#IndependentWoman

Recently I was facing certain questions about myself and you know, you'd think that by the time you turn 33 years-old you already have your personality completely figured out. And I think I know pretty much who I am and I am proud of the woman I've become. I am grateful for everything I had in my life, and I am satisfied with my career as it is.

I get asked many times if I wouldn't want to have more work in the music and then I think about the 3 ensembles I manage, the 2 choirs I am conducting and another ensemble I am coaching, the churches I am doing musical duties at, and there's this foundation (Stichting Zin in Zingen) I am working with, and the projects I am doing as a guest singer occasionally and so on, and there's teaching and then I am like: Work even more? Isn't this just enough? Yeah, of course, it would be great to become rich and doing that CD recording I've been being asked in the summer whether I have one or not, but next to a part-time job and the diverse musical activities I have and my own vocal- and personal development I have hardly time for posting new entries on this blog, not to mention the fact that when I mention to my Friday date all the things I listed above just now, I get two different reactions. The first reaction is that they ask me if I'd have any room at all for a relationship being so busy, and they already assuming I don't, without me actually giving an answer to this question. The second reaction is that they don't ask this question, just assume that I'd probably don't have time for a relationship so I'd obviously wouldn't mind being treated as a hook-up material or just simply back off - what flattering options to have, isn't it? Anyway, I get assumptions and they make decisions for me without even being asked whether I'm fine with their conclusion or not (let me tell you, no woman would be satisfied or happy with a man making decisions for them - I know, this might be shocking for many! - insert sarcastic joke here). Well, for these gentlemen, whose head are full of their assumptions about me and my intentions, I have no room, no emotional energy and definately no time at all (unless they come out of their head and stop reading between my lines 😉)
So work more? I don't know, maybe. But surely not wasting time for delusional men.

The best was when I was accused of not being a feminist. Well, this made me think a little. I have always considered myself as an "equalist" when it comes to gender rights and gender gap. When I say "equalist", I mean I believe that men and women deserve to be treated as equal, since both of them belong to the human race. There shouldn't be any discrimination based on biological differences. I don't like to call myself a feminist, because then I would be considered as a feminazi as well, who hate men, and as a matter of fact I don't hate men. I love them! I love everything about them! They make great friends and some of them can be excellent lovers (I guess) and very few of them could make exceptionally good partners (the kind I am looking for, actually). In the old fashioned way, I am a true feminist, I act like one. I take pride in the fact that I pay for my monthly expenses, my rent, food on my own, and really I am the Independent Woman from the Destiny's Child song. I am super excited about the 8-week long boxing training I'm about to begin in the end of this month. I am proud of the fact that I can make it on my own without the financial support of some boyfriend or husband or anyone, actually. It's not that I wouldn't need or wouldn't want to have a relationship...

Or well, you know what?

I don't want a relationship. I want partnership. I am an equalist. I want someone with whom we treat eachother like equals. If I don't have that, I prefer to be single, because I am happy the way I am and I don't need a relationship to justify my existence or to give me the flattering status of someone's girlfriend or wife. Again, I'm not against of becoming someone's girlfriend or wife, but not in a relationship that's only relative, I want to be equal with my man. I want to build a castle with him - figuratively. Accepting eachother as we are with all our scars and flaws, laugh together, inspire, forgive and understand eachother. That's what I want...


But well, back to the singing part and music and work and such.
People usually ask me if I've ever thought about singing in a professional choir. And really, I did. I gave it a thought and decided not to do it, not only because I am terrible with auditions. I don't even hold auditions with Bartók Rózsái Együttes for the vacant places, because I don't believe in the efficiency of an audition to filter out candidates for a possible long-term cooperation.
I knew it quite soon back at the Conservatory that I don't want to do the same things fellow-singers did: going to auditions, sometimes just for the sake of doing it and not particularly to get the gig - seriously, I will never understand this madness. Once I asked a friend what is it like to go to these auditions and she told me it's like doing a singing exam at school. I was like: Eh? What's the point of that?? I think it's really rude from the professional world to keep freshly graduated singers in the student state this way. I hated singing exams! There's no way in hell I'd want to go back there! No wonder I've always been bad at auditions...
Don't get me wrong, if you like them, knock yourself out, but I'm not joining this vicious circle of sending me back to exam situations. By the way, this might be also the infected wound which the classical music world actually suffers from - but it's really just a thought.

I will never settle for something less than my goal. Not in my professional life and surely not in my private life.

So here you go:

• I am a feminist, but not a feminazi.
• I am traditional in some cases, but very radical when it comes to (social) causes I am passionate about.
• I am old fashioned, but I don't mind taking the first step.
• I love to experiment with literally anything with the right people in the right circumstances - and not only because my whole self as an early musician and performing artist revolves around experiment and new sensations all the freakin' time
• I believe and trust in God, but I'm not a religious fanatic (like those crazy people from Margaret Atwood's Gilead - a huge shout out to The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments which is an astonishing deduction to what would happen if religious fanatics would take over in the politics)

I could go on with this list forever. Nothing in life is ever black and white.

Blessed are the no'-s and rejections

You are reading the blog of someone who got rejected many times. Before I got in the Early Music department of the conservatory in Tilburg, I had got rejected from two other Hungarian Conservatories, and got accepted to one but for financial reasons, the class didn't start (yes, it's a thing in Hungary). Regardless the fact that I'm not an ugly or mean person I have been rejected as woman by men as well, believe it or not. 

Yet, I rejoice and I say: God bless those no's and rejections!

For some reason we consider hearing "no" or rejection as a negative, and it is completely fine to feel that way when we come across them. It is important though that we don't stay in this negative mindset, because it can be more damaging than anyone woul ever think. It's OK to lick your wounds, you need it to recover properly from a bad experience. 

I don't know why, but rejection and being told "no" has always been a motivation for me to work harder to want even more than I initially wanted. If I think about it now, my life is filled with rejection and "no", yet I see them as signs pointing in a different direction or even pointing out what I need to work on more. Sometimes encountering rejection is just indicating that you need to change the method and not the direction. Also people tend to say rather "no" than giving a detailed feedback on what they actually not confortable with - I know, because I'm doing this exact same thing (I know, not really smart of me, but I'm just as much human as anyone else). 

Of course I don't see rejection as a feedback on my deeds at first, I even flip out maybe, but after I get my act together, I reflect on it, take a good look at it, sort out what I did out of miscalculations, or which elements were based on my fears and number of other factors, and then I change my method. The goal is the same.

Singing and music has always been present in my life ever since I was born (even before, I think, for I listened to music and the baptist church's repertory in my mother's womb). I decided quite late to become a singer and before I'd have become an early musician I wanted to be an opera singer - I think, I mentioned this before. In reality, I didn't want anything else, and I don't want anything else even today than sing as much as possible and back then opera seemed the most logical choice, and I was also fond of the genre.

Who knows? If I'd have never got accepted to Tilburg to study early music, I would have become an opera singer and who knows, I could have been able to make it first into smaller and later some bigger roles. However, the stuff that I am doing now is very much different from what I had initially imagined back then when I was 17 years-old. As an opera singer I would depend on an opera company, my agent, my pupils and Lord knows what else. I would be bound to all these and I would probably feel miserable as I have always longed for independence and freedom, to be able to fly freely without wings even. 

What do I have now?

I'm a singer specialized in early repertories (medieval, Renaissance and Baroque), I have different ensembles, and I am coordinating our projects together with my colleagues whom I can also call my friends - true friends who would never let me down (in the opera world your relationship is less likely like that with your colleagues - although there are exceptions, of course). If I don't become a singer the way I did I would be a different person for sure. I am free and independent. I have found balance and I have found my own way, and all that thanks to all the rejections I had to meet and all the "no" I had to hear. 

Sometimes we have an idea about what would be the best for us, but my experience is that things have never turned out the way I expected them to, instead they turned out much better. I even had the chance to experiment with improvising operas in two different ways! How cool is that?

Got lightly hit by a car... but it's gone now

It happened about a month ago, and I think it's a story I will tell until I die, because it's the best thing ever happened to me. But let me tell you a little bit of background story to it first.

Back when I was a kid and still needed high chair to reach the table when we were eating - like everyone had one as a kid, so did I. I had this really bad habit of swinging with the high chair from each side to another and because I could balance myself pretty good (most of the times) I almost never fell. Yeah... almost... I fell once with the high chair on my right shoulder. I was (of course) crying, and it most definitely hurt (I can only remember as I was falling, no more than that), but my mother thought it's not necessary to go to see a doctor, because I could still move my arm. Basically there wasn't any visible injury. But as I was growing it came out that probably because of falling on my right shoulder, it dislocated a little bit. For a long-long time after this my right shoulder was always a bit higher than my left. Also it wasn't that much uncomfortable as one would think, though later when few years ago my body awakened and I've got overly sensitive about everything that happens in my body I could sense a certain constant pulling in my muscles on the right side of my body.

The weekend before my tiny bike-accident I had that certain moment I mentioned in The Letting go (Part 2), so when I've got through that, I already felt like I had got my life back along with the peace I could finally find. The Wednesday after this certain moment I've popped by a shop or two after I was done with working, and I also took a look at a sale in a shop. I tried on a beautiful pink satin one-shoulder dress, and the lady in the shop asked me whether I like it or not. I didn't like it, I loved it! Found my Nymph-outfit No. 2, so after hesitating a little the following sentence left my lips: "You live only once!" - and I bought the dress.

Few minutes after I was biking home and I was deep in my thoughts busy with creating possibilities to wear my new Nymph-outfit and to tell my ensemble-buddy, Karel Barten, what a treasure I've found for the next concert we'll perform our Dialogue between a Nymph and a Shepherd by John Jenkins. I was so deep in my thoughts I (somehow) couldn't see or sense that two cars were coming from the right, from the street that crosses the street where I live in Tilburg. I saw the first car, a yellow car, but I couldn't see the red car coming after the yellow one (it could have been also in the blind-spot of my eye-sight). I was also late with grabbing the breaks, and because the air was rather humid on that day, my breaks didn't work as well, as they should had to. Even though I tried to change direction with my bike, the red car still got the front wheel a little and I was falling on the car on my right arm (not on the front of the car, but on its middle), and then of course I fell on the ground. The guy who was sitting in the red car stopped immediately and I have to say that he seemed more shocked than I was - to be honest, I really had to hold back my giggles caused by the unexpected adrenalin-rush. He was also kind of cute, and seeing how worried he was about my well-being (he even parked his car to the side of the street and stayed for another 5 minutes to make sure I'm fine), although the whole little accident was my fault, later a whole series a funny scenarios came into my mind. For example a stupid accident like this could be also a scene from a romantic-comedy movie when the guy and the girl meets. And then the girl still has to go to a hospital, and guess what? The guy who lightly hit her with his car is the doctor who fixes up the girl's arm.

Anyway, I could still move my arm, hand and fingers, so it was clear that I didn't break any of them. Of course later, when the adrenalin-rush was already over, I felt that my right arm cannot be bent, but it was only because of a muscle injury. The adrenalin-rush was still flowing through my body and I couldn't stop giggling when I felt that my right shoulder feels a little bit different. Just to check I looked in the mirror and it was indeed lower than it used to be. Also before the accident I could bring my right arm without any problem far behind my back but after the accident it didn't go further than my left arm could go behind my back. My giggles turned into laughter as I realised what happened to me just seconds ago: my dislocated right shoulder got fixed in the accident.

Ladies and gentlemen, there you go: a true story about how you can come out better than before from a seemingly shocking and tragic accident or experience. Also I felt my life was saved again, and my words at the shop also got confirmed: "you live only once!" - and you better not forget about that. I shouldn't think that I am invincible; on the contrary: I am vulnerable, sensitive and (hell, yes, indeed) I live only once, so I better take care of myself.