Decluttering

I've been doing a lot of thinking about decluttering my life in all aspects.

• I'm trying to organize my garb closet/prop room so that things are easily accessible and no one is screaming on the morning that we're heading to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, "Where is my hat? Where are my leggings? Why can I never find anything?" (Needless to say, this is not me, because I would've been looking for them the night before, not the morning of.) But I also want them to look good and I want to look at my things and see different options, not just "Oh well, I don't know where this is, so therefore I'll wear this instead."
  
• I've given away a bunch of jewelry and clothing that no longer suited me and I'm trying to determine what my style is. I don't want anything that's too fussy (at least not for every day - fussy is fine for special occasions). Right now I'm looking at streamlined and simple. Kind of a uniform.
  
• And as far as my teaching is going, I've decided not to teach classes, at least this year. I just don't want to have to grade papers, take attendance, and worry about classroom management. I only want to teach voice and do my own singing. And I really want to teach voice primarily at home, which is why I left Oldfields (keeping my HCC job, though).
  
• Speaking of singing, I'm thinking of cutting back on some of the singing that doesn't bring me joy. Kind of like the Marie Kondo's Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up book. I enjoy my church job, Concert Artists, temple job, and hopefully I'll enjoy returning to WNO this year, but I'm not sure I really want to do run-outs of gigs that aren't that rewarding to me.
  
• I want to pursue more teaching things like workshops, and take advantage of attending more workshops as well. 

It's nice to be able to pick and choose things, and I am aware that right now I am very lucky to be in "feast" mode, especially after the 10 years of "famine" I struggled with while in Milwaukee. 

Taking criticism

Some of the negative criticism I've had, professionally:

1. "My dear, you are not a mezzo. You do not have the low notes to be a mezzo and if you don't by your age, you never will." (Judge at a competition - I was 30 and had just started working with my teacher a year before; the low notes came in a few months later.)
2. "Christine Thomas, while adequate, paled in comparison with last year's alto, the splendid Theodora Hanslowe." (Washington Post review - Teddy Hanslowe was an awesome mezzo, but considering I had walked up my skirt and fell on my face before "He shall feed his flock," I'll take adequate. But still. Crappy thing to say.)
3. "Do you really think you're suited to American song?" (Blanche Thebom, judge at the American Traditions Competition. My response, "Yes, I do. I'm an American and I love the music and I sing it well." And now she's dead and I'm not, so there.)

Some of the positive criticism I've had:

1. "Christine Thomas sang the role of the Cat in a way that made you want to hear her Carmen." (Joe McLellan, Washington Post, regarding my performance in Starbird. Never did sing Carmen, but I held that close to my heart for years. First review.)
2. "The role of Smeton is one in which to spot future stars. Christine Thomas fits the bill." (Octavio Roca, Washington Times, regarding Anna Bolena. Really should've pursued an agent after that.)
3. “Thomas' voice, an amazing instrument" (James Auer, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, regarding my performance of Yehuda Yanny's "Incantations.")
4. "The wildly randy Wanda Kazlakowski" (Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, regarding A Cudahy Carolers Christmas.) 
5. "The girls’ mother, Marmee, was played with quiet dignity and wisdom by Christine Thomas, who also directed the play. Thomas has an amazing voice, and small wonder as she’s performed extensively as an opera singer. Listening to her solos was one of the richest treats of the show." (Liz Ruth-Brinegar, MD Theatre Guide, Little Women)
6. "As Marmee March, she is a vocal powerhouse. She has a strong, clean vocal style and commands the stage with every note in her solos “Here Alone” and “Days of Plenty.” Her portrayal as the matriarch of four daughters is admirable and she seems quite comfortable in the role." (Jason Crawford Samios-Uy, Backstage Baltimore)
7. "Thomas has a striking voice that is perfectly suited for her solo numbers. Filling both “Days of Plenty” and “Here Alone” with mournful sorrow and deep nostalgia, Thomas emotionally connects to the songs on a deep and earnest level, creating a much revered Marmee." (Mandy Gunther, Theater Bloom)*

*Mandy also found me somewhat aloof and frigid in the role, initially, but I blame that on the fact that I was also directing the show and there was something going on with the Christmas tree and the projections right before I went on, so I was distracted. But I clearly got over it by the time I had to sing. 

So I take the good and I throw out the bad. Or, rather I decide if the bad had any merit, and if it didn't, move on.

As Sondheim said in Sunday in the Park with George (the video of which I posted a few weeks ago), you have to move on....

Stop worrying where you're going

Move on

If you can know where you're going

You've gone

Just keep moving on

I chose, and my world was shaken

So what?

The choice may have been mistaken

The choosing was not

You have to move on...

My Favorite "Sings"

I wrote this nearly 17 years ago (!!!) when I was in the infancy of my teaching career, and it still pretty much describes my approach to vocal technique. I may have published this before but I can't find it, and it showed up in my FB memories this morning, so here goes:

My Favorite Sings
To the tune of (oh, you know!)

Lip trills and buzzes and breath exercises -
Whimper like a puppy to find where your sighs* is -
Expand your bottom ribs as though they were wings,
These are a few of my favorite sings!

Sing thru the "stick shift" to free the passaggio**,
Blow on your finger to feel the appoggio,
Locate your resonance with lots of "ming-mings",
These are a few of my favorite sings!

Don't lift your chin up, it pulls on your larynx!
A noisy breath means you're tightening your pharynx!
Relax your shoulders and all other things,
Get ready to work on your favorite sings!

Don't gasp or wheeze!
An incipient sneeze
Will give space to you
And don't forget if you look
weird when you sing,
You'll probably sound weird too!

*sighs - balanced onset exercise
**a chromatic exercise for registration

Found a composer!

I am thrilled to announce that Garth Baxter has agreed to accept a commission to compose three Irish songs. Garth and I have been Facebook friends for awhile now, and he has written some pieces for a good friend of mine, soprano Annie Gill, and so I thought I'd check out some of his work on YouTube.

The first song that came up was a choral setting of "Wild Mountain Thyme," which I posted the other day as the song that has meant a lot to my husband and me at our regular pilgrimages to Milwaukee Irish Fest. I thought that this was a sign, so I contacted Garth immediately.

I'm in the process of getting the poems pronounced for me and I've ordered an Irish-English dictionary from Amazon to help me do a word for word translation.

This is very exciting. I don't know when we'll get started, let alone finished, but I think this will be a fantastic collaboration!!

Now to decide whether the recital they'll be on will be the originally intended "outside the box" theme or if I'll just go with a Celtic theme and reprise some of the things that I did with MacDowell Club a few years ago....

More info to follow!

Cringeworthy wedding/funeral music

These are all songs I have sung (or heard) at weddings that made me cringe:

• Beauty & the Beast (The Musical): Unless both the bride and groom are beautiful. Otherwise people will smirk.
• You and Me Against the World (Helen Reddy): Seriously, what does this say about your guests? Plus there's a line about "Remember when we went to the circus and you were scared of the clowns." Really? 
• O mio babbino caro (from the opera Gianni Schicchi): The text literally means "O dear daddy, let me marry my boyfriend or I will go to the highest point and jump into the Arno River. Oh god, I wish I were dead." NO.
• The Wedding Song: If you have a guitarist, maybe. On organ, it's death. And really, it's only one note. Over and over and over. I have a friend who charges an extra $100 to sing that song. I just try to talk people out of it.
• Unforgettable (Nat King Cole): No religious reference whatsoever. Lounge lizard material. Save it for the reception.
• The Prayer (Bocelli/Dion): It's not a solo. If you have a tenor and mezzo, okay. But as a soloist, it doesn't work. It's awkward. (Honestly, even as a duet, I feel like it's the tenor sings in Italian and then the mezzo translates.... it's weird.)
• Endless Love (Lionel Ritchie): The song is about teen sex. Again, if it's a duet, you might be able to make it work. But really, ew.
• Power of Love (Celine Dion): Yes, I sang this as the recessional at a Catholic wedding. I couldn't believe they allowed it. The priest even structured his homily around it. The chorus was "'Cause I am your lady - And you are my man - Whenever you reach for me - I'll do all that I can." NO. This is church. We're not singing about SEX. Not that there's anything wrong with sex. It's just not appropriate in a church service.

Basically, if you are getting married in a church, your music needs to reference God and/or Jesus somehow. Otherwise, do a civil service. I did a wedding years ago where not a single reading or song talked about God. Then why get married in a church? Have a civil service and then have whatever music you want at the reception.

Not that I'm opinionated or anything.

I'm more liberal on funerals. If a song meant something to the deceased, great. I've sung "Look for the silver lining," "Somewhere my love," and "Every day of my life," all songs that meant something to the deceased or the deceased's immediate family. The worst funeral I ever sang was for a 95 year old man at which I had to sing a contemporary Christian song that (A) did not fit my voice (B) I'm sure he'd never heard, and (C) former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson was the eulogist. I felt like that funeral wasn't authentic. If the deceased could've, he would've sat up in his coffin and said, "What the hell is that cheesy piece of music? I wanted Amazing Grace!"

Your wedding should reflect your beliefs, your hopes and your dreams. Not just pretty songs that you like. They should mean something. Your funeral should reflect things that were important in your life.

At my funeral (not the church service, but the memorial service/wake), I want this video to be played. If it's not, I will haunt you all. (Plus I met Tommy Tune in the elevator at the Kennedy Center back in the 90s, so there's a sentimental value besides the words meaning everything to me.)

"Just got hit by a semi. Shit."

Every morning, I review the "On this day" feature on Facebook to see what I was thinking about and doing on this very day every since 2007. In 2013, I posted:

Christine Thomas-O'Meally

July 25, 2013 · Spring Grove, IN · 

Just got hit by a semi. Shit.

I was driving back to Milwaukee to close out our Wauwatosa house. I was driving alone - Bill was working and really didn't want to go back the house (he was having a very hard time with leaving it in the first place). It was a long drive, but I was making great time, and in the couple of minutes before it happened, I was just thinking, "I really like long-distance driving. I find it very Zen. Huh. Why is that semi moving into the left lane? I was going to pass him. Oh well, I'll just hang back here till he moves back and then I'll pass him."

Well, he didn't move back (and then I hit a pothole and figured that was why he had moved, because he knew it was there) and I waited. He didn't show any signs he was going to move so I sped up a bit and then... he decided to move back. 

I don't remember if I honked or screamed, but he saw me at the last possible second before he would've crushed me. His wheel had hooked into my wheel well at that point and he'd torn off its cover. The impact threw me off the road, and I nearly lost control of the car, but I was able to stop on the shoulder just short of the guardrail on the bridge - in the middle of an on-ramp.

Typing it terrifies me all over again.

The damage was strictly cosmetic (although I had a lot of car repairs over the next three years before I traded it in, and I can't help but think that, somehow, the car was compromised by the impact). 

When I pulled over to the shoulder on the other side of the ramp, the driver of the semi stopped to see if I was okay. I looked at him and said, "You. Hit. Me." It was the only thing I could think of to say. Someone told me once that that was such a mezzo thing to do. All I knew was that I was angry and now I was going to be late getting back to Milwaukee. I really didn't think I'd be able to drive the car the rest of the way - but I could. And got it checked out and estimated the next morning, and after closing out the house, drove it back the following week. 

While sitting there, after I called the police to report the accident and my husband, I posted the above status to FB. And then didn't post anything for 10 minutes, because I was on the phone with my insurance company to arrange the estimate. I scared the hell out of people for a bit. Didn't mean to - but I sure was gratified by the outpouring of caring that my friends displayed in those ten minutes and the days that followed.

I am very lucky to be alive. I'm lucky that Mini Coopers are tiny little tanks. I'm lucky that the driver saw me in time to avoid crushing me. I'm lucky that his employer paid for all of my repairs. I'm lucky I'm a better driver than I thought I was and was able to get control of the car. 

Since this is supposed to be a singing blog, here's Natalie Weiss interpreting the words of John Bucchino, which express what I'm feeling now, 4 years later: Grateful.

You like me! You authentically like me!

When Sally Field accepted the Academy Award for Best Actress for the movie Places in the Heart, she made a speech that has been misquoted as "You like me! You really like me!" Her actual speech was “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time [she won the award, for Norma Rae] I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it — and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.”

As a performer, needing to be liked often comes off as needy, as if you aren't performing to tell the truth and to be authentic, but out of a desire to be popular. If you audition with that mindset or with the mindset of "I really need this job," it's often seen as desperate and inauthentic.

When I was living in Milwaukee, I didn't feel as though I was liked. And it wasn't just the last time I was living there. It was growing up there as well. I haven't had that feeling living on the East Coast. And I think I know why. I think I was raised with the idea that other people's opinions of me were paramount and that I needed to make myself likeable. And I never felt that I knew how to do that.

The last few auditions I did in Milwaukee played against that idea - I went in with a self-protective and closed-off mindset of "I don't care if you like me. I don't care if you hire me. You probably aren't going to anyway. I'm just going to sing these songs. Bite me if you don't like me." (That last part might be a bit extreme.) And it backfired. I came off as uninvested in my music. I didn't enjoy the audition and I didn't get hired. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yesterday I read a blogpost by Noe Kagayama, who writes the blog The Bulletproof Musician (to which I subscribe). This article was about assuming that people like you from the get-go. Not that you have to make them like you, but that they already do.

Basically, it talked about everything that I've done wrong in my life - that research has shown that self-protective behaviors like impersonality or hiding your true feelings negatively impact people's perception of you. It might seem like this study was conducted by Captain Obvious himself, but to those of us who were raised with the idea that people wouldn't like us if we were too silly, too honest, too real, it's eye-opening.

(Interestingly enough, I never felt that way in my Milwaukee studio - only in performing circles and in my life. I think I already assumed my students would like me. Huh.)

Kagayama closes his article with the conclusion that entering a new situation (whether it be teaching or performing) with the idea that the students/audience/colleagues already like us is paramount to creating an environment that is authentic, focused, and conducive to creating music.

"Otherwise, we risk going into a situation determined to prove ourselves, and come across as defensive, stubborn, and snobbish. Or in an effort to avoid showing our cards and letting on how excited we are, end up seeming withdrawn, cold, aloof, and standoffish. And ironically, end up getting exactly the result that we were afraid of in the first place." [Emphasis mine]

I'm tired of that result - and I've only had it once since I've been back here, and it involved a situation where I was upset and afraid to make my feelings known. And it won't happen again.