When I sing, I feel no pain. This is really remarkable, almost like magic. I remember reading about some old master painter whose fingers were locked up with arthritis, but who became young again and pain-free and energetic when he picked up the brush again. But I'm certainly not a master, and I'm not old either. It's just that singing requires so much concentration there's no room for anything else.
There are lengths of notes, and pitches of notes, and those are hard enough to get straight. There is dynamic (or loudness), and so many other symbols to pay attention to both above and below the staff... there are crescendos... and of course the words you are singing, which have to be memorized eventually, you can't read them and read the notes and everything else at the same time. I am not a music prodigy. Just trying to keep track of one or two of these elements at once--say, the words I'm supposed to be singing and the lengths of the notes, at the tempo we're singing them--requires so much concentration that the rest of the world might as well not exist.
I had terrible cramps the day we were rehearsing the Brahms Requiem. I have cramps that could fell a horse, although that's not special among women. And I thought, good. Better to have them today. I was in so much pain I was nauseous and shaking and sweating on the risers, afraid I was going to faint. We would sing a movement and there would be nothing but focusing on singing, which is wonderful, and of course the piece itself, and it was beautiful and electrifying and fun and everything it always is. I would feel nothing physically, unless the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like they do when you sing in a chorus and you hit a particular chord. And then the piece would end and Mr. Kent would drop his hands and the pain would come back all at once and I would try not to fall over. Sweating. I was so glad we were rehearsing because otherwise I would have been at home alone in my apartment trying to deal with it, with no distraction.
I have somehow backed myself into a corner this year with my bad habits, mostly worrying and perfectionism and denying my feelings. I've had these problems all my life, but somehow this year they've bred until I've gotten to a place where literally every move I make hurts. I can't ponder a decision without being stabbed by fear or cut down by self-criticism... but I don't even see what I'm doing and I react to it without thinking, like an animal. I feel like I've dressed myself in a straightjacket. Every move hurts. I am blessed to be able to write this now... it has become so much a part of the background that I'd begun thinking this was just the way life was. It is painful all the time, and if I have a problem with it it's because I'm weak or lazy.
It was funny to watch myself singing tonight. I felt no pain while singing. And then when we quit for the evening I felt it all roll back in. But it was the thoughts that were odd. Half-formed things resembling "Oh, now I have to feel this again... this is real life... I'd forgotten about this..." as blankets of queasy fear and pain settled on top of my brain, smothering the clarity I'd had a minute earlier.
But they give themselves away. Those thoughts. There is something of a chicken-and-egg question here. Which came first, the heavy misery or the thought that I had to experience it? That--oh--I have forgotten what real life is? What odd thoughts to have. It seemed to me that they were a bit over-eager, rushing in in the desperate hope that I wouldn't forget about them. Well I was afraid and I set myself in opposition to them, and they overcame me and I became straightjacketed again. Until I sat down to write this. Writing is a little like singing.
I'm sitting here watching the words appear on the screen as my fingers move. I want to make a resolution, I want to say, I will not be in opposition to my fears. I would say that I will feel them when they come and when they go away I will feel that. It is a new thing to me to be at this loose end. To give up trying to control tomorrow. I must remember that I am already in a corner and there is, in fact, no where else to go. To learn a new thing is difficult sometimes but if that's all that's keeping me from it... there are far worse things than difficulty. Like, oh, TERRIBLE TERRIBLE PAIN.
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