Face the Music

"I only know one truth; it's time for the singing to end" - Luke Skywalker, The Last Jedi Teaser Trailer, 2017

I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what he said.  I might have paraphrased him, I'm not entirely sure.

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Another week, another draft of the resignation letter.  I often joke that if I ever wrote a suicide note, it would take so long to detail all the crimes I feel have been perpetrated against me that I would eventually become so engrossed in writing it that I would lose interest in killing myself!  VERY FUNNY EH?!  Yes, potentially very triggering as well, I know, my history of suicidal depression notwithstanding.  

But this is an idea I keep toying with, something that keeps coming back (y'know, it's like poetry; it rhymes) time and again.  Do I actually want to stop singing?  Is it really time for the nuclear option?  I've felt bad about singing for years and to be honest, not much has gotten better.  I work a desk job that seems to hate me almost as much I hate it (don't even get me started on career progression), and a musical career that started showing so little promise has all but died - years of negative reinforcement from successive directors of music has obliterated most of my confidence, and the climate of elitism that surrounds Cathedral music is almost suffocating - it's not enough to be good, but to know the right people, have the right teachers and gone to the right place and you know what fuck everything because I get to be upset about feeling completely inadequate and have a stupid vent for it.  I'm tired of all the fucking clanging of names dropped and the endless carousel of novelties and arrogances as they butt up against each other, foolhardy expectations that the world will bill and coo for them just like their like-minded child friends did.  All the posturing, look how good I am, the fragility of egos brittle as they are

Yes, I am bitter, and I am sad.  Slowly I have to look at my failures more and more as they rise to meet me, rising through the ceaseless telegraphing of success of the great and the good, for whom every avenue is open.  I'm tired, because all I know is to be angry and fight tooth and nail, but eternal frustration leads only to fatigue, and to be honest... I think I'm done.  I have to be done for my sake, because I will die.  All ambition slowly ends, and I become an inert lump of clay, no better than a Golem.

That's it for now, I suppose.  I couldn't say any more without having to name names and that's not only passe but also probably libelous at the end of the day.  It's time to seriously ask the question "Is choir killing me?" and importantly, time to consider that the answer might be "Yes".

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The takeaway from all this is that I probably won't quit, but continue to rage impotently against what I see as deliberate stumbling blocks and preferential treatment.  I've talked about unconscious bias in others, and reasoned that my appearance and my actions certainly put me in less favourable positions with  others, especially where performance opportunities are concerned.   A voice has cried out in the wilderness, but I doubt that will make things any more plain.  I'll spend next weekend away, out of Cornwall, and will begin to feel optimistic again, for a brief moment.  Just a little while.  And then... Well.  The world won't change.  All it does is turn.