A young colleague of mine, relatively new to the business of opera was finding it hard to balance her personal life with her professional career. She was newly married, so much in love. Her mother died, and there was no time to mourn. In this letter to her I explored why being human is far more important than your job. I wrote this letter two years before I decided to leave singing and at a time when I began to question everything about my life and career.
Be still and know – you are not your job. So much is talked and written about life work balance, I find oftentimes we need to be unbalanced for a time, to honor our life passages. If you don’t nurture who you are as a human on this earth, you won’t be good for any job, not as a sanitation engineer, not as a teacher, not as a brain surgeon – nor an opera singer.
My dearest Susan (the name is has been changed),
I just moved and am surrounded by boxes and construction. As the dust settles, your e-mail has stayed in my head. What I share now is my experience and we are each on our own path. Perhaps a little of what I say will give you new perspective.
You say you have found your career to be more of a struggle than you believe it should be. I felt the same and yet something kept pushing me on to struggle after struggle. Although I came to the Mecca of Opera in the USA, New York and did the requisite starving for six months — maybe I should’ve lived in a cave and starved longer so I could afford to pay a retainer to the best connected agent in the city and to the best publicist. I didn’t. Unless you have a tenor voice, spectacular or un, or a voice like the real mostre sacree, Joan Sutherland, Pavarotti, Caballe — you need that kind of ammunition, if the Fates do not smile upon you and grant your every career wish. Hindsight is always 20/20!
I have been in this business a lot longer than you, am very tired by the struggle and it’s no longer worth it to me. Yes, I wanted to sing at the Met and La Scala, but the fates decreed otherwise. I have simply let go of it all. Now, I sing something when it pleases me, and I’m asking the universe what else am I to do with the tremendous energy and love I possess. I’m exploring many avenues and have no idea where I may end up — scary, but exciting.
I have sung all over the world, I have met remarkable beings and affected many lives, but you know something? I affect the lives of everyone I meet, whether I sing to them or not. It is my soul that has worth and the voice of that soul, not the applause of a faceless crowd that was lauding a character I created, not me.
I have no regrets. This journey of mine has been about the growth of my spirit. I have become inner-directed. The need — the rapacious hunger for approval and love is gone. The approval and love radiates from within now, filling me with light and without effort sometimes illuminates the path of others as well.
I’m sorry to hear of your mothers passing; life always takes precedence over art. It’s real. The next time someone says the show must go on, ask them, “Why?” They may give you a lot of malarkey about bottom lines, but just ask again, “Why?” I sang in Spain the night my father died, why? Because they couldn’t replace me — what matters more?
The mourning of the loss of someone close to us is real and must be faced or the wound never heals and a deep scar remains. Take all the time you need to heal. As for your wonderful relationship with your husband, the world of show business doesn’t smile kindly on real love. Read Baby Doe’s words to her mother at the party in Douglas Moore’s, The Ballad of Baby Doe. True, all true. And even more true in this fake business where love is simulated 14 times a day, complete with heaving breasts and luminous eyes.
When you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything. Wait, let your heart, not your head guide you. Our hearts know with a deep and sacred knowing. Our mind should be the servant of that heart. Is singing right for you? Only you can answer that. The way will present itself – we often become so busy doing, we become human doings instead of human beings. Be still and listen to the angels that surround you. Ask them for help and guidance or they are powerless to act.
Sometimes we need to perch for awhile at the edge of the abyss, teetering this way and that, until we let go, and voilà! – our heart pulls us in the right direction. That direction is uniquely yours; take time, all the time you need. The answers, and your path, lie within you waiting to be discovered. I promise that is true.
We often become frantic with artificial deadlines. Have faith that your timing will be perfect. For example, the Buena Vista Social Club, the old musicians from Cuba discovered by Ry Cooder, from the ages of 75 to 92 are now playing Carnegie Hall and every other concert hall in the world. Bet they never thought that would happen! In perfect time, all things are possible.
Thank you dear one, for inspiring me to put into words part of my journey. I send many blessings and much love.
As ever,
Adria