The Desire for Hermitage, The Gift of the Magi, divorce, and the role of an artist

“Ah! To be all alone in a little cell

with nobody near me;

beloved that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to death.

Singing the passing hours to cloudy Heaven;

Feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring. 

That will be an end to evil when I am alone

in a lovely little corner among tombs

far from the houses of the great.

Ah! To be all alone in a little cell, to be alone, all alone:

Alone I came into the world

alone I shall go from it.”

-Anonymous Irish Poetry

The first time I heard Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs was when I was a sophomore in college. Though always an old soul, I must admit that at 20 years old, the significance of the closing song of the cycle was completely lost on me. If felt morbid, lonely, and bleak. A few weeks ago though, the song popped into my head while hiking along the Carmel coastline and its significance for me became beautifully clear.

I am writing this post after just concluding a month long gig in one of my favorite artistic places, Hidden Valley, an artistic retreat in Carmel Valley, CA where I was singing the role of Della in David Conte’s beautiful chamber opera The Gift of the Magi. After a wonderful opening weekend, I enjoyed a blissful week off with little to do. While many of my friends returned to the Bay Area to be productive and attend to other responsibilities between performance weekends, I welcomed the opportunity to stay in my little room at Hidden Valley, read, write, work on music for my next gig, and just “be”. It was the most amazing feeling and one of the first times in my professional life that I found myself with the freedom to focus solely on myself and my art.

My accommodations at Hidden Valley were a far cry from the scenario described in “A desire for hermitage”. My “cell”, while small and fairly austere, was equipped with a cozy space heater and its own bathroom. Meals were prepared for us by a private chef, and I made a respectably regular habit of making green juices from the vegetables that grew in the organic garden on the premises. (I brought my juicer with me in my car. Did I feel pretty good about myself? Yes, in fact, I did!) I was also not far from the houses of the great. Leon Panetta owns a house right down the street from where I was living. (He has his own street too, called Panetta Street, naturally.) So no, my hermitage was not entirely monastic, but there was something about being surrounded by nature and away from the trappings of my regular day-to-day life that allowed me space to be alone with my thoughts.

One evening after our performance, an attractive middle aged women wearing an impressive fur coat and jewelry that immediately caught my notice came up to me with tears in her eyes. She told me how moved she was by the opera, specifically by the love between my character and her husband Jim, played by my great friend Ryan. “I cried…a lot,” she said. “I mean you could just feel the love between the two of you! You were so in love and so eager to just be together. You were such newlyweds! And the tree! I mean the way you were so excited by that tree, the way it meant so much to you! I didn’t know why, but when I saw how happy you were to get that tree, I just started crying.”

“I know, right?” I said. “I mean it’s such a crappy looking tree! But Della loves it so much because Jim thought of her and wanted to make her happy. It really is such a sweet moment, isn’t it?”

“I used to have this amazing flocked Christmas tree and all of these beautiful Tiffany ornaments. It was just spectacular,” she told me. “I’ve been going through a time of a lot of loss and change recently. I’m getting rid of so many really beautiful things that meant so much to me at one point in my life. It’s been very hard. The process has been really long and tiring. And there I was, listening to you two sing to each other, and watching you two together, and you were just so in love and so happy with so little. It just made me cry so much. Not because I was sad really, but because it gave me hope. It felt so good to feel things, you know?”

“I understand,” I told her, recognizing the coded language. “I’m going through a divorce too.” She and her fur coat hugged me tightly.

She had cried not because she was sad that her relationship was over, but because seeing the love between Jim and Della gave her hope that she could still be moved by love, and romance, and excitement for the future! It felt so good to be reminded that she was still capable of feeling that way. I knew exactly how she felt and I was almost taken aback to hear her articulate exactly what I had been experiencing. Going into this production, I was worried that as my marriage was ending, I would have difficulty accessing that unbridled joy and love that Della feels for Jim. I was worried that through my pain, it would be difficult for me to feel the excitement and the hope that Jim and Della share for their future together. I was filled with such relief to discover that it was easy and joyful for me to access those feelings and memories. Though my marriage had ended, it was neither difficult nor painful for me to draw upon the love and joy that I had felt during the relationship. It was easy for me to love love, and easy for me to feel hopeful and excited to experience it again with someone new. It felt so good to feel those emotions and to share them with the audience.

As I’ve settled into my professional life as a performer, I’ve often grappled to come to terms with exactly what it is that I offer the world. What is my contribution to humanity or to the people in my life? Was choosing to be an opera singer a selfish decision? Does what I do even matter?  I’m not solving the world’s problems or keeping people safe, healthy, or fed. I spend my life pursuing an art form that feeds my soul. I spend most of my time on the road, or alone practicing, or off in my mind somewhere. A performer’s life is solitary and I’ve always been the kind of person who doesn’t mind being alone. Does that mean that my career is really only benefiting me?

I’ve finally allowed myself to accept that the role of an artist is extremely vital. Artists synthesize human emotion! We guide our audience through their own experience of the emotions, memories, and ideas that they may not be able to access or process on their own. We experience life in all its beauty, pain, loneliness, and joy, and recreate those experiences, (painful or difficult as they may be), to share with others.

Our lifestyle is a solitary one. We spend holidays, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and sometimes even final goodbyes far away from the people we love. Relationships are complicated by the constant travel and irregularity of this career and lifestyle. However, as a product of our being alone, we are able to remind our audiences that they are not alone. That is not an insignificant contribution.

There are some things that can only be said with art and music. There are some realizations that can only be found in solitude. If I can touch at least one person’s soul with my work and make them feel like they are understood, that will be an end to evil, when I am alone.