My life has come full circle in so many ways. Things I ran to get as far away from as I could I now find myself smack in the middle of. I'm back in Baltimore again, where I was born. I'm singing in houses of worship for a living, when, after playing for my father's church for ten years I was pretty done with that whole scene.
My beloved teacher from undergrad always told me the types of roles she saw me singing when I "grew up." I dreamed of Violetta and Lucia and bought the scores, and then I went to grad school, sang completely different things, and veered off into other territory. There was a time I looked at those scores on my shelf and thought maybe it would make sense to give them away, that they were of no use to me. I almost did! And now it seems, the closer I get to what I think my real voice really is, the more I think she was probably right all along. The high stuff is easier for me than it has ever been. I need to work a bit on my flexibility, but the idea of fioratura does not seem as impossible as it once did.
My teacher said the other day: "The journey to the voice is really the journey to self, isn't it?"
And as cheesy as that might look on the page, it wasn't at all when he said it.
The thought that what I originally (as a VERY young singer) imagined myself to be in my head may actually be what I will sing...well that just kind of blows my mind. Maybe it shouldn't, but somehow, it make me more confident in myself, my instincts, the fact that I may in fact know more about my own voice than anyone else, even on a deep subconscious level. What a concept! After all this time, all this training, everything it has taken me to get to where I am, to feel like I am singing with the real Jessica voice: I may in fact be coming full circle.
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