Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!

So the last couple months I have been having some serious doubts about whether all this singing is worth it. It makes me take 18+ hours/semester—and that causes several things:
I don’t take care of myself
I don’t take care of my friends (especially my friends that I don’t live with…and Rachel)
Makes me too busy to enjoy what should be my youth

My voice teacher once said to me, “Well, you have to ask yourself every day whether it is worth it or not. And if it isn’t, then you have to stop. But, then every day after that you have to ask yourself when you get up in the morning if it is worth it that day.” Pretty good advice.

Through all the practicing and rehearsals (JESUS-TAPDANCING CHRIST), I tend to lose sight of what made me do this in the first place. As trite as it sounds, I did it because I love singing and music. Now I am just doing it because I am too much of a pussy to change anything in my life.

And I don’t really think of myself as being talented enough to sing for a living. And sometimes if you don’t believe in yourself, no one does. As tragically romantic as it is, I don’t want to die from syphilis at 32 like Schubert or go insane like Wolf or Schumann. And I don’t want to die in the gutter, a sad alcoholic singing waiter, like Francie Nolan’s dad in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Tonight I had a really good musical experience though. I was thinking of the song “The Vagabond” by Ireland…
Don’ know ‘bout life, it’s just a tramp alone, from waking sun to dust…”
It seemed particularly appropriate to sing it to the moon.

1 comment:

Ed Grow said...

I wanna be Jackie, Oh, Oh, please don't die!