When Your Work (Voice) Gets in the Way

I used to think that musicians had it made, meaning that their lives were enviable. Face it. You have a talent. You use it. And everyone loves you. But now, having watched A Star is Born, and The Great Caruso, I can see it's nothing like that.

Home with the flu, deciding if I should write to Puffs and offer them space here on the blog, I had a lot of time to watch television. I got lucky and caught a movie I never saw before, even though my father used to rave about it, The Great Caruso. Total fiction. But still. We can learn from this.

Grand Tenori.com lends us the pic of Enrico Caruso above. Thank you.

Most people my son's age aren't terribly familiar with the great tenors. This kid will soon be 20, so we can't call him Little anymore. When his older brothers were little I made them listen to Pavoratti on their way to school. But somehow the youngest missed this phase. I think cassettes went out the window and CDs were too expensive at the time.

Now, Bruce Springsteen, my son knows. I mean, Bruce Springsteen brought down the house on Super Bowl Sunday and the physicist-engineer-computer-scientist-still-undecided was at a party, so he must have watched and listened as thousands cheered on. I didn't really feel Bruce sang to me. The commercials, on the other hand. . .

Yesterday, at work, about 4 pm, two more patients to go before the finish, I started to feel sick.
What do you do if you're a therapist in this situation? Just say, "Ya' know, I feel sick. You're less important than me?" No. You don't. You rely on hope is what you do, and the work goes on.

I get through it and pick up FD who doesn't even have to say, "Go to bed. Rest up. I'll take care of dinner."

I mumble something about left-overs and stumble upstairs to get out of my clothes, close my eyes, listen to right-brain lectures on Ted.com, make a couple of calls and want to sleep, but really feel too sick to do that.

Eventually, if you don't eat or drink anything in these situations, your biology takes care of you.

I must have slept, because I wake up and FD is lying next to me. "I'm cold," he says. "It's nice that you have a fever."

See, life is good. I force myself out of bed and amble downstairs to heat up some hot water with lemon juice and honey, something my father swears is good for you on a good day and my mother patronizes. I drink it very slowly watching Turner Classic Movies.

Mickey (Woody Allen) is drooling over Holly, one of Hannah's sisters in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). If we were to take the movie apart for ethics, we would call it an abuse of power, the way he seduces Dianne Wiest, although she is a willing partner to the seduction, one of many in the film, although I came in on the second half. Mickey works as a television producer, she's a starving writer. It's an easy win for the Mic.

Oh, why not go on, I'll never return here. Perhaps the best part of the movie is Mickey telling over his suicidal wish to Holly, and how he almost shoots himself but misses. He wanders out of his apartment after this near suicidal act and roams around aimlessly, finally finding a theater. He's watching a Marx Bros. movie in a theater. He's watching Duck Soup and there is nothing funnier, as you may know, than Duck Soup.

Mickey can't help but laugh and enjoy himself. The Marx Bros. make life worthwhile. If there will be Marx Bros and the like, why would he ever want to miss out on that? Seems silly.

Another day.

On to Caruso. Much better!

The Great Caruso called my name the very next day. Two in the afternoon, watching television, what could be more decadent. Showered, changed pajamas,, canceled patients and never looked back.

Wikipedia tells us this operatic musical of Enrico Caruso's life is highly fictionalized. And if Wiki says it's fictionalized, probably none of the movie is true. Nevertheless, Mario Lanza stars as Caruso and some say that no one else could have conveyed the warmth and grace of the opera star, the richness of his personality, his nuances, generosity, and kindness quite like this.

And if you're looking for natural beauty in a movie, Ann Blyth plays Caruso's wife, Dorothy Benjamin. He meets her when she is a teenager. Doro is in love with the great tenor at first note; he marries her when she is in her mid-twenties. The socialite marriage made headlines, attracted congratulations from the likes of President Woodrow Wilson.

See, everyone loves tenors! And sopranos, too. And baritones. What is Bruce Springsteen, anyway? A baritone, I think.

Several opera stars make cameo appearances in this wonderful film, one that serves as a nice introduction to opera, by the way, rich in performance and designed to grab at the heartstrings. Caruso dies at the end, either from his addiction to ether, or a mysterious throat disease, we never know which, but it is premature, his death, the only thing true about his Hollywood ending.

Richard Hageman, Carl Benton Reid, Eduard Franz and Ludwig Donath appear in the film along with stars from the Metropolitan Opera, notably the soprano Dorothy Kirsten and Jarmila Novotna, Blanche Thebom, Teresa Celli, Nicola Moscona, Giuseppe Valdengo, Lucine Amara and Marina Koshetz.

It is a veritable tour of the Met.

Caruso, a poor son of a peasant family in Italy, an Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACOA) rises to international stardom. Here in the USA it pains him that big donors to the Met want him to pander to rich people, to play to the Diamond Horseshoe. The Diamond Horseshoe, high society season ticket holders, I imagine, are the patrons with seats near the orchestra.

Caruso is told to keep his fists out of his pockets on stage, lest he offend them, the patrons of opera. This isn't classy, fists in pockets. He tells his socialite father-in-law-to-be that he will not play to the Diamond Horseshoe, that he will sing to the galleries, to the seats far away, way up in the balconies, for these people paid to see him, too. And there are more of them.

Everything about Caruso is charming, even his routine before each performance, although this is not a professional recommendation: a pinch of snuff in each nostril for mental acuity; a shot of whiskey to "relax the throat", and a glass of water to wash it down. You never see him drink anywhere else in the film, thus his alcohol use is wonderfully moderate. This in the day before beta-blockers.

He's a smash, of course. Every time he sings a note, we swoon. Well, some of us.

When he leaves the opera house, well-wishers outside on the street greet him as he is about to hop into the convertible with his valet and his driver. They beg, "Mr. Caruso! Sing something for us! We couldn't afford seats." And he sings for them. You could cry, seriously.

As you may know, if you have been reading this blog, my significant other is a musician, too. He made me cry on our first date (sure, an exaggeration, but Bach on the piano, when most people only know Heart and Soul, you would, too). So when Doro Benjamin tells Enrico that she fell in love with him the first time she heard The Voice, I could relate. It is the reason, tell your children, to practice.

She is discouraged from it, advised against the marriage. The life of a musician is a life on the run, they all tell her. He's never home. It is never about you. His performances come first.
His work comes first.

And his are charitable performances. How can a woman object to that? You'll like this. His voice is auctioned off at the Met for the Liberty Loan Home Fund. I suppose we need one now, too, a Liberty Home Fund.

Enrico tells Doro,

A man thinks he has a voice. The truth is, the voice has the man. The voice has to be somewhere, the man follows.

I imagine Mrs. Springsteen has the same problem.

He did Born in the USA, right? It's likely that for every dollar Caruso performed for charity, Mr. Springsteen gives a thousand.

Perhaps the loveliest scene in this movie is near the end, when Caruso and Doro have a baby. He is informed while in concert, on stage. Someone in the wings whispers loudly, "It's a girl!"

He then whispers to the sound man, the little guy in that hole under the stage, "I have a girl! It's a girl!" Then the sound man wriggles out of the hole and whispers it to someone in the orchestra. Each musician whispers it into the ear of the next, "It's a girl!"

Then the gentlemen and ladies of the Diamond Horseshoe get the news, too, and pass it around, all are thrilled with the news, whisper it to the next person. The news floats through the opera house, all the way up to the highest galleries, and at the end of the opera the place is wild, everyone on their feet shouting,

VIVA PAPA CARUSO!

Oh, it's good to see that kind of love, you know, on a sick day.

therapydoc

Eat, Pray, and Love and Chanukah

Looks like we could melt that snowman with our candles. Totally unintentional.

This is the time of year my patients come in with holiday questions, and I happen to see a lot of Italian people. (Thank you, thank you, thank you Sopranos). A lovely Italian man who has been seeing me for a long time sweetly asks,

"So. Chanukah. This is the holiday when you light candles because the Romans tried to sack the Temple. But the Maccabees beat them off, right?"

He asks this before we begin to talk about real stuff, real problems, talk about self. It is pre-therapy chat, much like chit chat about the weather. I ordinarily don't usually let in questions about me, but this is a question about history. And who doesn't love history?

"Almost!" I exclaim, for it is hard to contain enthusiasm. "It was the Greeks who ransacked the Temple. They didn't hold by our doing things our way, like the way we want to rest on the Sabbath, check out from our ordinary lives, and they really didn't like that we prayed in a different language (Hebrew). This emperor's rules went like this: Be like us, be Greek, or die.

I am not making this up. And I love the Greeks, don't get me wrong, but this particular ruler, well. . .

So a bunch of Jewish rebels, both men and women, got together and decided to take back their turf. And they did."

"But the Romans did take over the Temple once, right?" he asks, confused.

"Uh, yes. Much later. They decimated it, leveled the whole beautiful city of Jerusalem, too, to make a point. Might makes right. It was important to do that, make that point. I don't know why."

"I feel ashamed to be Italian," he said.

"Hold on! We don't think of Italians in this way, or Greeks, either, although some people do have a little difficulty with the Germans and won't buy a Mercedes. But who can afford one anyway, these days? It is against the Jewish religion to hold grudges.

And anyway, since Eat, Pray, and Love, everyone wants to be Italian!"

And we move on.

Eat, Pray and Love is a biographical novel by Elizabeth Gilbert. I mean, I would call it a biographical novel, but not being truly literary, meaning barely passing Rhetoric 101, I don't know for sure. But this little book is in the first person and reads like a novel and is in fine chick lit form and I love it. Liz breaks down after her divorce and takes a year to find herself. She chooses to divide her time between Italy, India, and Indonesia. She chooses Italy because she loves Italian.

This, of course, hooks me, because I didn't realize either, my love for Italian until mid-life, when it hit me that I loved opera- Italian operas. These two revelations changed my entire life and I bought disks to learn Italian, but failed miserably. You can not learn a new language after 40. Or let us say, I could not.

Anyway, if you haven't picked up all of your presents for the holidays and you know someone who likes stories about spiritual quests, this is a fabulous little book, for it does a lovely job of explaining meditation. Therapists are always recommending meditation (if you're a therapist and you don't, you really should reconsider.) Not that people have to run off and find a guru, but the quieting of the mind is a wonderful thing.

We do it in all kinds of ways, work to quiet the mind, for it takes work. Meditation is just one way.

I could write for hours about how much I love Elizabeth Gilbert's book, how funny she is, how well she describes depression and joy. How well she describes how hard it is to let relationships go, and how important it is to do that; how important it is to own your best friend, your most reliable companion, you. But we have bigger latkas* to fry today.

Holidays are therapeutic, right? But only, I think, when the family is happy together. When it isn't, we family therapy type docs use the inevitable, inescapable family reunions as opportunities for patients to try out new ways of relating to family, new behaviors. I tell people, "I'm on call, baby. If it doesn't work, and you're freaking out, just call me. If I don't answer, assume you're on your own. Of course, you have you, you know. And you are very cool."

I tell them if all else fails to go out and build a snowman, unless that's against their religion, building snowmen. Frozen images. In which case, doctors orders, but ask your rabbi, you might consider doing it anyway and leaving off the nose. Make it an imperfect frozen image.

All that, by way of introduction.

Chanucha.

It's hard to believe that the time has flown so quickly, that it is time for the annual Chanukah post. I think all I really want to do here is focus on spelling. Let's make a game out of it.

I'm going to try consistently to spell Chanukah the same way throughout the post. See if you can find the mistakes. Down a latka as you read. Your local deli probably has them. Down a virtual one if you have to, think of it as a very large, round french fry laced with onion. Dip it in apple sauce if you wish.

First of all, let's get the differences straight between Hannukkah and all the other December holidays. Leave out birthdays.

Like the others, I think, Chanucha is a happy holiday, and we have a pretty good time, all in all. Jewish children play with a cute little spinning top and we all light candles each night. The more careful among us buy electric menorahs (theme candelabras) to be sure there isn't a fire. But the more trusting among us light an additional flame each night with abandon, often with olive oil. As years go by we make less of a mess with the oil. It glows quite nicely even if there is a mess. The excess can always be used on the skin.

My brother-in-law tells me that you can't ever have too much olive oil in your life. He may be right.

Anyway, I feel that someone has to tell you that Channucha is not Xmas. It's not an imitation, has nothing remotely to do with that festival, except the timing sometimes, and we don't have a Santa, although I, personally, love the concept. My kids didn't even know there wasn't a tooth fairy until they were sixteen, so we can totally respect the concept of Santa, some of us, for sure.

This Festival of Lights (as some call Channucah) is a festival dedicated to differences. I'm surprised everyone doesn't celebrate it, honestly.

It's the original celebration of diversity.

You can read the whole story over at Judaism 101, but basically, here's the story:

Alexander the Great, a Greek emperor, went about conquering territory, and when he did, he allowed people to continue observing whatever they liked. He didn't make everyone worship Zeus or Athena or Dionysis or any of the Greek gods. And because he was so nice and the Greeks seemed to have so much fun and stayed so fit, under his rule many Jewish people adopted some of the Greek customs and their clothing, even language.

But more than a century later, a successor to Alex, Antiochus IV oppressed everyone who didn't go with his program. He prohibited the practice of the Jewish religion, particularly, and massacred the Jews, desecrated their Temple. He required the sacrifice of pigs (a non-kosher animal) on the altar, knowing it repugnant to us. The Hitler of his time.

Not a nice guy. The Jews teamed up as a nation and revolted, basically took back their holy site and rededicated the Temple by lighting the everlasting flame with a tiny bit of pure olive oil. The oil had been left over, untainted by the invaders, and should have lasted only one night. But it burned for eight. That's why we get eight nights of Chanucha, eight nights to light olive oil, and for most of us, eight nights to lubricate life with pizza and latkes, anything greasy will do. And we drink wine, some of us, each night. But we drink as Jews used to drink, meaning, not a lot, not to get drunk.

And THE WOMEN, because they were instrumental in this victory, ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WORK while the candles are glowing. We settle into a comfy chair with a book and let our minds wander to where ever they may go. Or we talk on the phone. Or catch up on our favorite blogs.

Merry Xmas, everyone, and Happy Chanucha, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year. Don't drink too much, don't eat too much, and enjoy whatever there is to enjoy, for there has to be something, there has to be something to feel good about. And if you can't find anything, search for your best friend, that person inside who is always with you, always watching you, suffering right along with you. And talk a little Italian, if you can, with one another.

therapydoc.

*A latka is a seriously fried potato pancake, a traditional Chanucha delight. Some eat them with apple sauce.

P.S. If you happen to be looking for a present for an accountant, or anyone who likes history or the history of big firms, I just read (okay, skimmed it, bought it for my nephew) The Sex of a Hippopotamus: A Unique History of Taxes and Accounting by Jay Starkman. You can get it at Amazon or through Jay's website.

P.S.S. Thanks to http://www.judaism.com/search.asp?nt=bZdS&sctn=022&startPlace=9 for the pictures of the menorah, wicks and oil, and to clipart, for the snowman.