Like an Oscar winner doing dinner theater in Boca Raton

[textualdeviance]

OK, so I don't really fancy myself at that level. Hardly. But I think I've nailed down why I'm dreading tomorrow's preview show, and why I'm glad this chorus term is almost over: I am seriously musically/creatively frustrated, and it's driving me up the damned wall.

I don't mean this to be an indictment of the group--there's nothing wrong with it, for what it is. But ... I really, really, really need to be singing more hardcore stuff. The one challenging piece we're doing is being slaughtered because it's beyond most of the folks in the group, and everything else is pop songs and Kirby Fucking Shaw arrangements of hoary old standards. Fun for a casual singer, definitely, but for me, it's just jaw-achingly tiresome.

Add in all the other issues I'm having with it--being surrounded by 200 chatty women, for instance--and it's all coming up to be an exercise in ennervation. What I wanted from this group--reminding myself what it feels like to sing--happened in the first three weeks I was in rehearsals. I stuck with it this long, thinking it would get better, but it just didn't. I'm completely behind the idea of the group--it obviously fills a niche both in a political and social sense for most of the people in it--but it's just not giving me anything I need. Instead, it's only reminding me of what I wish I was really doing. Which is very, very depressing.

I know this probably sounds impossibly snobby. I get that I'm hardly some elite diva. But imagine any other occupation in which one has a fair amount of skill and ~20 years' experience, and then imagine being stuck in a job that's journeyman level, at best. There's no shame in being a journeyman, for those who are legitimately at that level, but it's hardly soul-satisfying for someone who is years beyond it.

I'm not haughtily declaring that I'm too awesome to hang with the unwashed masses. I'm just saying that singing is so incredibly important to my emotional well-being that not being able to cut loose and do it the way I've spent half my life training to do feels like a massive case of creative blue balls. I would rather not sing at all than sit around in rehearsals while everyone else is getting drilled on rhythms when I've been off book for a month.

All of this, of course, is compounded by being frustrated in my other passions, too. The journalism thing is a bust, for various reasons (and I can't even seem to get a job right now.) I'm stymied on the novel writing for a reason I can't nail down. My fandom stuff is kind of blowing up. The adoption stuff is a bone-achingly slow and bureaucratic process. And I can't even get my damned cat to stop harassing his feline housemates. Argh.

If I thought it would do me any good, I'd hop in my car right now and just take off for god knows where. But, as a wise person once said: no matter where you go, there you are. I'd only be taking my frustrations with me.

I will most likely do these concerts, out of my own sense of duty and professionalism. But I'm not going to enjoy them the way I ought to be enjoying performing. And I can't describe how much that breaks my heart.

Comments

[noipeh.livejournal.com]

You aren't being snobby, really, I've been in that situation before and it's incredibly frustrating. The area I'm in is small enough that you really do have to take what you can find, one reason I do the Madrigal feast (aside from the costumes!) is the singing. It's hands down the best music that I sing over the two year cycle between madrigals. And our director always throws in one particular piece each time that is a beast to learn, thank heavens! Anyway, my suggestion for you is to find either a masterworks group, most big cities have them, or consider another singing group affiliated with a symphony. (for what it's worth!)

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I do think I'm going to go for our symphony chorale when next they audition. I'd decided to do this group because it had been four years since I'd done any proper singing, and I wanted something I could ramp back up with. I honestly didn't expect that to happen so quickly.

I do need a little more polish before I audition for the symphony--my sightreading is dreadful--but I think I'm going to find a coach and work on that end for a few months. They also do a "summer sings" sort of thing--audience singalongs of well-known pieces--and I think I'm going to do that before I audition.

I definitely need to keep singing. I know, now, that it's so much a part of my emotional and even spiritual life that I can't let it lie dormant for years again. But I also know I need to do it at the level I've trained for, or it's just not enough.