God dammit I feel like I need to talk about this. So, any of my other choral nuts may or may not know that VOCES8 is starting a new professional group in the United States. A treble ensemble. An ensemble like this is something that I've been waiting for since I've been in high school and I've been trying to act like it's not a big deal.

Lately, I’ve been really distant from my musician side and focusing a lot more on my trans side. It’s the off-season and I celebrated Pride Month really hard. Go figure. But it’s been so easy to pretend like I don’t have these degrees in vocal performance and vocal chamber music and that I’ve wanted to be in a full-time professional ensemble that previously didn’t exist since for me since I’ve been twelve years old.

It's a full-time professional choir for treble voices based in the United States run by my favorite choir of all time. For context, there are no full-time professional choirs that voices like mine can even be a part of in the United States right now. Only "men's choirs." If I weren't going through this vocal gender dysphoria thing right now, this would've been some thing I'd be foaming at the mouth for. It’s the thing I’ve always wanted, even tried to form myself. (I started a treble ensemble with the intention of growing it to professional level some years ago, but my rehearsal leadership skills are subpar so I asked a friend to direct for me, and she insisted it needed to be a “women only safe space” so I quit my own choir 🤦‍♂️ they’re still singing today and sound pretty good btw).

But anyway, I was hanging out with a friend today and told her about the whole thing and was pretty wishy-washy about whether I was going to audition or not, told her I’m this close to giving up on the dream of being a professional choral musician and taking the hormones and just starting my whole life over and not auditioning means I don’t have to keep trying to be a soprano and not transitioning because it’s what my adolescent self wanted for me, and got himself $60k in student loan debt for. I thought she’d get it but she basically chewed me out, saying that I really need to audition and try to make that dream a reality.

I need to make fourteen years of college and young artist programs and suffering through community choirs and trying to start my own professional groups pay off. I need to put to rest the yearning and crying over a dream that feels more like a death sentence these days. If I do this, then I will have done it. I want to be a part of this group so badly. I need them to accept me. I want to sing with them for as long as it makes sense, and then I can finally say all those years were worth it. My younger self can feel satisfied with the work I have done, I will have accomplished the task I set for myself when I was a child and didn’t know trans people existed, and then I can finally get the fuck on with the rest of my life. I can go to the gender clinic and get the testosterone and ruin my “beautiful” “god-given” “perfect” soprano voice and finally be fucking happy.

The latest issue of Medical Malpractice Magazine is out.

fucked up being tricked into enjoying a traditional childrens song bc theres no good recordings of them that arent clearly for babies. im a freaking Adult can i not enjoy a good melody in canon once in a while....

Ahhhh I start voice lessons today wish me luck

Sitting out around the campfire on a late summer evening, singing old songs

@worldsbeyondpod

Sadeas Dalinar tenor baritone-bass duet. Are you imagining it? Are you imagining how beautiful it sounds? When they are harmonizing w each other? UGH I’m gonna Throw Up

👋☯️❌

—@ohgodthepain

oh, hello there / blessure et douleur~

👋 Favorite person you've talked to during The Hanged Man case? many to talk to / my favorites might vary... ...would it be cheating if i just said harry?

☯️ Act like the opposite of your skill. [The radio crackles uncomfortably. The voice comes out tinny, small, and vulnerable, lacking all the elegant gravitas that their poetry normally holds.]

...u-um. okay. ...mon dieu, i don't like... talking like this... khm. you are lost, deep in the pale. you try to recall home / but to no av- shit, no rhyming - but you can't. there's nothing to return to, no faces you remember, not even your own, a-and it... scares you.

[The radio stills for a second... then a sound like a rewinding track. The elegant poetic tone is back in place instantly.]

okay / that is all / i hope this is fine now back to my stanzas and placating lines

❌ What does a check fail look like for you? radio silence is a common conclusion, when i can't bring him back from the sea or instead, echolalia / an unwanted intrusion like that time i could only sing bweeeeeeeeeeee

I really wish people would stop acting like there's something wrong with being an "amateur" artisit/performer.

thinking about singing in a choir/group in comparison to singing solo/accompanied by music and just thinking abt how comparatively different that is. an orchestral backup to a solo song is nice- and takes a lot of dedication to perfect, certainly- but you will always be missing the synergy that comes with singing with other people. the synchronous intake of breath, the way vocal harmonies hum through the air in a way humans were biologically designed to pay keen attention to. the control and perfection of sound with your body instead of just your hands and limbs, and the perpetual awareness that you're operating in sync with a handful or tens or even a large group of people.

anyways. thinking abt how wigfrid's 'spellbinding' singing voice absolutely did NOT come out of the blue. thinking about how she probably started singing alongside some sort of group before moving to actressing and spending the rest of her career and the rest of her life before the constant singing and being completely alone.

for the first year ever— my aunt played the 12 days of Christmas in a lower key at our annual carol sing, meaning that I (the lone person singing “five golden rings” bc I’m the only fucking may baby and that’s how we organize the verses at this thing) didn’t have to choose between “embarrassingly low so that you’re bottoming out your vocal range and can’t be heard” and “full falsetto that will inventively end up sharp, flat, or both”. Bc that’s been my reality for like 15 fucking years at this point and it sucks every time bc I get a big spotlight on me and have to decide if I should sing low and quiet or high and pitchy. It’s hell. She realized by the tenth day this year that something must change and started playing in a lower key for the rest of the song. It was still bad but. Not as bad

Hope

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, but I have had a resurgence of hope and clarity in the past few days. There is a professional men's choir in my country that have been my idols since I was 14 years old, long before I knew I was a man myself. This choir is all I can think about sometimes. I buy and listen to every one of their albums as soon as they are released on repeat. If you ask any of my friends they will tell you sometimes they are all I talk about. Naturally, I have fantasized countless times about what it would be like to sing with them. Because I am afab, I always assumed it was nothing more than a pipe dream. This week, I was given the opportunity to sing in a workshop with them. In a q&a session, I had to ask if they would consider allowing trans or non-binary singers to be in their group, and their answer was a unanimous YES! I worked very hard in the workshop rehearsals; several singled me out to let me know that they were impressed by me. Sharing meals and downtime with them also solidified how well I got along with the members. It was like a dream, talking, joking, debating and discussing music, and singing, singing, singing every day with the members of my favorite musical group. And receiving heartfelt compliments from them! My heart was so full. I emerged as a leader within the workshop. Other workshop members looked to me for musical expertise, and members of the professional group endorsed me as an "end" or the person on the end of the choir who gives cues and tempos to the rest of the group. I was even given two opportunities to sing solos by the director of the ensemble! At the final reception, I approached my favorite member (a cis countertenor with a voice as high as mine) and asked him to be honest with me, would I be a good fit to sing with the group? Did I have what it takes? Without hesitation, he said "Yes." He also said he was not the only one who thought so, and several other members including the directors were very impressed with me. He recommended I audition. The next day, I got home to discover he had posted a selfie we had taken together on his Instagram with the caption "two rad sopranos." (and that was the only post from the whole workshop week he posted !!) I have been on CLOUD NINE since this whole thing! I have felt so confident and euphoric. I've never felt more like the man I know I am supposed to be than I do right now. I cannot stop fantasizing about what it would be like to sing with this group. I would drop everything for them. I would never want anything ever again if I got to be part of them. I know it's silly, and PATENTLY untrue, but I feel like all my problems would be solved if I could just be one of them. I could finally be a Real Man if I were one of them.

.

me and the guy in my peer review group doing the assignment at 10 pm the night before it's due

Okay this is not me bragging or anything I’ve spent 15 years in intensive training it’s not like I’m super unique or anything but like. It sucks a little to have such a versatile voice. Like yes I worked hard to be able to sing any genre with the requisite style but then people are like ‘okay now sing’ and my brain is just like. How? What genre? What style? I do not have a voice of my own it sounds however I choose it to sound

Like there’s a local variety show I wanna do cause yay performing and it’s like well of course I’m gonna sing but then like. How?? Cause I wanna show off my voice I worked hard but then it’s like what do other people find impressive? When does it get too much and just get annoying? Like I’m trying to pick a song and I can’t even pick a genre. Opera? Musical theatre ballad? Jazz standard? Something Julie Andrews-esque? Something to belt? Something fun and silly? Something soft and emotional with my guitar? I am stumped and no choice feels good

I attended my first catholic mass today and I get the catholic guilt now. the religious trauma is so palpable it was seeping through the 2 services I sang at. y’all are so strong

oh yeah also have to shout out the young queer theatre-enjoyer (as doer or audience) with christian parent experience of "at least i can be in the choir & be one of like 2-4 tenors & enjoy singing harmonies & most of practice is just chilling b/c it's 95% playing the melody 50x for the twenty sopranos who still don't have it down" while also not having to deal with sitting in the midst of the pews or whatever