If I could categorize these posts, this one would have Spirituality or Soulwork as its tag. I can't stop talking about this week's choir story. I just can't find any relief except from looping, and looping is burning it into my throat, closing it.
A long time ago, when I was in my twenties, I was very observant in my religion, very active in choir and study groups and prayer groups. At that point in my life, I had the energy and the will to work at my NT mask, with moderate success, and church was not hard for me in any way.
We'd gone to a combined church event in a convoy of vehicles to listen to a speaker and discuss a book about when and how effective prayer works. on our way out, I saw a woman that I did not know. She was standing in a pool of yellow light, waiting for something; she looked like a child expecting a gift. I found myself walking to her and I said something like, "Come with me."
She told me that she taught school and part of her job was to lead in singing, and she was so afraid to. She'd choke or not be able to make a sound, and the children noticed.
I felt myself fill up, and was curiously, comfortably warm, and I put my hand on her throat and my other hand over the crown of her head, saying, "The singer never chooses silence." I said other things I don't remember. The words fell from my lips easily and smoothly and energy flowed through me. It was all of a few seconds and when I stopped speaking, she said to me, "I can sing now."
"Yes, you can." It was my voice talking. The confidence was something else.
A month later a good friend of hers mentioned the story to me and also to my own rector. The woman was now singing confidently. The rector treated me a little cautiously after that, which surprised me. Wasn't the point of the exercise to practice effective prayer?
I did not need to be silent this week. All I had to do was slip into my NT mask for church, spin up the energy, and set aside the values I bring to choir rehearsal. All I had to do was ignore that the other sopranos, who have known me less than two months and have not welcomed me, have pushed me further away without saying a word. All I had to do was ignore the altos introducing a ten-year-old boy into my seat, expecting that everything would just work, and I am now at the extreme end of the section. I have been in this choir less than three months, in voice lessons less than two months, and my only fan is the voice coach. And she will only coach choir members.
I love my time with the voice coach. She says I have a "big" voice; long range, good chest and head sound, round, full pitches, good breath management. She loves the time with me. I hear, routinely, that she has worked over a year with several singers who can't do what I could do in weeks. I don't know what to say to this, except, "Thank you. You're easy to follow." She is easy to follow.
All I had to do to keep this was to agree that it didn't matter how my section or the next one treated me.
This shouldn't have been hard. I'm aspie. I'm not chatty, not casually social, I make my one friend and I'm happy. It shouldn't matter that four other women found no reason to acknowledge my existence. It shouldn't matter that a different group of four just ignored me and reassigned my chair to a child with neither my projection nor my range. Seriously, how much do I acknowledge their existences? I smile at them, and I do my best to blend with them. I show up on time. I take direction from the music director.
Instead, I could not focus, could not stop the buzz in my brain, the rising tide of anger over the injustice of it: given a music director, given the expectation of hospitality, given my deference to people with longer tenure, I could not get over that they willfully did what they wanted when they wanted it for places, seats, and even coaching the child to rejoin the soprano section after the music director publicly assigned him to the altos with his mother.
If they don't respect their own music director, I'm not going to garner any respect by respecting her either. She isn't in control. They are. They do not welcome me. And I sat here on Sunday, and I sit here tonight, and I do not know what I will do come Easter. I am assigned to read Scripture, another thing I do well. And like doing.
I don't know what to do because I am afraid and I don't know what I'm afraid of. Lectoring (reading Scripture) is highly structured and strictly solo. It's not like anyone's going to mess with me, is it?
Well. I'm afraid of conversation before and after the service. I don't want to talk to any people. I don't want to be asked to make them feel better about how they behaved. It's not up to me to make them behave. And I won't deny how I feel.
I can't find someone to pray for this singer's release from silence. I am bitter; tonight, right now, I would trade every aspie gift I have and 45 IQ points I can't use to sing this season. There is no point in granting me gifts that benefit no one, including me. I could have such a better life, if I weren't too smart, too educated, too obsessed. I make a lot of noise about resenting aspie "cures" but I could sure use that spray that could make me NT temporarily. Like at work. And at interviews. And at church. Oh, and in parking lots, supermarkets...
NT. NoT me.
EDIT: It was only days ago that I thought I could reconcile being aspie with being religious (as well as spiritual). Something got stirred up!
And I come up against it again. Is my courage just a matter of making a virtue of necessity? If I could wear the pheromone, would I ever take it off? Would I not contentedly settle down as one of the unwashed sheep that Jesus so loves?
View attachment 16325
If there is no spiritual advantage to prophecy, why read Scripture at Easter? If there is no community desire for the gifts of aspergerdom, how will I belong anywhere, ever? If there is no individual advantage to aspergerdom either, why do I exist? And when can I stop existing? Can't the product of two ill-matched animals, an animal that no other animals want around, just disappear?
I can't--quite--cry. My eyes are hot and my heart's a rock.
I curse the circumstance.
A long time ago, when I was in my twenties, I was very observant in my religion, very active in choir and study groups and prayer groups. At that point in my life, I had the energy and the will to work at my NT mask, with moderate success, and church was not hard for me in any way.
We'd gone to a combined church event in a convoy of vehicles to listen to a speaker and discuss a book about when and how effective prayer works. on our way out, I saw a woman that I did not know. She was standing in a pool of yellow light, waiting for something; she looked like a child expecting a gift. I found myself walking to her and I said something like, "Come with me."
She told me that she taught school and part of her job was to lead in singing, and she was so afraid to. She'd choke or not be able to make a sound, and the children noticed.
I felt myself fill up, and was curiously, comfortably warm, and I put my hand on her throat and my other hand over the crown of her head, saying, "The singer never chooses silence." I said other things I don't remember. The words fell from my lips easily and smoothly and energy flowed through me. It was all of a few seconds and when I stopped speaking, she said to me, "I can sing now."
"Yes, you can." It was my voice talking. The confidence was something else.
A month later a good friend of hers mentioned the story to me and also to my own rector. The woman was now singing confidently. The rector treated me a little cautiously after that, which surprised me. Wasn't the point of the exercise to practice effective prayer?
* * *
I did not need to be silent this week. All I had to do was slip into my NT mask for church, spin up the energy, and set aside the values I bring to choir rehearsal. All I had to do was ignore that the other sopranos, who have known me less than two months and have not welcomed me, have pushed me further away without saying a word. All I had to do was ignore the altos introducing a ten-year-old boy into my seat, expecting that everything would just work, and I am now at the extreme end of the section. I have been in this choir less than three months, in voice lessons less than two months, and my only fan is the voice coach. And she will only coach choir members.
I love my time with the voice coach. She says I have a "big" voice; long range, good chest and head sound, round, full pitches, good breath management. She loves the time with me. I hear, routinely, that she has worked over a year with several singers who can't do what I could do in weeks. I don't know what to say to this, except, "Thank you. You're easy to follow." She is easy to follow.
All I had to do to keep this was to agree that it didn't matter how my section or the next one treated me.
This shouldn't have been hard. I'm aspie. I'm not chatty, not casually social, I make my one friend and I'm happy. It shouldn't matter that four other women found no reason to acknowledge my existence. It shouldn't matter that a different group of four just ignored me and reassigned my chair to a child with neither my projection nor my range. Seriously, how much do I acknowledge their existences? I smile at them, and I do my best to blend with them. I show up on time. I take direction from the music director.
Instead, I could not focus, could not stop the buzz in my brain, the rising tide of anger over the injustice of it: given a music director, given the expectation of hospitality, given my deference to people with longer tenure, I could not get over that they willfully did what they wanted when they wanted it for places, seats, and even coaching the child to rejoin the soprano section after the music director publicly assigned him to the altos with his mother.
If they don't respect their own music director, I'm not going to garner any respect by respecting her either. She isn't in control. They are. They do not welcome me. And I sat here on Sunday, and I sit here tonight, and I do not know what I will do come Easter. I am assigned to read Scripture, another thing I do well. And like doing.
I don't know what to do because I am afraid and I don't know what I'm afraid of. Lectoring (reading Scripture) is highly structured and strictly solo. It's not like anyone's going to mess with me, is it?
Well. I'm afraid of conversation before and after the service. I don't want to talk to any people. I don't want to be asked to make them feel better about how they behaved. It's not up to me to make them behave. And I won't deny how I feel.
I can't find someone to pray for this singer's release from silence. I am bitter; tonight, right now, I would trade every aspie gift I have and 45 IQ points I can't use to sing this season. There is no point in granting me gifts that benefit no one, including me. I could have such a better life, if I weren't too smart, too educated, too obsessed. I make a lot of noise about resenting aspie "cures" but I could sure use that spray that could make me NT temporarily. Like at work. And at interviews. And at church. Oh, and in parking lots, supermarkets...
NT. NoT me.
EDIT: It was only days ago that I thought I could reconcile being aspie with being religious (as well as spiritual). Something got stirred up!
And I come up against it again. Is my courage just a matter of making a virtue of necessity? If I could wear the pheromone, would I ever take it off? Would I not contentedly settle down as one of the unwashed sheep that Jesus so loves?
View attachment 16325
If there is no spiritual advantage to prophecy, why read Scripture at Easter? If there is no community desire for the gifts of aspergerdom, how will I belong anywhere, ever? If there is no individual advantage to aspergerdom either, why do I exist? And when can I stop existing? Can't the product of two ill-matched animals, an animal that no other animals want around, just disappear?
I can't--quite--cry. My eyes are hot and my heart's a rock.
I curse the circumstance.
