope, charity, mercy, justice, love? If so, I better keep them near me, “laid out” like my clothes (read: tossed) on the futon while I sleep nearby. There are things there would be nice to take, and then there are essentials. Today it was a dress, heels, and the Hopkins biography I’m reading. Maybe a good exercise for Advent is to think about what I truly can’t live without, what I want to have close at hand when the alarm rouses me in a powerless night, earlier than I ever expected.

Opera singer? What was I thinking?

I have had a very busy few days, with our latest opera in tech week and a number of exciting auditions that have me running all over, seizing the day. I was driving back into Boston today, running through the list of things in my head that I needed to get done and realizing that most of them are bizarre production related things that would be foreign to non-opera folk. This thought literally ran through my mind: "Opera singer? What was I thinking?"

Could it be that this question is one reason so many opera singers are so mental? Walk into any school and you find a number of educators whose parents were also teachers. Daughters inherit their fathers' medical practices, sons learn the law at their mothers' knees. Because a musicians' vocation is accompanied by a rarer gift, far fewer of us enjoy the sense of entitlement that comes with having inherited our lifestyle from our parents. We flock to big cities and gobble up new experiences, all the while feeling like kids playing dress-up, wondering when someone is going to notice that we don't belong in the world of professional music.

To whom do we turn for advice? Families aren't familiar with our world, friends count our callings as hobbies, while we contemplate questions: How much of me is my voice? Is something of me lost if I am not hired for a while? Is there something else that would be a better use of my time? Is it selfish of me to do what I love?

How does one answer questions of identity without a sensible profession on which to hang their hat, or when many people think their calling is simply imaginary? Even though going to a liberal arts school set me back vocally when I got to conservatory, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything because BC was not going to let us graduate without starting to figure out who we were. In my religious language I discovered myself as a being created out of love with a large capacity for goodness and share in a mission. I learned to be comfortable with my history and with my present, which has served me well in that it has kept me from being ashamed of entering new worlds.

So to answer the question, I'm not sure I was thinking at all when I 'decided' to do music. I doubt it is a decision I could have made without the grounding that comes from knowing who I am and where I come from, and the security that those things won't change no matter where I go or what I do.

Singing notes is easy, singing from your heart is hard.

The first time that I traveled to Italy, in the Summer of 2000, I often went to morning mass and/or evening vespers at one of the local churches in Parma. One evening I arrived at San Giovanni Evangelista and parked myself in a pew just as the church ladies were handing out hymnbooks. One old woman in purple approached me and held the hymnal just out of arms reach as she said something to me in Italian I would never forget. It translated roughly to: “Are you going to sing? Then really sing!”

When I tuned in for Kennedy’s wake last weekend, I did not expect the most memorable quote of the evening to come from Brian Stokes Mitchell. Before he started singing “The Impossible Dream”, he told the group assembled that he would miss Ted Kennedy’s voice because of the joy and intensity he brought to his singing. “Singing notes is easy”, Mitchell stated. “Singing from your heart is hard.”

Anyone who tries to ‘make it’ as a singer knows that is an understatement. Even though we all know that the performances that thrill us are the ones that have something to say, it is so tempting just to play it safe. We don’t want to offend with our passion or our message, we don’t want to wear our heart on our sleeve, so we stick with the somewhat bland interpretations that we think will sell.

One of the common quips that you hear when someone is spending too much time practicing and not enough living is that “they don’t write a lot of operas about the inside of a practice room”. Perfect technique and hours of practice only get us so far, and eventually we have to bring our lives and our message to that technique and figure out how to say what we want to say.

I didn’t really understand that idea of a message until very recently, when I had one that informed my singing and that I finally thought was too important to ignore. Still, it’s scary to take a stand and to say something, especially in our society where opinions are a dime a dozen about things that don’t seem to matter (the quality of Jon and Kate’s parenting, ‘death panels’ in the health care bill that don’t actually exist), but holding fast to a belief in a more serious area (the sanctity of the human body, the importance of a worshipping community) can be like stepping on the third rail.

To go back to Kennedy, listening to reflections on his life I think that was one of his most attractive qualities: he stuck to a politically liberal message that emphasized care for the poor. He happened to be savvy enough to craft that message into something that would get him elected, but just having such a clear message caused him to stand out in contemporary politics.

In music and in life, singing from your heart is hard. I’m convinced it’s the only way to “really sing” as my elderly friend in purple admonished me nine years ago. Life’s too short to be bland, or to hide what we have to say because our message might cause people not to like us. If we are not honest about who we are what does the admiration of people mean? Just that we are crafty enough to fool people, and that we believe the truth is not admirable.

As if auditions weren't stressful enough...

Today is as good a day as any for this blog to go back to it's roots, chronicling the crazy life of a soprano with a healthy dose of audition-induced neurosis. Last night I had an audition after a few weeks off. You'd be amazed at how easy it is to "forget how to sing". Auditions and performances tend to come in waves, and the first time back out in front of folks after some dead time can be disconcerting.

I got to the warm-up room with plenty of time yesterday, and realized after a few minutes of vocalising that it just wasn't going to be my day. I was phonating, my range was fine, but it wasn't easy and I wasn't thrilled with the tone. Most singers will agree that the most interesting part of those 'off' days is the second guessing and blame: if I were on a different medication, if the open windows at work hadn't let the pollen in, if I'd slept better, if I hadn't had salsa six weeks ago...

Some famous singer whose identity currently eludes me once said that her voice was 'right' about twice a month, and those days were always days she had no performances. With that in mind I sucked it up and went off to my audition.

The great thing about auditioning a lot is that after a while your rep is so ingrained that you could sing it under any circumstances. If I were suspended upside-down underwater and I heard the opening rolled chords of "Chi il bel sogno" I could probably sing the whole thing and still float the high notes. Last night, though, I dealt with a new obstacle: my contact lens almost fell out.

There is plenty of blame to go around on that front, and it all lands at my feet, because I don't replace my disposable contacts enough. I'm completely exposed, standing in a dress in the middle of a big empty room with only two other people, and I'm trying not to blink ferociously in the middle of my aria. At one point I really thought the thing was coming out and I completely stopped counting. The pianist waited, I went on, and a few dramatic eye-closes later the issue was resolved.

Early Morning Finery

I don't mind auditioning in the morning. In fact, I rather prefer it: my coping mechanism for audition-based nervousness has always been to view them as something to "get over with", and singing in the morning allows me to get it over with earlier in the day. In grad school I had lessons at 9:30 in the morning; since I'm naturally a morning person singing before noon is not something that bothers me the same way it irks some of my colleagues.

But getting all tricked out for auditions at 8 am just seems...inhuman. The pounds of hairspray, coats of mascara, wicked-high heels, are certainly not meant for this time of day. I'm sure my neighbors see me leaving the house like this all the time. I don't even want to imagine what it is they think I do for a living.

Audition seasons and off-seasons

During the fall I get psyched up for audition season (not because I am naturally gleeful about putting myself out there, but because it's a psychological necessity). In August I try to get all of my applications ready so that they are done before school starts, and then November and December is a whirlwhind of singing. This December especially, as many of you know, auditions took over my life, and I went underground, surfacing occasionally to put on my purple dress and sing Chi il bel sogno.

This time of year is definitely the 'off-season' for auditions, but they still come up. As I posted recently I had one a few weeks ago, plus I have three this week. I think for a lot of singers though, this is not the time of year that our brain is on auditions. I put them in my calendar and on the day that I have to sing the first thought that comes to mind is "Do I still know how to sing?"

So the next few hours involve getting my head in the game to sing tonight. Wish me luck.

I have often walked down this street before...

Earlier this week I had my first audition in over a month. It was a little nerve-wracking since I am a bit out of practice. Every summer I kill myself to get all my applications and auditions ready before school starts, because I know I will have no energy for it in the fall. What is true for the fall is doubly true for the winter, and I showed up wondering if I still knew how to sing.

I went to the conservatory to warm-up before my audition. As I was leaving I heard someone singing "On the Street Where You Live", one of my favorite songs. As I crossed Mass Ave to the train station I engaged in one of my favorite coping techniques: fretting about something completely unrelated to the true source of my anxiety.

See, I couldn't remember the first verse to "On the Street Where you Live". I could remember the second and third, I could remember the bridge, but I could not remember the beginning. I'm standing in the T station muttering to myself trying to remember these words, making myself crazy over it. Finally I did the trick my mom taught me for when you can't think of a word in a crossword: go through the alphabet beginning with "A". By the time I got to "I" I remembered the first line.

That mystery solved, I waited (AND WAITED!) for a B train. This particular audition was at BU, which seems so much farther than some of the other audition venues. I made it to BUOI, dashed upstairs, took off my eighty layers of snow gear, and sang well.

In a celebratory mood, I stopped for some hot chocolate before I got back on the train. I'm always amazed at how differently people treat me when I am all tricked out for an audition. Sparkly barrette holding back big hair, tons of eyeliner, no glasses, too much blush, diva lipstick...that must be what the guys like because I was the most popular girl at the BU East stop.

I almost pulled a Liz Lemon when someone asked me if the next stop was Kenmore. The sign with the T map on it was right behind me, but luckily I realized before I opened my mouth that the guy probably wasn't asking just because of some gap in his knowledge. I'm sure I charmed him with my response: "Uh, I think there's one in between...uh, blandford, I think".

January auditions - the abridged version

As a lyric soprano of below average height, sometimes I feel that the only way I could catch the an audition panel's eye would be to spontaneously combust.

2008 by the numbers

I would love to write some eloquent wrap-up to my year, but recently realized that I am not 100% sure which things happened in 2008 and which were another year. I took a look back over my planner to see exactly what this young musician did with her year.

Roles learned: 4
Roles performed: 3
Requiems (requia?) sung: 2 (in the same day)
Auditions: 22
Auditions out of state: 4
Church gigs (as a singer): 76
Church gigs (as a conductor): 44
Rehearsals (as a singer): 79
Rehearsals (as a conductor): 55
Personal days off from work: 2
Blood donations: 1
Dentist appointments: 2
Voice therapy sessions: 8
Voice lessons: 21
Coachings: 14
Cosi fan tutte scenes: 2
Recordings: 2
Concertos learned: 1
Arias learned: 7
Miles driven for music-related events: 2000+

That's an adequate snapshot of my year - and I'm tired of counting things. To more music in 2009!

Last Audition of the Month

Tonight I will have my last audition of December - the fourth, by my count. After this audition (and a subsequent rehearsal - no rest for the weary) I will buy a bottle of wine. Then I will drink some of it, reflux be dashed. I haven't had any since the beginning of the month, fearing the vocal issues that can come with a glass of red wine. Tonight, I live it up.

NYC auditions, December 2008

Yesterday was my third trip to NYC in as many weeks for summer Young Artist Program auditions. Last weekend I spent the whole weekend down there, staying with old friends from Nativity, watching the ACC Championship game at a crowded BC bar on the lower east side, and somehow ending up in Hoboken on Saturday night playing Rock Band.

I have been so busy that I didn’t want to spend much time away from Boston this weekend, so I decided to go down and back in one day. I have been riding Bolt Bus, the new discount Greyhound line that has wireless and outlets for computers. By the time I had my schedule figured out many of the buses were sold out for yesterday, so I got stuck with a 7am bus down and a 7:30pm bus back. Luckily for me my lovely brother agreed to come into midtown and goof off with me between my noon-time arrival and 3:30, when I had to be at the audition site.

Our bus got in a little early, and my brother wasn’t off the train yet. I left him a message and decided to head over to Penn Station to use a bathroom after the long ride. The only thing standing between Penn and me? A parade of hundreds of Santa Clauses.

I love Boston because it is an active city but it’s manageable. When I am there, I always feel like I am in control. There is nothing to make you feel like you are out of control like swimming upstream on 8th Avenue through a crowd of Santas while having to use the bathroom.

I made it into the station and into the line for the ladies’ room. It’s always disheartening to have to wait in line for a bathroom you know will be disgusting. It’s like waiting in line for a portable john. As I was in line my brother called as we went through the normal “Where are you? Where are you?” “I’m in line for the bathroom at Penn Station!” I said. My brother’s reply “I’m stuck in the middle of a Santa Claus parade!”

The rest of the goofing off went relatively well. Manhattan was ridiculously crowded, even more than usual, because of the various holiday festivities. We swung by Rockefeller Center because we had heard rumors of a tuba festival, and we were still seeing wandering Santas hours after the parade began on the steps of the post office. I spent an hour warming up, sang well, changed back into my sneakers and hauled to the bus stop, hoping to get on an earlier bus. I was successful, getting an open seat on a 5:30 bus and walking back into my apartment at 10:10.

So I did it. I had colleagues in grad school who would go down for NYC auditions and I just wasn’t ready for that. Making demos and sending them to these programs that only audition in New York was just too much for me (and in retrospect, I wasn’t even close to ready vocally). It took me until I was 25 to start doing summer programs, which many singers start doing around 19 – first I did one in Boston, then one in California, and finally one abroad, where half of my fellow singers were 6 or 7 years younger than I am.

I’m finally ready for a challenge as small as going down to New York to audition. Another thing I thought I could never do, that would be way too much for me and my routines and anxiety and neuroticism, I just got on the bus and did. I was lamenting to my mother a few weeks ago how far ‘behind’ I felt in that I am just now doing the things that many of my friends have been doing for years, and she simply said to me “you’re not done yet”. So I’ll keep plugging away at my own pace.

Congrats to all friends and readers who have completed their December auditions as well. You all inspire me.

Rejection

Well, I just got what will surely be the first of many PFOs for this season. For those of you not in the business, a PFO stands for Please Eff Off and is opera lingo for a rejection letter. This was for a summer apprenticeship that I knew was a real stretch, but at least I didn't have to travel or pay exorbitant fees for it. Even though I never really believed I would be accepted, it still hurts, like it hurts every time.

Rejections come a lot in this business, and we all know that fact going in to it. In what other profession are being constantly evaluated, fighting for jobs once a week or so, and being rejected at least 75% of the time? Imagine if every Wednesday you had to do your work in front of your boss, and he or she decided every week who got to come back on Thursday and Friday (and no, you wouldn't get paid to stay home). Then next week you would go back and do it again.

And every time you got sent home, even if it was only because there wasn't enough work that week or they were looking for a blonde rather than a brunette, it would feel like a sweeping indictment on your existence and vocation, and you would convince yourself that you had backed the wrong horse and that you were ruining your life, and at some point you'd end up in tears about the whole thing. Doesn't that sound like fun?

We singers are crazy. Part of it is that we are crazy to go into this line of work in the first place, and then we live it for a while and we get crazier. I repeat my suggestion from previous posts: Be patient with us. We're nuts.

a trip to Providence

Last night I drove down to Providence for an audition. Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep, with what I thought was nervousness over the audition. That was odd to me, since I very rarely am nervous before I’m going to sing for someone (why should I be nervous? I sing all the time. And I’m not terrible at it. So why stress?) Last night I couldn’t sleep either, so apparently it wasn’t the audition, but it does mean that I am anxious about something else and haven’t figured out what it is yet. Going back to work in a few weeks may be the instigator.

Anyway, this audition was contingent upon two things:

1. Finding a dress that would cover my knees, which are completely shredded from my recent bout of vertigo/clumsiness

2. Finding a way to roll up my passenger side window, which had been stuck since last Thursday.

I am getting spoiled since I have been driving the Jeep. When I was driving the old heap, I was never shocked when something went wrong. You didn’t know when you would snap a belt, or leak oil, or have a wheel fall off. For the sake of nostalgia, let’s look at the old rustbucket.

So I buy a “new” car (hey! 1999 is really new for me!)

I will admit, it’s nice to drive a car and know that it will start every time. But I’ll admit, when my window started clicking and wouldn’t roll up, I thought to myself “These blasted E-lectronic cars! They make everything electronic so they get you coming and going!!” All I’m saying is this wouldn’t have happened with my old crank windows.

Yesterday morning I took the car down to my mechanic, since I needed an oil change anyway. I have the best mechanic in the world (other than you, Dad!) here in Southie. If the world can be divided into people who do what they can get away with, and people who do what is right, my guy falls squarely into the second camp. It also doesn’t hurt that we think similarly: when I explained the situation to him, he mentioned that he could easily get the window up, and I could just not use it. I said “oh yeah that’s fine. You just need to close it. You don’t need to fix it.”

And now it’s closed. Life is good. And the audition went pretty well too.