Day 2: The day I discovered that there are poorly attended concerts all over the country.
I couldn't help but think of my dear BOCers last night when we held an aria concert at the library and the performers outnumbered the singers. I have performed in (and, I add sheepishly, been responsible for promoting) a handful of poorly attended concerts. We set the date, and rehearse, and invite our friends and fans, and then...no one shows up. I can think of at least three BOC concerts that followed that trajectory, and I'm glad that I surround myself with people who can still put on a good show and laugh at how few people are in the audience.
Hearing all of these standard arias from my new colleagues always makes me think of the voices I know best which I have heard sing those arias before. Because I didn't go to music school for undergrad I never really had singer friends, and even when I was at conservatory I kept a lot of people at arms' length. But after 4 years of singing with many of the same people, getting to know their voices and their stories, some of my dearest friends are other opera singers. Even as I make new opera friends, I am still a little territorial on my old friends' behalf, jealously wanting to guard their signature arias from other people.
After the concert we planned some leisure time, so I offered to buy some wine if someone could drive me to the package store. My use of the New England colloquialism was met with blank stares, and someone asked "why would you need to buy boxes?" Once I translated into standard English and was driven to the store, I was relieved to hear that the clerk was from New Hampshire and had family in Boston. All tricked out in my concert dress and prom hair I must have been a sight. He offered a discount if I sang for him and I politely declined.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
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.
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.
The will for adventure
Once upon a time there was a woman who loved to stay home. She knew that she should love adventure and sometimes she truly did, but most of the time she wanted access to the familiar, to sleep in her own bed, and to know where all the light switches were.
I inherited this homebody streak from a family member who shall remain nameless, and I also inherited the willpower to beat it when I know I should make an effort. That is why this morning I set out for Colorado for another “opera camp” experience like my trip to Novafeltria (documentation of which was the purpose for starting this blog in the first place).
That was two years ago, and it feels it. These past two years have been really transformative and maturing – but I didn’t start this post to talk about how old I feel. I’m still young enough to have been happy that my flight was out of Hartford this morning so my Mommy could drive me to the airport before dawn.
My enormous pink suitcase was overweight when I finally got to the front of the line (a line which I believe I saw an entire family cut – really?). I already had to pay a fee just to check the bag – and I’m not one to get all “airlines these days”, but I do find that a little annoying. The extra weight was going to result in another fee. They asked if I wanted to take out 7 pounds worth of stuff to get it under the limit. I looked at my already overstuffed shoulder bag I was carrying on, and I looked at the lock on the suitcase, and I thought of the cash back I get on my credit card and responded “No.” (Is that another sign of my age? My willingness to throw money at problems?) The clerk looked shocked. I said “It’s six in the morning, and I just want to get on the plane” as I handed over my Capital One card.
I had the dreaded middle seat on the flight to Dallas. The man on the aisle was very large, and I spent most of my time balancing myself so that I wouldn’t be in his space (which, of course, was my space). A screaming child was behind me and I battled through the early morning exhaustion only to land in the Central Time Zone - and then again in Mountain Time Zone - and have to battle through those same hours all over again.
A few folks on the 10 am flight from Dallas to Denver had brought their Chinese food on the plane. Another moment of ‘really?’ And I thought I was rude for having had an onion bagel in the terminal. The flight was uneventful (a few more screaming babies), and I landed in Denver about an hour before our rides were to pick us up.
I got pretty lucky with my car-mates on the four hour drive up to Steamboat. If there’s anything worse than spending two weeks at a program with people who irritate you, it’s spending four hours trapped in a car. The company was good, and we even enjoyed my family tradition of singing "On the Road Again". Despite a little altitude uneasiness when we were up particularly high, by the time we got to Steamboat I felt fine (despite having been up since 2:30 Mountain Time and only having eaten a bagel).
Check-in, dinner, were all the usual blend of mildly awkward introductions and asking where the towels are kept, and then we got to the best part of the evening: rehearsal for an arias concert. As tough as it is to have to sing on such little rest, it is nice to get that first see-and-be-seen sing-off out of the way. We got a very kind speech about not being nervous, and I sat back and thought “I’m not nervous at all”. I don’t think I would have made it this long if I were still affected by other peoples’ opinions of my voice. In the end, I sang like I was dehydrated and had been up all night - which was pretty much true. But my high notes were nice.
I inherited this homebody streak from a family member who shall remain nameless, and I also inherited the willpower to beat it when I know I should make an effort. That is why this morning I set out for Colorado for another “opera camp” experience like my trip to Novafeltria (documentation of which was the purpose for starting this blog in the first place).
That was two years ago, and it feels it. These past two years have been really transformative and maturing – but I didn’t start this post to talk about how old I feel. I’m still young enough to have been happy that my flight was out of Hartford this morning so my Mommy could drive me to the airport before dawn.
I had the dreaded middle seat on the flight to Dallas. The man on the aisle was very large, and I spent most of my time balancing myself so that I wouldn’t be in his space (which, of course, was my space). A screaming child was behind me and I battled through the early morning exhaustion only to land in the Central Time Zone - and then again in Mountain Time Zone - and have to battle through those same hours all over again.
A few folks on the 10 am flight from Dallas to Denver had brought their Chinese food on the plane. Another moment of ‘really?’ And I thought I was rude for having had an onion bagel in the terminal. The flight was uneventful (a few more screaming babies), and I landed in Denver about an hour before our rides were to pick us up.
I got pretty lucky with my car-mates on the four hour drive up to Steamboat. If there’s anything worse than spending two weeks at a program with people who irritate you, it’s spending four hours trapped in a car. The company was good, and we even enjoyed my family tradition of singing "On the Road Again". Despite a little altitude uneasiness when we were up particularly high, by the time we got to Steamboat I felt fine (despite having been up since 2:30 Mountain Time and only having eaten a bagel).
Check-in, dinner, were all the usual blend of mildly awkward introductions and asking where the towels are kept, and then we got to the best part of the evening: rehearsal for an arias concert. As tough as it is to have to sing on such little rest, it is nice to get that first see-and-be-seen sing-off out of the way. We got a very kind speech about not being nervous, and I sat back and thought “I’m not nervous at all”. I don’t think I would have made it this long if I were still affected by other peoples’ opinions of my voice. In the end, I sang like I was dehydrated and had been up all night - which was pretty much true. But my high notes were nice.
To wrap up the day someone was generous enough to drive to the grocery, where I stocked up on hummus and fudgcicles, the two things that have sustained me most of the summer. We also passed a neon bunny that looks like it’s on drugs.
The picture didn’t’ really come out, but that might actually suit the mood. Nearly 24 hours after my adventure anxiously began, I am at a picnic table under bright stars in the mountains, and it all seems perfectly normal.
When I went to bed last night and even when I woke up this morning I didn’t really want to go, what with all the uncertainty, meeting new people, unfamiliar beds and light-switch-placements. But I have trained myself to swallow my anxiety and just get on the plane. Inside me there is one person who loves adventure and one who loves consistency, and I’ve learned to let the two battle it out.
I hope to post once a day as I did in Italia due anni fa. I had the same hesitation about sharing my travel plans then as I do now, and I refer back to my warnings to potential thieves that I wrote in my very first post on this blog. I would also add that my upstairs neighbor sent me off with a promise not to let anyone touch my sh*t. So watch yourselves.
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| The stairs I will fall down in the night. Note their close proximity to the bedroom door. |
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
That is enough for me.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.” - from Luke 12, today's Gospel
Sometimes I worry that I am a hoarder. You’re probably thinking that there is not a lot of ambiguity in that designation, that it should be pretty easy to know whether I am or not. And anyone who has been to my itty bitty apartment, or seen me on one of my merciless clutter purges, or knows that I only spend money on books, food, and wine, knows that letting crap pile up probably isn’t among my compulsions.
I wish that made me rest easier about today’s Gospel. Even if I don’t accumulate stuff, I am often tempted to store up treasure for myself. The things I hoard are intangible: affection, esteem, opportunity. There is a fear that we all share, an uncertainty that is part of being human, and we all find ways to fight the fear off by building up reserves of what we think we need.
Yesterday was the feast of St Ignatius, whose famous Suscipe concludes “Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.” I wish I were able to mean those words. Would God’s grace been enough for me if I had to do something that caused people to not like me? Would it be enough if I abandoned my self-centered charm? Would I be satisfied by divine love if I made a choice or commitment that closed certain doors to me? Rather than putting all of my eggs in God’s basket, I have spread them out over countless baskets, just in case…
If we are going to hold the saints up as our idols, we need to be realistic enough to acknowledge the cost. One of the most treasured quotes from Pedro Arrupe reads: More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God's hands. He offered that reflection after a stroke that rendered him unable to speak. Perhaps to truly surrender to God involves a destruction, a shattering. After all, surrender is a war metaphor.
Is that part of the beauty of prayer, that we repeat these phrases, like “that is enough for me” even when our heart isn’t in it? Lots of people call us hypocrites because we pray “Thy will be done” or “peace be with you” and then go off and behave in the silly, destructive ways we always do. I’m not sure it’s hypocrisy – I think it’s hope. We are hopeful that someday we will conquer ourselves, or be conquered, and be able to truly mean the things we pray for. All of our prayer is a plea for transformation. We want nothing more than to arrive at the day when God’s grace is enough for us, even though now we let all our little wants get in the way of that larger goal.
Augustine wrote How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, when by the very act of calling upon him I would be calling him into myself? And still he prayed. Knowing how hard it is should be no excuse for stopping. It is dangerous to offer our memory, our understanding, our will, our freedom as Ignatius did, because someday God might take us up on our offer. When the things we think define us are stripped away, may we find consolation in what we think is desolation. May we understand more fully that our hearts are made for love, restless until they rest in God. May the barns and silos we can’t help but fill with ourselves not come between us and the grace for which we are destined.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.” - from Luke 12, today's Gospel
Sometimes I worry that I am a hoarder. You’re probably thinking that there is not a lot of ambiguity in that designation, that it should be pretty easy to know whether I am or not. And anyone who has been to my itty bitty apartment, or seen me on one of my merciless clutter purges, or knows that I only spend money on books, food, and wine, knows that letting crap pile up probably isn’t among my compulsions.
I wish that made me rest easier about today’s Gospel. Even if I don’t accumulate stuff, I am often tempted to store up treasure for myself. The things I hoard are intangible: affection, esteem, opportunity. There is a fear that we all share, an uncertainty that is part of being human, and we all find ways to fight the fear off by building up reserves of what we think we need.
Yesterday was the feast of St Ignatius, whose famous Suscipe concludes “Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.” I wish I were able to mean those words. Would God’s grace been enough for me if I had to do something that caused people to not like me? Would it be enough if I abandoned my self-centered charm? Would I be satisfied by divine love if I made a choice or commitment that closed certain doors to me? Rather than putting all of my eggs in God’s basket, I have spread them out over countless baskets, just in case…
If we are going to hold the saints up as our idols, we need to be realistic enough to acknowledge the cost. One of the most treasured quotes from Pedro Arrupe reads: More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God's hands. He offered that reflection after a stroke that rendered him unable to speak. Perhaps to truly surrender to God involves a destruction, a shattering. After all, surrender is a war metaphor.
Is that part of the beauty of prayer, that we repeat these phrases, like “that is enough for me” even when our heart isn’t in it? Lots of people call us hypocrites because we pray “Thy will be done” or “peace be with you” and then go off and behave in the silly, destructive ways we always do. I’m not sure it’s hypocrisy – I think it’s hope. We are hopeful that someday we will conquer ourselves, or be conquered, and be able to truly mean the things we pray for. All of our prayer is a plea for transformation. We want nothing more than to arrive at the day when God’s grace is enough for us, even though now we let all our little wants get in the way of that larger goal.
Augustine wrote How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, when by the very act of calling upon him I would be calling him into myself? And still he prayed. Knowing how hard it is should be no excuse for stopping. It is dangerous to offer our memory, our understanding, our will, our freedom as Ignatius did, because someday God might take us up on our offer. When the things we think define us are stripped away, may we find consolation in what we think is desolation. May we understand more fully that our hearts are made for love, restless until they rest in God. May the barns and silos we can’t help but fill with ourselves not come between us and the grace for which we are destined.
Friday, July 30, 2010
If you're not outraged...
Once upon a time, like a lot of idealistic young people, I lived and died by the bumper-sticker creed “If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention”. After a little time and a lot of experience, my bumper sticker is more likely to read “if you’re not outraged, you’ve probably developed a good self-preservation mechanism”. It’s not to say that there isn’t still plenty in this world worthy of lament, but that most of it is not the result of nefarious individuals but of huge systems impervious to our outrage. As I discovered the first time I was crossed by Bank of America, sometimes there is no one responsible, and no one to be mad at, and the anger only hurts ourselves.
Even with individuals I find it hard to maintain anger. Like a goldfish fooled each time by the tapping on the glass, I can easily be won over by a pleasant exchange with someone, even if previous exchanges have been less than pleasant, and even if I am convinced that they are one of those rare nefarious individuals mentioned above. Perhaps it’s because I am so frequently in need of mercy and forgiveness myself, but I am usually pretty willing to start over again with someone even if they’ve irked me in the past.
A lot of people mention Jesus’ anger when they are trying to justify their own. That’s a nice idea, but come on, this is Jesus we’re talking about. Yes, he went recognizably bonkers over the money changers in the temple, but he was also the Son of God. I better be sure my motivations are as pure and my anger as righteous when I start flipping tables.
Is it called growing up? Is it called settling? Is it called getting over it, whatever it may be? I’m not sure. But because I am more willing to let things go now, I give even more attention to the handful of things I am not willing to let go. There are a few incidents in my history that I refuse to forgive or forget, the claws and barbs of which I refuse to release from my gut and my psyche. I have made a conscious decision to keep being angry about these, so they must matter.
One was being told in elementary school that I couldn’t be an altar server because I was a girl, and the other was being told in high school that I should quit singing because my voice wasn’t worth listening to. They involve such wildly different things, but to me they are so similar that I have almost conflated the two incidents into some epic thwarting, an unidentifiable outside voice telling me something about me that I knew was false.
The comment in high school was really crushing. Not only had I shaped a fair amount of my identity around my vocal talent, I also had the intuition to know that this was what I should be doing. Singing was who I was, and had been since long before I had any outside feedback that my voice was “good” or “pretty” or “sweet” or any of the other adjectives that get thrown around. Singing was something I had always done, and part of how I expressed myself. Whether my voice was pretty or sweet had nothing to do with the most important fact which was that my voice was mine.
The issue with altar serving raises whole issues of gender that I’m not sure I am ready to get into here. What I am willing to get into, and what should embarrass me more than it does, is that even as a child I had a strong and bizarre devotion to the liturgy and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. The same way that I will now read any book, attend any lecture, or take any class that has to do with liturgy, when I was a child I would take any opportunity to be involved. It was bad luck that I was in a parish (and perhaps a diocese? I’m not sure) that still prohibited “altar girls”, and I remember being so astounded that I couldn’t even be angry or upset.
One of my earliest memories is of someone at day care telling me that blue was “a boys’ color” and having my now-typical reaction of “that’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard”. I never believed there was anything ontologically different about me because of my gender. There was nothing I deserved or didn’t deserve, nothing I was capable or incapable of, simply because I was a girl. So to be told that this element of my identity that I truly believed to be inconsequential was going to affect another person’s decision about what I could do was an absurdity that passeth all understanding.
In retrospect, neither of these things was truly enraging, more dumbfounding: somebody thought they knew better than me about me, and that somebody was wrong. Everyone has things that they are wired for, and to have those natural inclinations denied or disparaged truly violates the natural order of things. I suppose I hang on to these insults and slights because I don’t want to forget what it is that makes me who I am. I don’t want to forget that no one can tell me what I am capable of or what my aspirations should be. It’s good to let things go, but equally good to know what we should hold onto, what's worth being mad about.
I have avoided putting a “gender” tag up on the blog for a while, because I don’t want to get into something so controversial. But maybe it’s time.
Even with individuals I find it hard to maintain anger. Like a goldfish fooled each time by the tapping on the glass, I can easily be won over by a pleasant exchange with someone, even if previous exchanges have been less than pleasant, and even if I am convinced that they are one of those rare nefarious individuals mentioned above. Perhaps it’s because I am so frequently in need of mercy and forgiveness myself, but I am usually pretty willing to start over again with someone even if they’ve irked me in the past.
A lot of people mention Jesus’ anger when they are trying to justify their own. That’s a nice idea, but come on, this is Jesus we’re talking about. Yes, he went recognizably bonkers over the money changers in the temple, but he was also the Son of God. I better be sure my motivations are as pure and my anger as righteous when I start flipping tables.
Is it called growing up? Is it called settling? Is it called getting over it, whatever it may be? I’m not sure. But because I am more willing to let things go now, I give even more attention to the handful of things I am not willing to let go. There are a few incidents in my history that I refuse to forgive or forget, the claws and barbs of which I refuse to release from my gut and my psyche. I have made a conscious decision to keep being angry about these, so they must matter.
One was being told in elementary school that I couldn’t be an altar server because I was a girl, and the other was being told in high school that I should quit singing because my voice wasn’t worth listening to. They involve such wildly different things, but to me they are so similar that I have almost conflated the two incidents into some epic thwarting, an unidentifiable outside voice telling me something about me that I knew was false.
The comment in high school was really crushing. Not only had I shaped a fair amount of my identity around my vocal talent, I also had the intuition to know that this was what I should be doing. Singing was who I was, and had been since long before I had any outside feedback that my voice was “good” or “pretty” or “sweet” or any of the other adjectives that get thrown around. Singing was something I had always done, and part of how I expressed myself. Whether my voice was pretty or sweet had nothing to do with the most important fact which was that my voice was mine.
The issue with altar serving raises whole issues of gender that I’m not sure I am ready to get into here. What I am willing to get into, and what should embarrass me more than it does, is that even as a child I had a strong and bizarre devotion to the liturgy and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. The same way that I will now read any book, attend any lecture, or take any class that has to do with liturgy, when I was a child I would take any opportunity to be involved. It was bad luck that I was in a parish (and perhaps a diocese? I’m not sure) that still prohibited “altar girls”, and I remember being so astounded that I couldn’t even be angry or upset.
One of my earliest memories is of someone at day care telling me that blue was “a boys’ color” and having my now-typical reaction of “that’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard”. I never believed there was anything ontologically different about me because of my gender. There was nothing I deserved or didn’t deserve, nothing I was capable or incapable of, simply because I was a girl. So to be told that this element of my identity that I truly believed to be inconsequential was going to affect another person’s decision about what I could do was an absurdity that passeth all understanding.
In retrospect, neither of these things was truly enraging, more dumbfounding: somebody thought they knew better than me about me, and that somebody was wrong. Everyone has things that they are wired for, and to have those natural inclinations denied or disparaged truly violates the natural order of things. I suppose I hang on to these insults and slights because I don’t want to forget what it is that makes me who I am. I don’t want to forget that no one can tell me what I am capable of or what my aspirations should be. It’s good to let things go, but equally good to know what we should hold onto, what's worth being mad about.
I have avoided putting a “gender” tag up on the blog for a while, because I don’t want to get into something so controversial. But maybe it’s time.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
I will hold Your people in my heart
Earlier today I clicked on a link to a post titled “Ten worst hymns of all time”. Despite the flippant title I expected to read something examining texts, vocalism, needs of communities, and musicality. Unfortunately I found the same list of popular tunes that I’ve read 100 times before, followed by reader comments lamenting the good ol’ days when we sand Gregorian chant and Holy God, We Praise Thy Name (which happens to be one of my favorite hymns, although people taking issue with awkward lyrics in modern songs shouldn't then turn around and raise up a tune with the line 'Lo! the apostolic train angel choirs above are raising'). I should be clear my beef here is more with the comments and the idea of picking out the “worst hymns” than it is with the actual list (although the inclusion of Pescador de Hombres offends me).
Judging by their comments most of the readers could be called “traditional” or “conservative” (yes, labels are odious, but sometimes they are necessary) , and it is no surprise that they don’t like the St Louis Jesuits, and they don’t have much use for Marty Haugen and David Haas, either. I have always argued that post-conciliar American liturgical music is a mixed bag, and that it is going to take sometime to separate the wheat from the chaff. But despite picking out a handful of bad couplets as evidence that these pieces are on shaky theological ground, it’s obvious that most of these people just don’t like that particular genre of eighth-notey, hyper-melodic, G or D major, Haugen/Haas style jams.
There are plenty of pieces in that genre for which I don’t care either. My issues with these lists (and I have read plenty, and they are almost always similar) is that rather than addressing particular shortcomings in a way that could be constructive, they self-righteously vent about how much they hate a song or how tired they are of it. It’s worth noting that One Bread, One Body has too many held notes and not enough internal rhythm, that I Am the Bread of Life has as wide a range as the National Anthem, and that We Are Called would be much better in G. Pinpointing challenges in popular hymns helps us to be more prudent about their use (We Are Called only as a closing hymn rather than opening, One Bread One Body with an organist and singers capable of subdivision, I Am the Bread of Life in thick enough orchestration that people can switch octaves and not feel like they’re sticking out). But that’s not as much fun as being snarky.
The elephant in the room when we get kvetching about Here I Am, Lord, is that people really like that song. I know, some people really like smoking, too, even though it’s bad for them. But if something is a legitimate conduit of grace, we need to give some value to that. If we don’t, it means we don’t trust our fellow worshippers’ taste or spirituality. Almost every song on this list is deeply meaningful to many people, and none are so theologically or musically revolting that they are truly unacceptable for worship. Yet there are still scads of liturgists (and armchair liturgists) who see their role as protecting the people from themselves. I literally cannot find words to express how frustrated this makes me. If you do not value or trust your community you have no place leading it.
I often joke to my choirs that they make me like songs I don’t like, and they do this by filling them with life and art and prayer. There are a very few songs that are on my “absolutely not” list, and I’ll admit that it’s often more fun to criticize a piece I don’t like than to open myself to learning why it is meaningful to other people. Just because this is what I do for a living doesn’t mean I get to decide for everyone what their values should be. I can try to influence their taste and offer new examples of meaningful music, and I can make the best of the meaningful music that is not ideal. The people who worship beside me in any setting are my family in Christ, fellow heirs of the Reign of God. To love and listen to a community can be exhausting and aggravating, but I don’t do my job as a minister or a baptized person if I smugly blow off their consensus, experience, and wisdom.
Judging by their comments most of the readers could be called “traditional” or “conservative” (yes, labels are odious, but sometimes they are necessary) , and it is no surprise that they don’t like the St Louis Jesuits, and they don’t have much use for Marty Haugen and David Haas, either. I have always argued that post-conciliar American liturgical music is a mixed bag, and that it is going to take sometime to separate the wheat from the chaff. But despite picking out a handful of bad couplets as evidence that these pieces are on shaky theological ground, it’s obvious that most of these people just don’t like that particular genre of eighth-notey, hyper-melodic, G or D major, Haugen/Haas style jams.
There are plenty of pieces in that genre for which I don’t care either. My issues with these lists (and I have read plenty, and they are almost always similar) is that rather than addressing particular shortcomings in a way that could be constructive, they self-righteously vent about how much they hate a song or how tired they are of it. It’s worth noting that One Bread, One Body has too many held notes and not enough internal rhythm, that I Am the Bread of Life has as wide a range as the National Anthem, and that We Are Called would be much better in G. Pinpointing challenges in popular hymns helps us to be more prudent about their use (We Are Called only as a closing hymn rather than opening, One Bread One Body with an organist and singers capable of subdivision, I Am the Bread of Life in thick enough orchestration that people can switch octaves and not feel like they’re sticking out). But that’s not as much fun as being snarky.
The elephant in the room when we get kvetching about Here I Am, Lord, is that people really like that song. I know, some people really like smoking, too, even though it’s bad for them. But if something is a legitimate conduit of grace, we need to give some value to that. If we don’t, it means we don’t trust our fellow worshippers’ taste or spirituality. Almost every song on this list is deeply meaningful to many people, and none are so theologically or musically revolting that they are truly unacceptable for worship. Yet there are still scads of liturgists (and armchair liturgists) who see their role as protecting the people from themselves. I literally cannot find words to express how frustrated this makes me. If you do not value or trust your community you have no place leading it.
I often joke to my choirs that they make me like songs I don’t like, and they do this by filling them with life and art and prayer. There are a very few songs that are on my “absolutely not” list, and I’ll admit that it’s often more fun to criticize a piece I don’t like than to open myself to learning why it is meaningful to other people. Just because this is what I do for a living doesn’t mean I get to decide for everyone what their values should be. I can try to influence their taste and offer new examples of meaningful music, and I can make the best of the meaningful music that is not ideal. The people who worship beside me in any setting are my family in Christ, fellow heirs of the Reign of God. To love and listen to a community can be exhausting and aggravating, but I don’t do my job as a minister or a baptized person if I smugly blow off their consensus, experience, and wisdom.
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