The Compassionate Circle: Finding contentment in & beyond expectations
It is no accident that this blog post coincides with having just celebrated my 24th birthday. Like a snake sheds its skin at a given point, this year has been one long shedding & growth experience.
I had an archetypal Pink Panther experience towards the end of the July which serves as an apt metaphor for the journey of development & maturation that this year has taken me on. I'm not talking about the awful modern remakes. No. I'm talking about the 1960s/70s Peter Sellers, 3 hour film series, full of paralytic hysteria-inducing "Inspector Jacques Clouseau" scenes.
In one such scene, Clouseau is trying to think & look like a clever detective, his fingers idly spinning a globe around and around. Unlike Clouseau, I was attempting to assemble my globe kit while my thoughts were elsewhere.
Even those who haven't watched the original film series can picture, with mirth, how the scene unfolds. My fingers get trapped between the bracket and the top of Antarctica, because I'm too busy thinking way into the future instead of enjoying the ride that is my life now. It stops the motion of the globe in its tracks, and snaps me immediately back to the present moment. Like Clouseau, I then commence with several rude mutterings, followed by barks of laughter and panicked crying and pain as I try to prise my fingers free from the vice like grip of the globe & bracket.
Both Clouseau & I have a pressing prior engagement, yet we find ourselves, instead, facing an occurrence that is stealing our emotional & physical energy and time, and makes us cry and panic and eventually, shake it all off - becoming detached from the globe in the process. In my case, I had to snap the bracket from the globe stand, grit my teeth, and press and pull my fingers out of the trap. I still felt the bruises 2 days after the incident.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
We all take on familial/societal but also personally constructed narratives about where it is we "should be" at a given point in our lives, both personal and work-related. Often, these narratives are unrealistic or don't duly consider the technique, finances and preparation necessary to reach these tiers. We also don't give due consideration for why it is we're striving for XYZ in the first place. Other times, it's a case of putting all our eggs in one basket, not seeking out and trusting that other avenues will open as and when they are meant to. As the Pietermaritzburg Community of Friends (Quakers) say, "Way Will Open".
People assume that living in a small town = career suicide. Social media deifies being busy, living the fast track life in a big city. Emphasis is placed on sharing what you are doing on a day-to-day basis, and, realistically, those with the highest following often lead a frenzied, ambitious to the point of a nervous breakdown kind of day / week. The underlying message is that you have to "make it" in big ways in order to be guiltlessly content with yourself and your life. In response to this question, we answer by posting filtered pics, and making posts about everything we're trying to move towards and away from. If we share how we're really feeling, we're often concerned that this will damage our image in some way.
So, in this post, I'd like to present another argument, one in favour of living contentedly with what you have and with gratitude for who you have met thus far on your life's journey.
When I was a school girl, people made two assumptions about my home village. One, that the local boys private school was the sum total of the village, so I must be living on the school grounds. And upon further research on their part, they came to the second conclusion: that I was to be pitied for living in such a quiet place, a village without a pumping night life, and where nothing they would call noteworthy happens.
A few years down the track, and everyone is wanting to move to Hilton. It's now a town, has some top notch cafes and bakeries, boasts being the location for six top class schools for various age brackets, and the country lifestyle is now touted as being fashionable and something to aspire to. Funny how trends work, 'ey?
Granted, living in a small, less urban town does still lend itself to a slower-paced lifestyle. Granted, there isn't a cinema or an opera house in the town centre. But I have always loved living here, and have come to love working as a freelance opera singer in this little town in 2019.
With nigh-on a concert or two a month, I've been a musically-fulfilled little creative bee, and have met so many incredible people & musicians along the way! It's also been fascinating to reflect on how I've met them through the pursuit of top class musicianship, and circles within circles. Let me explain:
My voice coach in Hilton is a woman whose dedication to her craft and trust in "Way Will Open" is such an inspiration to me. The very fact that her moving to Hilton coincided with me returning home to pursue my craft outside academia was an answered prayer. There are no opera voice coaches in this area! But she nevertheless appeared in my life when I needed it most, and is transforming my technique and voice at a rate of knots. Trish Beaver wrote a lovely article about the relationship we are forming in music, which pops up on Press Reader if you type: Operatic Tones Heard On The Wind, The Witness.
A member of my home church introduced Margaret and I, as well as put me in touch with a local choir mistress, Judith Hawthorne. Through Judith, I was able to lend my soprano voice to the Durban Symphonic Choir, accompanied by the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Naum Rousine. We sang the whole of Mozart's Requiem.
I sang for Christopher Duigan in February, who generously put me in touch with many useful contacts.
I was also introduced to Lara Kirsten and Ilse Myburgh, both of whom I enjoy a musical relationship and friendship with. I have performed in 3 concerts with Lara thus far, and will be performing with Ilse for the first time on the 25th August. Ilse has championed the fundraising for my home church's new piano with a concert series.
Ilse Myburgh and David Orr are work colleagues at Epworth. He will also be involved in the Church of the Ascension Soiree on 25th August, playing the organ.
Lara Kirsten and I both know a member of my family clan, Phillipa Gordon-Lycett, the result being A Celtic Ceilidh, which took place on the Gordon Farm in Dalton, 2 June. I met several people there who have venues of their own at which they want Lara & I to perform.
One of my side-gigs is au pairing. The boys' mother co-heads Garlington Sales and Rentals, and through the Estate's need to promote their new retirement facilities, and put on an entertaining musical event, Lara & I landed (my first) corporately sponsored gig. Thank you Venns Attorneys, Lona's Pianos & Garlington Village!
Another side gig, baby sitting, keeps me VERY busy on weeknights (and some weekends) - and all of them heard about me through Garlington Estate.
I moved back home for the year not knowing what my life would look like. What's more, I was deeply anxious about this! I was used to the predictability of Uni life, where you know where you're going from one term to the next, have fixed measurements of achievement ... See Suitcase Conversations: Thoughts from the “Inter-room” (Interim).
I never dreamed I'd be juggling 5 side-gigs with my opera singing, but I have felt so fulfilled by it. I'm primarily my own boss, have several income streams, and different skills of mine are being put to use, for the benefit of others as well as myself. And I have met many incredible people.
I believe that different circumstances manifest different experiences and a unique set of people who you bump into / are put in contact with, from who you can learn a great deal. I am pleased to also boast friendship with these colleagues. The same could be said if I had moved elsewhere. Think Cloud Atlas, where several realities are presented. In each reality however, the revolutionary wisdom of Sanmi et al rings through. "Our lives are not our own". We are all connected. We can all learn from and teach and support and heal one another. Here are the voices I have gathered, which I hope to carry with me wherever I go, to guide me. I hope that they will inspire you to feel content in what you have, now, in your present life.
1. I have been given a voice. I must use this gift, both as entertainment, but also to speak to wider ideological, political and social concerns. I must go as far as I can with it, maintaining my vocal health to the best of my ability. Whether I'm in a small town or big city, how I use my voice should be consistent.
2. I am a human being, not a human doing. Therefore, I'm equally ambitious about crafting a simple life, one which gives me happiness, and all I need to be financially and energetically comfortable. One that will, one day, include furr babies, a family and children. If I scale back, work-wise, that is because I choose to do so. And that does not make me any less ambitious, nor any less of a musician. I choose to have a life that does not war between having a career and having a personal life. I will have both. Each will be in flux at given points in time, as is the natural way of all things.
3. #SideGigEconomy! I choose to utilize the skills I have as well as the skills that will develop to benefit people in my immediate circle, and those who step into it. Whether those side gigs land up all being music-related, or fluctuate in various niches, I choose to be financially secure, and stimulated by my multi-faceted work life.
4. I am exactly where I need to be. This contentment does not mean that I've grown complacent or unambitious! No. It's because, as many a person and muso has said to me in this last while, there is a lot of life that happens between the now and the then. And because, as Salamina Mosese said to Elle Magazine, "Working in your business and working on your business are two very different things and when you're still in the start-up phase of the venture, this can be a costly lesson to learn".
5. I choose contentment in the still moments, and contentment in the busy moments, and contentment in the in-between moments of my life. In the starting-out phase, and in the "making it" phase(s). In the peak phase, the family phase, and in the retirement phase. With every inhalation, and every exhalation, this is my life. I choose to live it, livingly, in the now.
Love and Light,
The Forest Weaver xx
I can be found flitting about on Instagram @the_forest_weaver
