So I just got back a few days ago from a river cruise. My parents took my sister and I on a week long cruise of the Danube River. We started in Germany, worked our way along through Austria, and finished in Hungary. It was fabulous.
It also helped me remember that I really do like this travel thing. It’s wonderful to see other places in the world that are so different from our own. Here in the U.S., our history only goes back so far. We might marvel over a building from the 1700’s and its importance in our nation’s formation. But when you go to Europe, 300 years is just a drop in the bucket. There are buildings that go back more than our western hemisphere brains can really comprehend. In Regensburg, Germany, you can see a building that was built upon some old Roman structures – old watchtowers and a gate. We visited a village in the Czech Republic that really makes you feel like you’re taking a time machine back to an ancient age. And when I was walking through the castle gardens in Nuremberg, I could almost imagine myself in my renaissance dress moving through the space like a lady of the court. (Yes, I have my own renaissance costume. No, I’m not embarrassed about that. Haha!)
I absolutely loved seeing these wonderful places, and it triggered in me a renewed motivation to….well….get motivated!
I’ve been so busy with my multiple jobs lately, that it gets easy to lose sight of your own personal goals and dreams. Because despite everything else I do, I am at my core, a singer. I will always be a singer.
The classical music industry has not been too great in our country these past couple years, which can lead to one feeling a bit frustrated. (You can definitely put me in that category.) I thought on more than one occasion that maybe I should go avocational with my singing and focus my energies elsewhere. But being back in Europe renewed my sense of longing to sing at a level above and beyond – at a level I know I’m capable of performing. Walking around Vienna reminded me of what it felt like earlier last year when I was there coaching my music at the opera house. I felt a real sense of possibility.
It is with that sense of possibility that I throw myself even more into my singing. I’ve had about two months off from singing after a very busy spring. But I think that’s about the longest a singer can go before the urge wells up inside, too big to ignore. I MUST sing.
I’ll be singing the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Patience” this fall, but also plan to put the rest of my music into high gear and coach my audition arias back into shape. I’ll be scanning the auditions more than ever and hope that the result will be exciting – and will lead me to explore even more new wonderful places that this world has to offer.
My fortune cookie from Wednesday night read: “If you don’t have time to live your life now, when do you?” I can’t think of a better motto for going forward right now.
