Ishcabittle

I was singing the aria I performed for my senior recital yesterday (annoying my wife to no end), Damn the Village from the operatic production of The Crucible.  I am no Sarah Good or Tituba, I am John Proctor, I have three sons and all of that.  I stumped myself trying to remember the lyrics in the later half of the aria, and I thought, “Well, I have my performance in iTunes, I’ll just give it a listen.”

A little background for those who don’t know me personally; I received a bachelors degree in vocal performance from Georgia Southern University, and up until my 23rd year, I believed with my whole heart that I would be an opera singer.  I picked that path not because I was extremely passionate about opera, but because it was something I was relatively good at, the school was giving me a scholarship to be in the program, and I didn’t want to do serious work at the time.  It seemed like the right thing to do.

I listened to my senior recital, and to quote Randy Jackson, “It was a little pitchy, dog.”  I must never have noticed all of the tuning problems when I was practicing for that recital, listening back to the recording, or during any of my graduate school auditions.  I wouldn’t have put me in a graduate program if I had been the professors who heard me audition, they were absolutely right not too.  I have been harboring a slight resentment towards those professors who witnessed my slightly out of tune renditions of italian art song, german lieder, and french post-romantic nocturnes.  All this time, I have not really let myself believe that I wasn’t actually up to the task of being an opera singer.

Realizing that I wasn’t actually as good as I thought I was has lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders with regards to the path that I have taken in my life.  After graduate auditions and the rejection letters, I was understandably directionless and depressed.  I tried my hand at bartending school, business school, delivery driving, short order cooking, meatball rolling, and more cooking before landing a tech job and suddenly feeling good about my work.  I can say with confidence that I am an excellent technician and consultant, but I never gave myself that confidence when I was a singer.  Now I know that I’m doing something that I am good at, instead of just hoping.

I’m still a musician, however.  Ishcabittle is getting more exciting at every turn, I have songs I am very proud of and it is a genuine pleasure to play my guitar through my crazy series of electronic doo-dads.  I can now, however, drop the pretense that I was cheated out of a life of chorale practice, auditions for parts well received, and a career singing the works of Rossini.