Ceremonies

Saturday was crazily long... emotional (both celebratory and remorseful) and full of so many faces that have been so familiar to me for so long. The two halves of my life, really.

The morning was spent at my Grandfather's funeral, where the priest was 15 minutes late for the service because of traffic on the Edens. I take issue with church services because, as a musician who is part of the "production", you see the nuts and bolts behind what is for many their most spiritual experience. For me, it has always made it seem less spiritual in this revelation, seeing the business side of the music and its preparation, how the priests (this is a very general statement and does not apply to all spiritual officients) sometimes just go through the motions while their congregation relies of them for spiritual guidance (the congregation is often guilty of the same disassociation from the spiritual, but that is a WHOLE other tangent...). So my experience on Saturday was unique, because even though this was MY Grandfather's funeral, I had to be "working" and part of that aspect of "ceremony"... and I really dislike it.

Ok, and not all of this has to do with the church, but also my own inner turmoil and the ego surrounding being a singer. After finally finishing my last piece, just before the "rememberences", I just broke down. Partly because I was watching my uncles and father talk about Grandpa, and that's emotional, but really it was a release because I hadn't been able to feel anything yet... my mind and heart was surrounding my own "performance". This fact makes me feel extremely guilty. Honestly, I'm not an experienced Cantor and so definitely made a number of mistakes throughout the service, and this made me feel bad because it happened in front of my whole family. And really, my ego wants everyone to think I'm really great. And that I'm worried about what others think about me at my Grandfather's FUNERAL... ugh. I was disgusted with myself. But that's what the embarassment was... not being perfect in front of all these people I knew. Anyway... for those not involved as I was, it was a beautiful tribute. My Grandfather served very valiently in the Navy during WWII, even having his ship sunk, and there was a flag ceremony after the service. In the end, no one really cared about my slip ups or when my larynx was higher than I would have liked. And someday I hope to disassociate from that ego-centered nature of singing... particularly in these situations.


After that was the wedding of my friend Pete Wojtowicz. We've know each other since we were in high school at NHSMI at Northwestern... "band camp", as I like to call it. ;-) It was a beautiful ceremony with William Butler Yeats poetry read instead of convoluted Bible passages, a homily from Ryan Scammell, a friend of the couple, who actually knew them and didn't need to ask questions about their lives and history to create the perfect "homily". I don't mean to bash religion, but I just feel like religions began with ceremonies like this one... where people were doing what felt right and natural... and then they became dogma. Never to be changed or questioned.

I spent the day surrounded by amazing people. My family, my cousins, aunts and uncles, my brothers, my parents... and then I left them to jump in a strech SUV limo (which I usually distain and criticize, but at that moment realized why so many people find them fun on occassion) with my older "brothers", these college friends I've now known for at least a decade, who I can see after a year apart and pick up like we had just hung out yesterday. I danced away the stress of the morning and laughed at my great fortune to have met so many wonderful people during this lifetime.

I seem to have deterred from the title of this blog... Ah well. Living life is, very much, a part of being an opera singer and an artist. Right?