Debbie, you remember, my wife, likes to share her internet surfing discoveries with me. It was a few days ago she sent me a link to an article by Kevin Williamson.
Mr. Williamson’s in depth discussion of a self-destructive pathology stirs up memories of damaged friends and struggles past. The vantage point from my 66th rung on life’s ladder allows me a rather grand overview of the subject in Kevin’s rumination. First, I have to divulge my own enjoyment of the low stakes life style Kevin indicts. I call my happy easy street retirement. You know. That career capping period when one gets to do just about anything he/she can afford. On the climb up my ladder of time I’ve looked forward to retirement with a knot of emotions that included resentment.
Kevin Williamson
I’m glad Kevin admits to that monster’s influence in his own life. Without his personal struggle, he would not have been able to understand or engage resentment with such aplomb in his article.
I know of and have met quite a few analogs of “Mark”, Mr. Williamson’s acquaintance. Like “Mark”, they take, or took, in some cases, satisfaction from the negative effect they once had or still have on the environment which maintains or once upon a time sustained their lives. That environment puts a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs and enough cash in their pockets to let them make enough choices to allow them the opportunity to avoid becoming so irritating or damaging to those upon whom
they have impact, that society is forced to put them out of the way. Our modern society is being evaluated daily as tolerant or intolerant by many measures and one of them is how much damage a “Mark” can do before he must suffer sanction from our society. I’m going to stay away from those social justice weeds around which Mr. Williamson dances so effectively, while I call out everyone who contributes to a parallel artistic pathology.
There is no reality more inspiring of resentment than watching other people live “better” than we do. Once an individual constructs his/her definition of “better” he/she is ready to juggle that specific hot potato. The hot potato issues that inspire resentment are innumerable, but I hope you at least catch the hem of the cape of the masked marauder who hassles everyone’s heart. (For the tenor: I hope you can grasp the principle.) Let me distill my previous resentment statement down to relevance within my career category: There is no reality more
inspiring of resentment than watching another singer get more curtain calls, applause, encores, money, contracts, critical adulation, members in his/her fan club, etc., etc., etc. The generic application of the resentment principle has infinite possible details. After all, it was the downfall of Satan.
Let’s forget about Satan, for now, and get on with my view of Mr. Williamson’s and his bud’s struggle with resentment, something common to all humans, but especially active in the lives of singers.
It’s not just us tenors that suffer the slings and arrows of sociological anxiety. It is a common poison offered to all opera aspirants, and failure to flower into a full-fledged artist is a common prognosis for those incapable of at least some detoxification. It’s a major issue that impacts more than the voice. How does a singer get poisoned? Just like any other human. Let’s see…. Three examples come to mind. If my friends read these pages they may recognize themselves. If they have courage, they may have something to add.
It was a long time ago that Debbie and I met a young man who had a very complicated life. On top of everything, he wanted to be a singer and was studying with a friend of mine. That friend invited me to sit in on a lesson, and I was happy to say that the voice I heard was really, really good, and I had lots of hope that this man’s life would carry him onto the stage. I was so few rungs up my life ladder that I had high hopes I would be singing with this man before I stepped on the rung I had already labeled retirement. Yes, I was arrogant enough to believe I would make it to that rung.
It never happened. I never had the chance to sing with him in an Opera production. The why of it may not be what I see from my perspective, but there was one complication in that man’s life that I knew would be a huge obstacle to his success. Back in the day, his family would trundle him out with pride to sing in mixed company when he was but a mini human. Now, that should not be a bad thing. No doubt about it. One can be an entertainer even just out of diapers. I loved singing in front of people as soon as I discovered they liked listening. The problem for this young man was that he hated it. According to what he let drop in casual conversation, he really hated it. Garcia might have called this a deficiency in his personality. I suggest that it is a function of resentment. Like: “Why should I get up and suffer in front of those people so that they can enjoy themselves?” I’ll leave the full working out of such a problem to psychologists, but this resentment has to be flushed out of the singer, or the “artist” will always resent the audience. There is no way that such an individual will fully flower into a commercially viable joy for the ears.
After one or two more rungs and a few more grey hairs, I received a request from an agent who suggested I take a professorial interest in a singer he had discovered. We did sing together. We sang together before I could even attempt to fulfill my agent’s request. In the fullness of time and one or two rungs latter, we landed in the same Opera House for an extended period. I think our agent suggested to her that I might be useful in her crusade to become an artist. I did my best to upload what I knew to her understanding, and found the transfer to be really difficult. It turned out that I now measure my knowledge download from her as far greater than the upload I hoped to add to her database. Her resentment infection didn’t seem to come from her parents. What impeded my efforts came from the student body and professors of her school days. There was no way that my hopes to hear and see vulnerability displayed on this young woman’s voice and gesticulation were going to be realized if she kept her anger and resentment. I failed, but I kept that to myself while I disseminated my opinion in all directions that this young person was gifted with a wonderful instrument.
Now I come to the singer most relevant to Kevin’s indictment of modern life. I had a student not long ago whom I had hoped I could help vocally. There was definitely a misunderstanding between us. I knew he needed to learn how to sing. He thought I should show him how to sing an Opera. It was one of my war horses, so it shouldn’t surprise me that he would want me to teach him how to do it. The problem was that there were so many technical deficiencies in the young man’s singing that there was no way for him to master the Opera he desired to sing.
His deficiencies don’t make him unique; rather so common that one can suggest he is part of the 99%. This statement may be politically provocative, but it is an understatement of my belief. I think that among the population of the world maybe 99.9999999999999% have no hope of mastering a Rossini Opera. Although not numerically unique, my student was the first example of Kevin Williamson’s well assessed pathology of adolescence un-escaped. My student cordially considered what I thought he needed, and shared with me what he held to be essential. We did not agree. The bottom line turned out to be a calculation that Mr. Williamson put so prettily:
The price of being a little bit of a slacker is not very high in the United States, though the rewards for success can be staggering. Life is pretty comfortable, and you can take six years to finish your bachelor’s degree in art history while working at Starbucks, and it isn’t miserable.
Necessity used to be what forced us to grow up. That was the stick, and sex was the carrot, and between the two of them young men were forced/inspired to get off their asses, go to work, and start families of their own from time immemorial until the day before yesterday. A 20-year-old man with adequate shelter, cheap food, computer games, weed, and a girlfriend is apt to be pretty content. Some of them understand that there is more to life than that, but some do not.
I stubled over an article by Olga Khazan who might have a lot of arguments against Kevin Williamson, but certainly had some advice with which my tenor student would agree.
Olga Khazan
My student did the calculation and came up with the formula that so disappoints me every time I encounter it. It goes something like this: “The job shouldn’t be that hard. I’m not going to do that much work, and if I don’t become a star, che sarà sarà.” That is resentment in action.
Mr. Williamson is wrong to point only in the direction of the USA. America does offer the environment he describes, but the USA is a slacker in comparison to the cushy conditions one can find beyond our borders. After all, none of the students I used above as examples have birth certificates on file in the USA.