Selling Out, Singing Out —Zen and the Road to Rude Awakenings
by Bernie Libster

“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” — Polonius, Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii.

When I first started voice lessons some three years ago, I never imagined it would end up compromising my entire moral code and affect the way I made, at least tried to make, a living. It all began when I got laid off at the ad agency where I’d felt secure because I was working on the AARP account and they wouldn’t dare let go someone on the verge of senior citizenry. Ha! In that more-than-a-year’s time, I’d been unsuccessfully looking for work that would at least supplement my Social Security. And I’ve finally gotten over thinking I was too old, lost my chops, etc. — another story I don’t have space here to tell. But before I could move on, I’d have to rethink everything, everything. A few anecdotes:

Last fall, to get practice singing before other people, I joined a cabaret workshop and in June made my debut at a real life Broadway cabaret, Don’t Tell Mama, with eight fellow students, among them real estate brokers, court reporters, medical records keepers and an employee at Pfizer. I loved them and the experience.
We played for two nights, and it’s all over until the fall — if I find the money.

A short while ago, peeking out from the occult section at my local library was a book called The Tao of Abundance, a combination of ancient Chinese wisdom and New Age job coaching. I devoured the book, all of whose wisdom boiled down to two things: 1. the universe is infinitely bountiful, and 2. find something you really love and pursue it with all your heart and all else will follow.

Ever since a third grade music appreciation teacher played “The Swan” from Carnival of the Animals, music has been one of the most cherished things in my life, and this love grows stronger with every voice lesson, but there’s no way on earth I would have fantasized that I could make a living by singing. However, I began contacting all the music-related organizations I could think of — Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, NJPAC, The Metropolitan Opera, the NY City Opera — writing earnest letters about my passion for the arts and my great track record as a fundraising copywriter. No reply. Not one.

Feng Shui saves the day. Kind of.
Last spring my wife Marian had a feng shui practitioner redesign her office. Within hours after she’d finished implementing the new layout, her phone started ringing and it hasn’t stopped since. So she signed us up for a feng shui workshop given by her practitioner, which is how I came to bury nine red envelopes, each containing a single coin, beneath our little evergreen tree in the front yard, hang wind chimes in the wealth and power corner of my office, and place a bowl of raw rice with a crystal on my desk in the same corner. Within two days, I’d landed four interviews: with a company that sells pet health insurance (as a diehard cat lover, that seemed to suit me), a venerable brokerage house (I’d have to wear a suit every day), and a small software developer (surprisingly interesting). The fourth was with an agency that sells drugs to doctors. Now pharma is an industry I swore I’d never work in, although some of my best friends are in pharma and this particular job didn’t involve innocent consumers. To top if off, the guy I interviewed with was a professional photographer and jazz guitarist who’d followed his dream to Japan and worked for a major camera company for several years. Now he was back here, doing a job that was still foreign to him, jamming at night, making ends meet by day.

While waiting for the red envelopes to work their magic, a funny thing happened at my voice lessons: I had a breakthrough so dramatic, so longed for, that I never would have imagined it possible. Space doesn’t permit me to get into the fine points of vocal technique but I’ll just say that now instead of thinking of how to shape every note and modify every vowel, I can fling it all out into the Void. Very Zenlike. I am not on the level with my teacher, certainly not with Pavarotti, Bocelli and the rest.
But Zen isn’t about professional rankings, it’s about letting what’s inside get outside. Or something like that.

While this melange was stewing, I thought about some lines from the great poem on aging, Sailing to Byzantium, by the immortal William Butler Yeats. They go:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,

And so I keep awaiting leads from the endlessly bountiful universe that will send me a job that lets me go on singing without compromising any further the remains of my high mindedness. I play back the tapes of my voice lessons, especially the breakthrough lesson. My goal is to sing Gounod’s Ave Maria, Panis Angelicus, and If I Were a Rich Man free at any wedding, funeral, or bar mitzvah that wants me. Meanwhile, along with pondering this great shift in my thinking, I listen to Byzantine choral music, read Yeats, and pray. I pray, “May the Tao take a liking to me” and find me a job that doesn’t involve pharma. But if it does, so be it. I mean, who wants to be a tattered coat upon a stick?

return to September 2006 Adtalk