August 30, 2019
I tried to let go of choir when I went to university. I was all set to begin anew. I was going to live up to my parents’ dreams of becoming an engineer.
That, and I heard the choir perform during All-State my senior year of high school, and they weren’t that good. the All-State choirs were better. My school’s choirs were better. I didn’t want to tarnish my feelings on choir by having my last few years in it be less than what I was used to.
Yeah. How’d that work out?
I lasted a semester.
Part of it was, of course, that I started the same year they hired Dr. Kim, who turned the choral department around. Suddenly I had something I wanted to reach for.
Part of it was that, on graduating, one of my chosen families disappeared. I still had furry, of course, and I still had Ash and Shannon, but I was missing a core part of myself, and I wasn’t strong enough to not have that in my life.
You weren’t strong enough to do a lot of things, then.
No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to tamp down my mania or pull myself up by my bootstraps through depression. I wasn’t strong enough to buckle down on my math and chemistry studies. I wasn’t strong enough to treat my friends and lovers as well as they deserved. Not on my own, at least.
So I joined choir.
You did more than that. You took ownership of your life.
I changed my major to music. I started taking singing lessons. I gained strength from my community, and I got better. I got strong enough to at least learn, bit by bit, how to deal with each of those things. I’m still working on some of them, but that’s where I started learning.
I got strong enough to make it into voice lessons with Dr. Morrow-King.
I got strong enough to get into Chamber Choir.
I got strong enough to go on two choir tours in South Korea.
I got strong enough to leave the music education program and move to music composition.
I got strong enough to talk to the department chair about why I wasn’t getting lessons through the school.
I got strong enough to stand up to Dr. Wohl when he was called on it and not selected to be the new professor.
Not strong enough to suffer defeat.
No.
Not the one I experienced.