Boheme

After graduation I moved to California where I planned to work as a nurse for one year. It seemed a prudent thing to start paying off my student loans before going back to New England to finish my music degree.
Nursing was harder than I thought it would be. When I interviewed on the unit I eventually worked on for seven years, I did not recognize anything I saw: tubes, machines, monitors, specialty beds. I was a new nurse who had never started an IV, catheterized a patient, given antibiotics or suctioned anyone. How I ever got through nursing is a mystery to me--and all the more proof that there was nothing about it that came naturally to me. My sister worked on the unit, and I desperately tried to live up to both her expectations and reputation. It was a living nightmare. I had to repeat my probationary period and was written up more times than I probably was even aware of. I had to work a 10-hour night shift and couldn't sleep during the day. So it was hard to think straight after working three nights in a row. But I stuck it out. After a year or so, I wasn't a hazard to my patients--and the fact that no one had died due to my care was a miracle in itself.

Somewhere along the way I began to study voice with a short, stocky tenor. Through his influence I applied for and was accepted in an opera workshop.

The workshop was held at a local liberal arts university. A well-known musician and Italian language coach team had come to town for the three weeks it would take to put on three Puccini operas. There were singers from San Francisco, Texas, and Arizona. And a few of us from the area. Each of us sang for Bill (not his real name) and were cast in a role based on our voices. I was cast in the role of Musetta in La Boheme, and Ciesca in Gianni Schicci.

The singing and rehearsals were invigorating. It was soon apparent that Bill really liked me. While he'd swear and shout at the other singers, when he realized that I was within earshot, he'd immediately rush to me and apologize profusely. "Those words were not meant for your ears, honey," he'd drawl. Our daily voice lessons were thrilling--I'd never sung so well before, and it was wonderful to be able to sing high notes that I'd never performed before. I had a high B and reveled in singing it loudly in the several arias that contained it.

Meanwhile, I was embroiled in an internal struggle. I was convinced that opera was not a good venue for a Christian. I was even more convinced that I did not want to forsake all in my life and follow music. This came forcefully to me one day when Bill introduced me to a visiting singer who had lived in his car for a summer just to be able to attend a one of his workshops in another state. The singer had given up his job, been penniless and transient just to be able to gamble on a maybe. The life of a gypsy was not for me. I was also scared about how I could make a living if I chose to throw it all into one basket.

One day during my lesson I was working out a passage with rather languorous lyrics and Bill stopped me. "Think only of sex when you sing that." I was a virgin, and his comments awakened nothing in me. This must have registered on my face. "Barbara, you need to have an affair before you can really sing." For several minutes he waxed eloquent on the benefits of being sexually ravished and bringing that sensuality to my singing. I flatly told him that I wasn't interested in having an affair and could we please move on with the lesson. We did move on. But the next day there was a visitor for my lesson. This all-brawn-no-brains type of guy, wearing very tight jeans and a shirt unbuttoned clear down to Bakersfield, sat in the corner leering at me throughout my lesson. It was clear that this was someone only too willing to help me with the affair Bill recommended. What a turnoff. Although I was cordial when I met him, I ignored him thereafter. He never came back.

I wasn't sure what to think about this sex business. I hadn't realized that it would be so rampant. I was only 22 years old and still rather naive.

My regular voice teacher hugged me one time and whispered in my ear that he'd love to get me in bed. He was a father of seven children. I was disgusted to the point that I dropped him and never went back to study with him. (By then I also learned that he'd been having an affair with another singer who he later married).

What was I going to do with my singing? Bill wanted to know and really pressed me about it one day. I didn't know. He told me that he thought I should go to New York and that he would take care of me there. He would see that I sang where I should, was introduced to people who should know of me, and that he would be there for me. He said that I had an extremely rosy future if I would only go to New York and work hard at singing (with him, of course) for two years. Then I could sing wherever I chose.

Singing had become an intoxication. I loved it. I was free and I was good at what I was doing. Languages came easily to me, as did acting. So opera was really fun. But I still had that nagging question--How could I be true to my religious convictions and have a professional musical career? Part of my confusion was obviously rooted in the way singing had come upon me. Part of it was from the mixed messages and emotional charge that singing had for me. And part of it was that there was no one to trust, no one to ask how to proceed, and no one to support me. So I did what I had done for years: I prayed.

One night, on the way back from the workshop I had words with God. I told Him that I was mighty angry at the fix I was in, that I really wanted to go to New York with Bill, and that I had lived with my dreams so long as a teenager and that now they were coming true. But something didn't seem right. The very time we don't feel like praying is the exact time we should pray. And pray, I did. And rant and rave and cry.

The next morning I had real peace about my singing future. I awoke with the intention of singing with all my heart, of reaching for excellence. But only as a dedicated Christian of conviction.

That day, Bill again pressed me about my future. "Bill, I don't know what I'll do with my voice. I don't need to know right now. But I believe that if God wants me to become a famous singer, nothing will keep me from that. If God wants me to go down the the corner and sing for a drunken man and then die, that's up to Him. I'll do my best, but I simply don't have the answers to what I need to be doing with my voice right now. I just know that I want to do what God wants for me."

I cringed under Bill's stare. He walked around the piano, looking sideways at me and then out the window. He suddenly wheeled around, pointing his index finger at me. "For by grace are ye saved, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God! ...And we know that all things work together for them that love the Lord." He paused, looking at my shocked face. "Oh yes, I know all the verses. I used to be a child evangelist with the Southern Baptist church. I know how to preach and I know exactly what you believe. I respect that. I understand." He didn't say much more than that, and our lesson was over very quickly. But I did catch him looking wistfully at me several times over the next day or two.

It was just like the tenor from Seattle, at the cast party. After we performed Boheme, we all got together for a party at my voice teacher's home. Sitting in the jacuzzi, a huge pink hibiscus in my hair, and false eyelashes aflutter, I was approached by this man. He squatted down next to the hot tub, probably for a better view down my swimsuit, I thought.

"I hear that you're a Christian," he said in a low voice.

"Yes," I answered, well aware that nothing about me looked very Christian.

"So what are you going to do with your voice?"

"I don't know yet. Are you a Christian, too?"

He stammered a very weak, "Yes." He said he had left his family and his pastorate in Seattle so he could go to New York to pursue singing. "I've given up everything for music," he said. "You should go to New York. You have a very bright future there."

By then I was out of the hot tub and standing next to him by the sliding door into the house. "You know, I don't really know what I'll be doing with my singing. But I do know that without a doubt, God will be central to whatever decisions I make about my future."

The expression on this man's face is one I will never forget. It was one of sadness, regret, wonder, and earnestness. "I wish I could think about it that way" was all he said. He was watching me through the evening with a very wistful expression.

Life moved on after that workshop. I had sung very well and experienced something beautiful. And I was sure that I didn't want to live the life of an almost professional singer. I still sang quite frequently, but mostly oratorio work. More and more, I sang religious music--arrangements of all the old hymns with lofty, uplifting words. And that is the path I took until 2001. Doctoral studies and lack of a musical network pulled me out of the musical world for the most part. Then a nasty bout of gastric reflux excoriated my vocal cords to the point that I am hoarse after only a few songs. So perhaps my singing days are over.

It could have been very different, this singing business. But it wasn't. I feel as though I have already had a career in music and retired from it. Yet it has influenced all that I am--how I carry myself, the way I interact with people after I speak, my sense of presence. I'm grateful for what remains, even though the focus of my life has moved on to something else now. The memories live on in my heart.