Wolf Trap Opera

This is where we started this whole thing; searching for a way to embrace the uncertain and ephemeral nature of life and of art. Many of you who follow this blog are navigating transitions in your lives and your careers. We feel your pain, and we know (even if you don’t) that it will all be fine.

I thank you for going along on this unconventional audition season journey. It was a bit indulgent for me, but I hope that it had some resonance for you. Much of my professional life is clinical, linear, responsible, and frugal; that’s the essence of my striving to be a grown-up. (Yeah, good luck with that…) But we should all give our workaday lives some texture and integrity, especially during times like audition season, when so many things threaten to undermine our best efforts.

I’ll leave you with one final borrowing, by the 14^th-century Sufi poet Hafiz. It contains words that we strive to live by on the other side of the audition table and on the other side of the door in the opera company offices.

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

I will never be a sage, but I will continue to do my level best to drop keys for the beautiful rowdy prisoners who bring music into my life.

I’m going underground (actually under an intimidating pile of applications) for 2 weeks. I’ll be back when we start our travels. The audition tour blog installments will run October 24 – November 22. See you then!

A grab-bag of left-over quotes, here at the end of the series. Don’t expect too much continuity.

“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
Oscar Wilde

I never knew exactly where Wilde was going with this, so I’ve adopted my own interpretation. The “sheer terror” is universal; we only get ourselves into trouble when we pretend it’s avoidable.  And only when we accept the terror as our lifelong companion can we be optimistic.

If you’re terrified by the uncertainty of what it means to carve out a life in the arts, of living the cruelly examined life, of making yourself vulnerable again and again… well, you’re only human. You should be scared. So get over it and believe the best.

“Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel really is a light,
and not another approaching train.”

Believe that the light you see is a good sign. If you’re wrong, there’s no irreparable harm done. If you live as if every light is an oncoming train, it exacts a price that you shouldn’t have to pay. (These words written here by a woman who plays the pessimist card at every available opportunity…)

“Le jour qui luit est le meilleur.”
(The day that dawns is the best one.)
Leconte de Lisle

I have little patience for people who constantly complain about getting older. If you catch me doing it, slap me.

“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
Ranier Maria Rilke

And while we strive to remember that most of us who read this are more fortunate than most other people in the history of the world, that can’t translate that into complacency. If our needs for food, shelter, and companionship are met, we have an obligation to put ourselves out there to be defeated by greater and greater things.

“There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein

See you tomorrow for the final installment.

And this is your reminder that the final application deadline for the remaining audition tour cities (Houston, Chicago and Vienna VA) is tomorrow night at midnight!

“Phantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen.”
(“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”)
Albert Einstein

Ah, Albert. You’re right up there with Martha Graham as my favorite muse. And surprisingly so, because I thought you were a scientist…

Yes, I know that the great scientists and mathematicians are artists. I can’t say I understand how, for the place where numbers and elements become ideas is not a place I can go. But I believe it  exists. In the same way that beginning musicians wrestling with notes and rhythms can’t imagine how ethereal and integrated music can be at the highest level; we who are stuck at beginning algebra (at best:)) can’t soar with the scientific eagles.

But no matter. Notice that Einstein didn’t say that knowledge isn’t critical. (Really? You know who I’m talking to. Go practice.) He simply acknowledged that it didn’t trump the mind’s ability to soar.

“You never know what is enough
unless you know what is more than enough.”
William Blake
(Corollary: Oscar Wilde’s “Nothing succeeds like excess.”)

“More than enough” requires imagination. I used to invoke this axiom when I was coaching singers who would take maddening baby steps toward a bold goal. Your imagination will help you take the leap to the edge if you give it rein. In fact, if you practice this approach in collaboration with a trusted teacher or mentor, you will find the imagination and courage to go where Blake goes; to find out what is “more than enough.” Crossing that line is the only sure way of knowing where it is.  And knowing where it is will allow you to perform on that exciting, exhilarating edge.

“Anything you can imagine clearly, you can play.
That’s the great secret.”
Frank Conroy (Body and Soul)

“Probleme kann man niemals mit derselben Denkweise lösen,
durch die sie entstanden sind.”
(“Problems cannot be solved with the same kind of thinking
in which they were created.”)
Albert Einstein

Of course, this is all looping around on itself, and that’s good. Two weeks ago, we considered our toolkits, and how it makes a tremendous amount of sense to diversify the ways we have of attacking challenges. Einstein’s words have been translated into English many different ways, but the gist is the same: If you made a mess, you’re probably not going to clean it up without a change of attack.

We spend a disheartening amount of time wondering why our default approaches don’t work. And this goes a lot further than music-making – diets, relationships, bad habits – we tend to think that if we just try hard enough along the same vein, we’ll persevere. Persistence is a virtue, but without creativity, it misses its mark.

“The prescription for creativity is to have a wide range of interests
to increase the likelihood of two disparate ideas coming together.”
William Shore

In The Cathedral Within, Bill Shore talks a lot about Arthur Koestler’s theory of bisociation: “The act of combining two ideas from different worlds to create something new.” Well, duh. But it’s amazing how often we forget this and think that by earnestly recreating someone else’s genius, we are doing our best as artists.  Not so, for real artistry is creating something truly new.

Don’t despair, for this is within the grasp of mere mortals. It may seem there’s little likelihood of you finding something truly unique to bring together with all that you’ve studied. But I’m not spending these four weeks trying to get you in touch with yourself for no reason. Know yourself; find that rock-solid center from where you can embrace anything you dare. Have a wide range of interests; learn about life and love; work hard and play hard. Then bring all of these things in close association with your technique and your study and watch them combust.

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive;
but it is lightning that does the work.”
Mark Twain

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anaïs Nin

This is where we separate the wheat from the chaff. The last three weeks’ ruminations on perspective, focus, preparation and receptiveness are just the beginning. You can embrace all of those but still not be in the game. This business of making a living in the arts is not for sissies. Your career – yes, your whole life – will shrink or expand in proportion to your courage. So man up.

“Courage is not the absence of fear,
but rather the judgment that something else
is more important than fear.”
Ambrose Redmoon
(who was a hippie before hippies were cool)

Fear does not go away. Stage fright may always be with you. If someone tells you that you can eliminate it completely, be very suspicious.

But here’s the secret: Fear need not be the most important guest in the room. We’ve all heard stories about iconic artists who hurl before going onstage for their whole careers. I hope that’s not you (and, if it is, that you’ve explored whether or not you’d be happy making a living doing something that doesn’t quite freak you out as much), but if it is, this strategy is for you. Articulate what is more important than the fear and allow it to consume you.

If music and theatre and the amazing privilege of sharing the most important things about being alive are important enough to you, they can beat the fear into a dark corner, bloody and bowed. It may always taunt you, but you may grow strong enough to keep it at bay.

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”
Paul Gauguin

Let’s go one step further and speculate that if you’re not a little afraid, then something is wrong. If your art is pleasing and safe, it may be but pleasant plagiarism. I’m not sure that’s why you started this whole thing in the beginning. If your art is revolution of the best sort, then good for you. That kind of art is strong enough to withstand a few butterflies.

“Please be aware that our performers tonight
are working on a tightrope at a great height,
and the least noise might disturb them,
and they would fall to their deaths.”
Jean Cocteau (Orpheus)

Be strong. :)

“For every complex problem there is an easy answer,
and it is wrong.”
H.L. Mencken

I am rarely unequivocal. A true and unrehabilitatable liberal, I’m always open to the possibility that someone else’s idea just might be better than mine. But this is one topic on which I take no prisoners. (The other one, specifically audition-related, is here.)

Perfectionism is not a virtue. Is it not viable. It is not desirable. It doesn’t even make you a martyr to your art. It’s selfish, dysfunctional, and dangerous.

If you take comfort in your perfectionism, I dare you to change. It’s too often an excuse for making hard choices, and ultimately, it’s not about the task at hand; it’s about you. If your allow your quest for perfectionism to get in the way of doing the best you can and acknowledging that that might just be enough, you’re putting yourself ahead of the work.

When told by a violinist that a difficult passage in the violin concerto
was virtually unplayable, Stravinsky is supposed to have said:
“I don’t want the sound of someone playing this passage,
I want the sound of someone trying to play it!”

I think that Benjamin Zander included this quote in his book The Art of Possibility. (I loaned my book and it didn’t come back, but that’s OKJ).   No matter; the point is that even composers aren’t looking for clinical perfection in performances of their music. If that doesn’t get your knickers out of their knots, I don’t know what will.

(Time to throw in one of my periodic caveats: If you are the kind of person who is all-too-comfortable with imperfection, this is not for you. Walk away from the computer and go practice.)

“I don’t know the key to success,
but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.”
Bill Cosby

Have a wonderful and relaxing weekend. Make some music, get some perspective, and remember that the application deadline for our second set of audition cities (Cincinnati, LA, & San Francisco) is at midnight tonight!  :)

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
James Thurber

Yesterday’s exercise in being flexible enough to stop trying to change things beyond our control is just the start. This new worldview only has a chance of sticking if we embrace uncertainty. Our Western culture is not so good at this, and being committed to it on a personal level means constantly swimming upstream. It takes courage (a topic for next week), and it demands a new perspective on what’s important.

As Thurber (and Rilke yesterday) reminded us, knowing the questions trumps chasing after the answers. Perspective demands broad vision; the kind that affords us the luxury of sussing out what matters. We just have to find those places and times in our lives that allow the broad view, and sometimes that means backing up a bit.

“Reculer pour mieux sauter”

I have no idea where this comes from; like the best of all principles, it seems to show up everywhere. Literally, it means to back up in order to jump better. Physically and mentally, it makes all kinds of common sense. Back up, get a running start, and leap. We can see it in our mind’s eye.

The same approach applies to progress in our musical and personal lives. Once we gain a little perspective, we may be willing to admit that the path we’ve chosen (on a micro or macro level) is not one that will allow us to continue to make progress. Perspective says that it’s OK to take a step back, gather ourselves and our forces, and go in a different direction that will allow that leap.

Again, be smart, work hard, but stay loose. These things are not mutually exclusive.

“Not all who wander are lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

“You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.”
Swami Satchitananda

I can’t say it any more clearly than that.

I came of age in the 60′s and the 70′s, when the Serenity Prayer was becoming a bit of a cliché. That powerful mantra that helped so many people get their lives back from all sorts of addiction and abuse felt trite; and so it receded into a cobwebbed corner of my mind.

It’s time to dust it off. We must be flexible and resilient enough to accept what we cannot change, and seek not only the courage but the tools to change the things we can. (The wisdom to know the difference requires advice from someone at a pay grade higher than mine, so I’ll let that one alone. :))

Stop trying to fight the waves. They’ll keep coming. You’ll have bad days, you’ll always be the wrong flavor of the month for someone, and roadblocks will seem to come out of nowhere. Wring your hands and sulk for a minute to get it out of your system. Then learn to surf.

We can only embrace what’s in front of us. No one will ever give us definitive answers to our problems, and there is no way to please everyone. Stay loose and let it go.

“Live your questions now, and perhaps, even without knowing it,
you will live along some distant day into your answers.”
Ranier Maria Rilke

“Nobody can do two things at once, you know.”
The Red Queen, via Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass)

Take that, multi-taskers.

The Red Queen was a tough customer, but she had much to teach Alice that is more important today than ever. Endless scientific studies are showing us what we already knew; that it’s an illusion that we can split our attention and not pay a price.

My son is a software programmer, and he explains to me (repeatedly and patiently) the difference between serial and parallel processing. When we try to do many things at once, we fool ourselves into thinking our brains are engaging in efficient, lightning-speed, parallel processing. Actually, we’re still doing one thing at a time, but we’re switching between them every few nano-seconds.  And (as is patiently explained to me), every one of those switches loses us time and keeps us from immersing ourselves with the necessary depth in any of the many tasks we’re attempting.  (I tend to believe him, for he’s a digital native who juggles online gaming, Pandora, emailing and web surfing at once; yet when he needs to write difficult code, everything else is shut down so he can really look inside it.)

What’s our take-away? Not only is this important for our private study and work, solidifying technique, learning roles, doing research; it’s also a hard but critical thing to put into practice while performing. (And yes, auditioning is performing.)

We should only be doing one thing at a time: delivering that wonderful integrated package that is music/voice/character/language. But if the preliminary work has not been done, we end up trying to remember the words and notes, monitor the technique, and fine-tune the interpretation – all at the same time. Enough practice must be done so that our addled brains aren’t trying to jump back and forth between these different concerns. Nail them down; make them part of you and completely interlaced with one another before you put yourself out there.

Oh, and another thing – while you’re performing, there should be no part of your brain that’s devoted to scanning the room for cues (“Are they writing bad things about me?” “Why are they frowning?”) and obsessing about other unfinished business (“Do I look OK in this dress?” “Did I remember to mark the cut in my music?”).

Be attentive to what matters, and shut down that monkey mind that swings frantically from branch to branch.

“Stand knee-deep in the flow and life and pay close attention….
Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.”
“The quality of life is in proportion to the capacity for delight.
The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way

“Nothing can be more useful to a man
than a determination not to be hurried.”
Henry David Thoreau

Of all the bon mots that I’ve shamelessly stolen for the last few weeks, these are the ones that strike closest to home. Daily life is getting faster and faster for many of us, and yet our bodies and souls (thankfully) are far more attuned to the rhythms of the natural world than they are to the pace of computer chips.

I’m not a Luddite, even though I sometimes wish I were. I embrace the amazing ways in which these last few decades of technological advancements have widened our worlds. I love geeking out, and I crave speed. But the pace at which our bodies breathe and think and live cannot keep pace with the blinding speed of our tools. We must be determined not to be hurried by computers and smartphones and other techie toys and tools. They should not be allowed to dictate our priorities.

Digital audio and video make it possible to benefit from the interpretations and performances of generations of musicians. Web translators and other resources make it faster than ever to get a preliminary grasp on the operas and songs that are the stuff of our professional lives. The first step is easier and more widely available than ever. (Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was cutting my operatic teeth, I had to borrow LPs from friends with libraries and hunker down at Lincoln Center and the Library of Congress to actually read reference books. I am not nostalgic for those days.)

This new world is wonderful and better in many ways. But it tricks us into thinking these first steps are the whole journey. Truth is, the amount of self-knowledge, the commitment to the message, and integrity of the vocal technique are more important than ever. And there’s no quick path. You rush any of it at your peril. Be determined not to be hurried.

“The word panic comes from the ancient Pan, who,
when the terror anticus came upon him,
would pull out his pipes and try
to play himself back into peace.”
Madeleine L’Engle (Two-Part Invention)

Calm can come from your music, and a helpful and healthy cycle can result. Remember that; both for yourself and for your audiences. But it’s hard to “go there” when the music is also your livelihood and brings with it so much worry and fear. Try. Find a place in your music-making that is yours alone, not subject to the criticism or guidance of others. For some folks that means trafficking outside of their professional sweet spot; the opera singer goes folk and the jazzer plays with arias.

All of it is in search of the place at the core of us that feeds everything else we do. It’s always there, but if it’s not honored, you run out of fuel regularly and dangerously. I have a mantra on my iGoogle page that serves me well when the speed of life threatens to throw me to the edge like a crazy centrifuge. “Look in. Lean in. Stay in.” Find your own reminders and litter your life with them.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you are constantly putting yourself out there – for teachers, panels, producers, judges – it’s frighteningly easy to forget who you are. What we want to see and hear in the audition room is a person who is confident, relaxed, energized, and calm, all at the same time. Of course, it’s never as simple as it sounds, but you have to start somewhere.

“At the still point, there the dance is.”
T.S. Eliot