"...let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Now FDR was not talking about singing or pursuing a career, but it's his description of fear that's tickling my brain today. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified. Paralyzing needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. Let's talk about retreat.
I'm a few weeks into my new job. October 15th is the deadline by which the theatre must tell employees if their contract will be extended another year. Now that doesn't mean that October 15th comes and the people who aren't extended are fired. It means their contract expires at the end of the season, around September of next year. This system is still pretty new to me, but I think that kind of notification is pretty standard. If you're extended, then you get another year. This time next year, October 2014, I'll be notified if I'm extended through September 2015, or not. Having a long notification is probably a good thing. It allows people time to audition or apply for other jobs, make travel or moving plans, weigh their options, and make a choice that's the most right for them, rather than one made out of haste. At least, this is the hope. However, if you're a fretter (and I am a fretter) then you look at that deadline - although it is a WHOLE YEAR away - and you think, "Oh shit. So I have to prove my worth and right quick because otherwise I won't be extended. I have to kick ass in every performance. I have to be polite and nice to everybody and work on my German to show that I want to assimilate into their culture. I must be good at all of the things and it has to happen RIGHT FREAKING NOW!!!
Doesn't this sound like a wonderful way to spend your day?
Sidebar. I had this wonderful student named Helen. Helen is not pursuing a career in singing. Helen is not auditioning to get into shows. Helen wanted nothing more than to be able to sing in the church choir and feel like she was making a contribution. A wonderful 60+ year-old lady who was terrifically smart, a former US foreign service world traveler who'd lived in many countries and spoke several languages, but when it came to singing in front of people, she'd practically run and hide. We ended up together because she bid on a package of voice lessons I put in the church silent auction, and won.
Whenever I start with a new student, I like to sit and talk to them for a while about why they want to study singing and if they have specific goals. Improving their sight-reading. Confidence. Being able to sing a little solo, or not to freak out if they're called upon to do so. Body coordination so they can walk and sing at the same time. Releasing high notes. Whatever. For Helen, it was the whole package. [I should say I'm not telling any secrets by disclosing these things - she'd happily tell you about it herself.] After many years of being told she sang too loud or unpleasantly, Helen had taken the bit between her teeth, and by golly she was gonna conquer this singing thing. Now I knew that Helen was a pistol in life, so I pulled no punches. She'd mealy mouth through a phrase and I'd yell at her to do it again. I'd see her eyes drifting off into self-criticism and I'd clap my hands and tell her to come back to me because our lesson time is happening right NOW and the voices in her head will have to wait. And after a while, Helen was breathing freely, matching pitch, and reading better than she had, but she still couldn't admit that she'd made progress. And I had had it with that. It was time for her to recognize the steps she'd taken and shake off the old self-doubt. She needed to be able to say that she was kicking ass when she was kicking ass. But Helen is a well-mannered woman who probably doesn't curse like a sailor, even when no one's around, so I told her that she should figure out how to say, "I kick ass" in some foreign language.
The picture of diligence herself, Helen did just that. She called up a Swedish friend who said that the rough equivalent was "Jåg ger järnet." And then, she did an hilarious and wonderful thing. She had it printed on a t-shirt in those beautiful blue and yellow swedish colors, and gave me one. Helen wore them to her lessons, and it always gave us a really good laugh. Talk about converting retreat into advance.
Even after she was no longer my student, Helen continued to be a terrific friend and helper on this crazy journey of ours. She sat and read the English libretto of Mamelles to me so I could type it into the score. She drove all the way from Jamaica Plan up to Andover and sat in a coffee shop with me for hours, talking and listening and telling me her tales about international travel. When I went off for a gig, if she had a friend in the area (even in the tiniest corner of France) she'd send them my way so I'd have someone to meet for coffee. And now, recognizing that she should perhaps not live on her own in the future (rather cleverly and well in advance, that's our Helen) she's moving. Our realtor and friend is a neighbor and friend of Helen's, so he took this fantastic picture of her on moving day:
.JPG)
There's my friend, Helen - wearing her "I kick ass" t-shirt, as she embarks on the next phase of this adventure. She's long since joined the church choir, by the way. Even went on choir tour with them to England earlier this summer. She practices like a fiend, helps out at all the choir functions. I'm so very proud of her, overcoming those old fears and charging forward. Forward!
Which brings me back to where we started. Fear.
Last night, after chatting with my bestie about her work and my work and whatnot, my husband stuck his head around the door and said, "I just want you to be aware of the difference between real stress and perceived stress." And after that sat in the room for a while, I said, "Are you accusing me of fearmongering?" He, without hesitation, said yes.
Well shit.
So even as I sit here, acknowledging that it's possible to work oneself into a torpor and succumb to the vortex of one's own agitation, I have, indeed, succumbed to it myself. I let myself slip into the overblown land of 'what if?' and everything that I rail against: trying to read the minds of others in order to please them, trying to mold myself into the artist I think someone else wants (rather than that artist that I want to be) and appropriating the fears of other people to wrap into my own. Because fears need company and darkness in order to survive.
I don't know what's going to come next October. I don't know if I'll be given a third year on my contract or not. Or if I'll even want it. But I do know that if I spend the next 12 months looking over my shoulder, I will be miserable and not 1/100th of the artist that I can be. Because how am I supposed to draw strength from the fear demon eating its own tail? How am I supposed to let go and explore my creative possibilities if I can't get out of my own way? Rhetorical line of questioning ended.
I can't. So we gotta do something different.
I'm wearing my Honey Badger t-shirt today. And Honey Badger, as we all know, takes what he wants. So I'm gonna channel my brave friend Helen and the Honey Badger, and charge forward, convert retreat into advance. Because I kick ass, and it's time to start acting like it. Booya. Game on.
No comments:
Post a Comment