The Nerd Within

Nerd: /n3rd/noun - slang.

1. A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.
2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.
(American Heritage Dictionary)

Word History: The word nerd, undefined but illustrated, first appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo: “And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!” (The nerd is a small humanoid creature looking comically angry, like a thin, cross Chester A. Arthur.)

Nerd next appears, with a gloss, in the February 10, 1957, issue of the Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday Mail in a regular column entitled “ABC for SQUARES”: “Nerd a square, any explanation needed?” ...

The third appearance of nerd in print is back in the United States in 1970 in Current Slang: “Nurd [sic], someone with objectionable habits or traits.... An uninteresting person, a ‘dud.’”

Authorities disagree on whether the two nerdsDr. Seuss's small creature and the teenage slang term in the Glasgow Sunday Mailare the same word. Some experts claim there is no semantic connection and the identity of the words is fortuitous. Others maintain that Dr. Seuss is the true originator of nerd and that the word nerd (“comically unpleasant creature”) was picked up by the five- and six-year-olds of 1950 and passed on to their older siblings, who by 1957, as teenagers, had restricted and specified the meaning to the most comically obnoxious creature of their own class, a “square.”
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth EditionCopyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.)
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So, where does this leave me - where could I possibly be going with this? Yes, the 1950's/70's slang definition of Nerd still appears in dictionaries, but the more common understanding of Nerd is closer to the following definition: A person who is single-minded and accomplished in any intellectual pursuit. I have dropped socially inept largely because I see myself as a music nerd. And I of course do not consider myself socially inept - most of the time.

I recently came face to face with my nerdy-ness and learned the lesson that there is a time to embrace it and the time to trust it and let it go. Embrace it when translating languages, embrace it while doing a character study, embrace it while studying the history and style of a piece, love it in all of its glory while pouring over the music and all of the dynamic/stylistic markings left behind as clues as to its performance. But for the love of all that is holy in Opera, let it go when you perform.

There, I said it. Let it go. Allow the emotion to flow through trusting that the work has been done. The dynamics and language will come out; they have no other choice than to come through when performed with passion and understanding for what is being said...really said.

I have never felt this so strongly as when singing Nina's Aria from Pasatieri's The Seagull. In the opera, in order to survive, part of Nina lets go. She looses her human self and ascends to a plane where she believes she has become a homeless wanderer, a seagull. It took singing a 'mad' aria to pull me out of my intellect and into the emotional waters where opera becomes something truly powerful and dramatic.

The opera singer has so much to be aware of that it is easy for an intellectual mind to become obsessed with the minute details, thus loosing the beauty that each detail was intended to create. Perform in the moment, trusting that the details no longer have to be nourished, they are doing the nourishing.

Now, not only do I love nerds, but I also embrace the power of trusting in the nerd within.

One step at a time

New shoes. New dress. New resume.

I had a performance this week, for the first time in many, that provided me with a new item for my resume, and a check to put towards new shoes and a new dress for this fall's auditions. I also have a slightly new outlook. Performing isn't just what I want to do, it is what I need to do in order to stay sane. I have been dealing with a great amount of stress and anxiety related to work and personal life. It had built up to a point to where exercise or practice sessions, typically a tremendous way to meditate and escape, were rendered relatively useless. But almost instantaneously after the oboist and I finished the show, I felt my worries return to something manageable, something realistic. I still have the same anxieties, but now I can begin to deal with them.

It was really quite a fun show; Short Attention Span Chamber Music Series. There were books on Blake's artwork and his poetry displayed for the audience to explore as well as the Blake/Vaughn Williams songs performed. I was even offered another fun job because of it.

I don't quite think I can find a way to include the new job offer on my resume but it will be worth the experience, and quite entertaining. The man who hired me puts on silent movie nights in which he has the audience create the sound effects, along with a pit orchestra filled with fun instruments like an electric violin, theremin, toy pianos and the like. I would be singing from the original silent film of "The Phantom of the Opera". It sounds like some music from "Faust" and a few Schubert art songs were used. I'm sure this will be a performance to write about!

Season

This weekend has truly been a jump-start to audition season. For months I have been working away without any performances or public singing. Part of this was due to a new voice teacher...I had technique to busy myself with (smoothing out the voice top to bottom) and as this weekend proved, it was well worth the self imposed vocal solitude.

This afternoon I had my first public performance in almost a year. As luck would have it, two people who were at last year’s Met auditions were present this afternoon. Both of them had the same comment, “I heard you sing last fall, but this was such a surprise. You have come a long way, even from just a year ago.” Sweet music to my ears. There is nothing like external acknowledgment of hard earned improvement. I am feeling a bit more confident day by day.

It was also nice to sing through three of my arias, learning that I do have quite a bit more work I want to do on the Cenerentola. But, this is an aria that I feel will always want quite a bit of work. In fact, that is a large reason of why opera is so dear to my heart; the never ending process. It is a struggle, but a struggle worth participating in. It is a struggle with great rewards. It wouldn’t be nearly as profound or emotionally poignant if it didn’t require the work, the dedication, the passion, and the dream.

Mezzo(r)-Soprano

There is always that moment of disbelief and hesitation in a new coach’s or teacher’s eyes after first hearing me sing. This is not a moment of complete and utter awe at my technical and dramatic prowess mind you. Rather, one of: “Are you sure you are a mezzo?” Yes, I’m sure, and after a few more lessons, they are as well. I also am sure that I am not the only one who has been faced with this question time and time again. Having an easy top in a traditionally warm rich low fach doesn’t necessarily spell confusion. It was how I was approaching the top, and thus my musical choices that spelled c-o-n-f-u-s-i-o-n.

I would purposefully knock out an aria highlighting the easy highs and coloratura, something to the tune of Donna Elvira’s Mi tradi. My high c, is a strength. The fact that I can run through a coloratura passage that hangs around the dreaded f and f#, is a strength. What wasn’t a strength of mine was connecting the idea of both a high and low voice. Corrected technique aside, my musical choices had a large hand in the confusion.

My first year of auditioning, I fell into the same self imposed trap. I would begin with a zwischenfach (in-between) role, a role often performed by either soprano or a high mezzo-soprano. So while I thought my voice was stating, “I am a mezzo, I sound like a mezzo, even my high notes are like a mezzo’s”, my list of audition music would be screaming, “I may not know what I am, my high notes are simply second nature, perhaps I am a soprano who believes it is easier as a mezzo”. I didn’t include a solid repertoire list. It didn’t only have zwishenfach roles; it didn’t include high mezzo roles with a few zwischenfach roles. It was a bit more slap dash that that. They were arias that I sang well – regardless of what the whole role was like. So when I would introduce myself with the repertoire of both a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, I was not convincing my audience of who I am, let alone getting the point across that I know who I am - big mistake, and admittedly, not my only one.

In a blood sport like opera, where auditions can be made or

A Simple Question

Ah, the life of an almost opera singer...

That nagging question:

"So, what do you do?"

You wouldn't think that this was such a confusing question, but to tell you the truth, it always takes me a while to form an appropriate answer; and my answer tends to change based on who asked the question. If I want the conversation to be quick and dirty, I answer truthfully, "I am a Marketing Director." Unfortunately this tends to elicit a lot more interest that I usually anticipate, leading to a more lengthy discussion than I had planned. If I have a social connection to the asker and am more willing to explain myself, again, I answer truthfully, "I am an aspiring opera singer". Often I use a combination of the two; the Marketing used to offset the fact that I am barely "working" with my singing.

Most often I end up retreating into the depths of my mind, pondering the virtual circus of activities I perform weekly, trying to coherently communicate them to the person who at this point is now staring at me with the deep look of concern in their eyes.

But I honestly don't quite know how to say all the things that I am actually doing in preparation for a career in opera. They are not returning immediate results in the form of performances. They are not measurable by most people's standards. Many of them even sound like leisure activities: watch movies, read books, read magazines, go to the opera, go to concerts, sing, exercise. It is more of a lifestyle that it is a path of study. I suppose that at this stage, my career in opera is about taking the time to prepare for the moment when I do step out onto a stage.

Much of this preparation comes in the form of my many "job interviews" - the auditions. So as I embark on my second audition season, I have decided to keep record of the ins and outs of being an almost opera singer. Bare with me...this could get ugly, or more likely, dreadfully boring.