(no subject)

[sanura]

Ursula Vernon rocks my world. She has the best ideas.

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/464124.html#cutid1


Maybe I should just be an amateur. I can get a BA, not be in the operas, do college theater instead, and become a musical failure. If I have this kind of self-esteem issue after every Chorale rehearsal with Lauren singing the Laudate Dominum, I'm not going to make it. What makes me a terrible person is that the tears came not from appreciation of the clarion beauty that is her singing, but from a terrible, painful jealousy. She is better than I ever will be, and I can't stand it. It makes me want to die. I suppose I have a megalomaniacal tendency to think that with time and vocal maturation and work on my technique and musicianship I can match the skill of anyone I admire; it's always been that way in the past, except for when it's a man (which is one reason tenors move me most easily). And when it's someone other people admire and I do not, as is the case of most female opera singers, it doesn't matter to me that I may not be able to sound like them, because I don't want to. The issue with Lauren is that it's less skill than simple, beautiful, natural talent. She came in that way, and she'll always be ahead of me. I am not competing with her, but with myself; I know that I will lose either way, and I don't know if I can live with that. However, I am also unsure whether I could live with being an amateur. So I'm going to sit here and hate it for awhile and see if it goes away.

Comments

[trivetmonger.livejournal.com]

I have felt the same way, except in reverse. I desperately want to not be an amateur, but I'm not sure I could live with singing for my livelihood. I know I could be much, much better if I had license to work on my music as much as I wish I could, but I don't know if I could be enough better to make it worthwhile. Nevermind the fact that by the time I got to the point I could maybe get into a conservatory I was halfway through college and somewhat disinclined to do another four years of undergrad. So I am resolved to amateurhood, and it's not as bad as you might expect. You just tend to get passed over for soli a lot and have to pay for lessons. It could be worse.

[sanura.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the conditions of amateurhood that I'd hate as the fact that I'd have given up. This is the one thing (besides copyediting) that I've ever been professional at. I'm not anti-amateur; in fact, I take a kind of pride in my status as an amateur visual artist. I've never had lessons and yet I'm this good, you know: more egotism. I've had similar feelings as a young singer in the context of a workshop or as a big fish in a small pond, here and in high school: I've not had much experience, but I have the talent to make up for it, and people tell me so. I know a lot for my age. But if I give up that advantage, I'll be a has-been knowitall, rather than a talented amateur. One of those people who used to know what she was talking about and doesn't anymore, rather than someone who knows way more than she ought for how much she's been taught.

In any case, I'll stick with this futile exercise until it no longer seems futile, or I'll go be someone else and die. I know at least a quarter of this angst is post-PMS, so I'm not worried about never thinking I'm any good ever again. Thanks for the insight, though.

[ohtori-akio.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a has-been knowitall myself... stick with it. Knowing that I can't go back to it hurts worse than knowing someone else is always going to be better than me.

[sanura.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's another side of it I forgot to mention.