Refrain.

[astrophel_]

(My parents hear this at semi-regular intervals... every few months, perhaps.)
After I complete this Masters degree thingy--(just got back to Karlsruhe from CT yesterday; it smells like summer outside. Germany and Italy share a certain wonderful summer-scent, I think)--I shall change careers, get a postbacc and go to medical school.
Reasons (today's

Comments

[astrophel_]

(I must be in a really contemplative mood today; pardon the prolonged response!)
It is so good to hear from you, and--once again--so thought-provoking a response. The truth is that this whole matter has been nagging at me for years; it tends to come to the fore whenever I'm not actively preparing for my next performance. I have my first voice lesson in nearly a year tomorrow. Most likely that will have a similar effect to the recent performance of Nozze di Figaro that I saw--I'll "realize" that of course I want to be a singer. I do love singing; I do love music; I do love everything about the craft of being on stage. That I don't doubt. And yet this refrain. Usually medicine, occasionally theoretical physics, philosophy, art history {i'm jealous of my sister, who is having all the fun studying medieval art}, musicology. And, of that list, the one that does recur most often is the only one that pays a dime. I'd be lying if I didn't say that this music career terrifies me for that very reason. I'm used to a very different lifestyle than I'm going to be living, in ANY possible future, for the next fifteen years (most likely for the rest of my life, of course.) I'm embarrassed that I'm still largely dependent on my parents, and yet I struggle to wean myself off of the habit of buying things. I excuse it as "necessities"--food, study materials--but really I'm talking about the great (expensive) cheeses I get at the market (Karlsruhe indulges my food fantasies) and the books I buy to read 100 pages of before moving on to the next.
I remember telling my father, once, that I hated the idea of not making enough money to someday give my children (an amusing and frightening and hopefully far-off idea) the sort of opportunities and lifestyle I had as a child--especially the top-notch private schools. I was surprised at how offended he was by this. He grew up on a chicken farm, the son of holocaust-survivors who started over with nothing, and I was telling him that only The Hopkins School was good enough. I'm still not sure what I think about that.
A part of me wants the Jaguar. Or at least the Steinway piano, the nice restaurants, the theatre tickets, the exotic cheeses and the best (or at least better) wines. But that part of me also wants to divide my time between a house an hour outside of NYC, an apartment in Paris and a small villa in Tuscany (my sister and I have hypothetically agreed to share the villa.) And that's more the opera singer's lifestyle than the physician's... albeit only for a few opera singers.
And yet that's not the thing that I think makes me reconsider singing so often. The fundamental question I keep running up against is: do I find being a singer fulfilling? Generally the answer is, not entirely. But can I imagine finding _not_ being a singer fulfilling? And then answer to that is entirely not. Typical of someone who grew up the way I described above: I want to have my cake and eat it, too.

And how are you? Do you get to mount a solo exhibition before you graduate, and, if so, how is that going? Will you be in Paris this summer, and, if so, can we meet for coffee sometime? I'm hoping to get to Paris at least once this semester--it was so thrilling when I was there in January. All the best,-j