Time to Make the Leap

"The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground." -Chogyam Trungpa

I resigned yesterday from my full-time job as a copywriter in an ad agency. I've tried to give a concise reason as for why I would leave a job that I like, with people I like, and a salary that is dependable and steady. Alas, I have failed to be concise, but I think the following is clear.

Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel J. Levitin, among others, are proponents of the following theory:

"...ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is roughly equivalent to three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."
from This Is your Brain on Music

After thorough investigation and tabulation, I discovered the following about myself:

I have 13,170 hours of practice in music, but only 5,169 hours in vocal technique/study.

My boss told me on Friday that she wanted to make sure I didn't quit too quickly and then wonder “what if”. For two days I thought “what if?”, “what if...what?” I never wanted a career specifically in advertising. I can start writing at any other time, study it any other time, do it any other time. And right now, I have a whole bag of “what ifs”: What if I had left my job three years ago and dedicated 4 hours a day to my singing? Where would I be now?

The numbers above summarize me perfectly: an excellent musician and a good singer. I don't want to be good. I want to be excellent. I want to be Callas. And in three years, if I dedicate 4 hours a day to my singing, I will have reached 10K.

Daniel Gilbert, psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness says that we never regret what we do, we regret what we don't do: inaction. Therefore, and because it seems right now some stars have aligned, and there are opportunities that I must follow, I must leave my job. I have to leave it because I cannot let financial fear define who I am. I have to leave because I cannot let one of my best traits—my perseverance, my refusal to quit—become one of my worse enemies—losing sight of my goals, losing perspective, not being able to tell apart what I can do from what I want to do and what I should do.

So I'm off to a 10K hour journey to excellence.

Crossing Over

Maybe you've heard the news: Renee Fleming has just released a pop/indie rock album, "Dark Hope." I hadn't heard anything about it until today, when I stumbled upon no fewer than three articles about it in the New York Times. On May 25, two reviews of this album were published: one by the classical reviewer, Anthony Tommasini ("Even Sopranos Get the Blues"), and the other by the pop reviewer, Jon Pareles ("Letting Desdemona Rock Out a Little"). Then today, the arts section featured an excerpt of a conversation between the two reviewers: "Opera Diva Tries a Rock Album. Cue Controversy." (Their full discussion is here.) 

Wow, where to begin... Here are a few observations on these articles, divided into the Good, the Not-so-good, and the Ugly.

The Good:

• I agree with the reviewers that the best crossover artists bring something essential of themselves into their new effort, whatever it may be. As Tommasini puts it, "To me the most admirable crossover ventures have involved great artists who have leapt right over the divide and found their own ways to perform music from another genre." 
• Both writers make some interesting comments about the differences between classical and pop technique. Pareles believes, "Classical training strives to control or eliminate the rough spots. But pop makes the rough spots some of the most expressive moments." I'm not sure if I agree across the board, but it's an intriguing observation. Maybe we classical singers could learn to let some "rough spots" show through occasionally in order to express more? 

The Not-so-good

• Both reviewers seem to wonder, Who is she making this album for? Who is the target audience? To which we respond, "Who cares?" Do we need to have the audience in mind at every moment while we create our art, or can we say what we want to say and hope that people (anyone, anywhere) will be touched by it? I think there may be a lot more "crossover" between pop and classical audiences in our generation than these reviewers think. Music is music.

The Ugly

• This section by Pareles really took me aback: "...The classical folks often seem to think that their virtuosity is the only kind of virtuosity, so of course it will work in every context. When opera singers deign to sing what, to them, are clearly trivial ditties, they often end up sounding silly and pretentious." What?! Let me speak from personal experience here. I am one of those classical singers who sound "silly" and maybe even "pretentious" singing popular music. But it is never, ever, because I think that this music is any more "trivial" than classical music. I think my early musical training, combined with natural vocal tendencies, has just given me vocal habits that feel very difficult to break. Pareles seems to think that we opera singers look down on all other kinds of music. I don't think this could be any further from the truth.

And, for the record, the album doesn't sound half bad to me. What do you think? What factors make crossover work for you, in either direction?

-Miriam