Sometimes I think I am never going to be a concert musician and I should give it all up and go home.
I watched The Pianist yesterday. The film about a Jewish piano player in Warsaw at the time of the Second World War, who was marched into a ghetto, nearly packed off to a death camp, escaped by chance, and spent the rest of the war hiding in various flats in the city. I'd been wanting to see it for a long time, because it was terribly dark, just what I needed to make the state of my life seem bright in comparison.
And you know, I thought the film was uplifting. Despite the obvious depressive aspects, there was also ample proof of the good in people. Heroism, generosity, all that sort of thing. And I wasn't bothered by the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, because I'd been expecting that sort of thing.
No, what got me was the final scene. He's sitting in front of a piano. There's a full orchestra behind him, and he's about to begin a concerto. First the horns start, then the strings, and then he begins to play. The camera pans over the faces of the audience... god knows how many hundreds of people. And I think to myself, "God damn, I'll never make it." In that moment it occurred to me that I had once sung in the cathedral and been paid £100 for a single song. It seemed to me that this would be the pinnacle of an undistinguished, ill fated career, and that I would die in obscurity, with a few CDs sold and maybe a handful of people moved by my music, but with no real body of work behind me and with a long tenure at Norwich Union to look back on because singing didn't net me enough to keep up rent on my flat. I wanted to sink into the floor. I wanted to go home, permanently. I wanted to go back and live in my parents' house and return to my opera company with my tail between my legs, and pursue the chorus because, though I'd be paid a pittance and would never be a soloist again, at least I would be singing.
I didn't turn the damn thing off. I watched to the end, because it seemed so selfish to me that the acting out of someone else's success should make me more bitter about my own failure. And it was a really beautiful piece of music. It made me feel lonely that I didn't have someone to share it with, someone else who appreciates all the nuances of a good performance and the effort that goes into it.
That's another thing that's been making me feel bad about myself. My pianist has been a great deal of trouble, there's no doubt about that, but in some ways I'm very glad I have him to talk to. He shares the little joys and frustrations of performance. I've never connected to anyone else in quite the same way that I connected to him, because his creativity works in similar ways, his compositions are a compulsion similar to my poetry, and artistic endeavour is equally important to him. After my experiences with him, I feel I would be most happy with another musician. But on some level that seems silly to me. There are plenty of people who are sweet and good and nice, and very intelligent, without having musical talent, or any particular artistic talent of any kind. My latest boyfriend, whom I can't say I was very satisfied with, is one of them. And who is to say they wouldn't be good enough for me? Who is to say he's not good enough? Does someone else really need to be doing the same thing as me to appreciate it for the creative process that it is, or to share my frustrations that I'm currently singing to retirees and earning a pittance? Can't I give people a chance if they're not musical and they're not eccentric, and they don't understand about things like depression and insomnia and paranoia and seeing visions every day?
In a way, I envy people who are utterly average. They have more partners to choose from. There are more people in the world who would understand them and make them happy. And here I am, asking for someone who throws all their considerable energy into artistry or academic study, and is sensitive and strange, and complicated, and brilliant. I ask for too much. I shall end up alone.
27 Nov 2008, 10:38 am
