No Comment

The previous post has been deleted, never to return.

Just too much ugliness going on there, for no reason that I can see. I want to thank those of you who offered comments in my defense and the others of you who emailed me directly to express your support.

I felt I had to respond to the initial comment that set off the storm because it attacked my credibility, baldly laying out a claim that my blog is some kind of hoax, but in hindsight it was wasted effort and energy.

Going forward, I will have a new policy regarding comments. As always, differing opinions will be welcomed, but I will take advantage of my right to delete any comment that is off-topic or a personal attack.

I have decided to disable comments for this post; if you want to communicate with me about it, you can email me directly.

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Last week's nastiness came at a bad time.

As regular readers know, I resolved at the start of the year to learn a new piece and sing it for my church, and was scheduled for this coming Sunday, March 9th.

I felt ready and excited. I had chosen the aria "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein" from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which is ideally suited to me. It was memorized and I was just continuing to polish and perfect it, while my voice continued to re-align and strengthen and open up back to its old self.

It's been five years since I last sang in public; at 33, I am just hitting what should be my vocal prime as a baritone, and the new physical maturity I heard in the sound was encouraging; the top notes, especially, had a new luster and ease. I could not wait to get out there; this was going to be fun.

And then suddenly, about two weeks ago, it all started to fall apart. Once again, it seemed my voice couldn't quite warm up all the way, and it would tire quickly. Though my throat was open, my jaw relaxed and my breathing solid, the warm, round sound began to fade, becoming fuzzy, reedy or thin-sounding in various parts of my range. Intonation began to go off-kilter. There was no longer a smooth transition in the passaggio; instead, it was like driving a car with a bad transmission. At first I thought, "Oh, it's just one of those days," but it began to be persistent and I had to admit to myself that this is exactly what happened to my voice in 2002.

This was infuriating, because for the last several years, I have had no problems with acid reflux at all. I felt ready to try again, and I would never have asked if I could sing if I hadn't been 100% confident that I was okay. I immediately made some radical changes in my diet and started going through some of the routines that had been helpful the first time around, but after a few days I began to sense that I probably could not fully recover in time. It wasn't going to be enough to just "get through" the piece; I needed to triumph, I needed to nail it, or it wasn't going to be worth it.

So on Saturday I told the music director that I was having problems again and that I would temporarily need to withdraw my offer to sing.

I am going to kick this. I want to say a special word of thanks to two friends who have given me invaluable advice this week. I wasn't going to say anything, because it is too painful and, frankly, humiliating, but both of them are encouraging me in a new direction, toward being more in touch with my feelings and what's going on inside me and more willing to reach out and be honest and ask for help with things.

So, that's all, for now. I could just use your friendship and support, and if you're the praying sort, I would appreciate a word or two on my behalf.

Finding Voices

On Tuesday night in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton claimed to have finally found her own voice. I guess it's going around.

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Project Renaissance is underway. The score for Bach's St. Matthew Passion has arrived and I've begun learning the aria "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein." Last week I spoke to the music director at church and said I wanted to offer it around Easter time, and he said "Great."

I picked the perfect piece, really. It sits beautifully for me and more than anything requires breath control and alignment; it's not a "big" sing and doesn't go higher than an E-flat, so it is totally non-threatening and practicing it is like physical therapy for the voice. It's also therapy for my mind; concentrating this hard, listening and feeling carefully, analyzing and experimenting, I swear it's causing a part of my brain to light up that's been dormant for five years. It feels really good. And it's nice to hear the old voice again.

Recently, though, I spent some time thinking about why I'm doing this. Part of what was so hard for me about the collapse of my career is that -- even to me, who was suffering from it -- acid reflux sounded like no big deal. Everyone has that. Have a TUMS, you know? Pop a Nexium already. And although no one ever said as much, I had an overpowering conviction that the general assumption was this was an excuse I was making for why my career didn't go anywhere; too deluded about my own talent and unable to admit that I just wasn't that good, I had invented some story about a minor health disorder to cover up my mediocrity.

I've been complicit in that fable, too; for the last few years, I've taken to explaining to family and friends that well, it was nice, it was a good ride and I loved every minute of it, but it was time to put that aside and get a real job. And that, my friends, is what's called A FUCKING LIE.

So, yes, a big part of it is that I have something to prove. It happens nearly every week in church; the person who decides to sit in front of me turns around at the end of the service to compliment my sotto voce crooning during the hymns and say, "You have such a beautiful voice, you should be in the choir!" And while that's nice, I have to confess that behind my polite smile I'm thinking, "You have no idea."

Then I began to worry -- and rightly -- that this was perhaps not the best motivation or spirit in which to present a piece at a church service, and that if I wanted the world to sit up and take notice of how great I am, I should probably consider a different venue. Still, I felt called, as one might say, to offer this piece in this place in this year.

What attracted me to this aria was its beauty; I loved it the first time I heard it. There is something positively plangent about it. Each gentle dissonance tugs at my heart. If one were to think of the Passion as a dramatic work, this is the piece that is sung while Jesus' body is brought down from the cross. Ironically, as I begin to study it, I'm noticing that the text directly addresses the conflict I feel between wanting to prove myself and wanting to humbly offer something for the church, and so it has become a personal prayer in its own right about shaping the rightness of my intentions.

Make yourself, my heart, pure;
I want to bury Jesus myself,
that He should forever more
have sweet rest in me.
World, get out; let Jesus in.