good things happening to good people

A few years back I was singing Cherubino in a production of Nozze di Figaro at New York City Opera. The cast was wonderful, and I was particularly impressed with the Brazilian baritone singing the Count because he was a beautiful singer, a great actor, and just an incredibly nice guy. He was one of those kind, gentle people that you just want to be around because they have such a lovely energy. I remember thinking - WOW - this guy is so GOOD! Why isn't he more famous??

We became friends, and he also subsequently worked with my best friend Georgia several times in a row, and they also became good friends. Then one day when they were working together in New York, he told Georgia that he was doing an unusual audition; for a Broadway show! The audition was for Emile in a new production of South Pacific, and he figured it was a pretty big long shot, since he had never in his life been in a musical of any kind (unlike a lot of Americans who got their start singing by performing in school or community musicals). But Georgia and I both thought he would be perfect for the role, and low and behold, the casting people agreed with us. If you follow musical theater here in the U.S., then you know where this story is going; he was cast in his first broadway show, he did spectacularly well, and he went on to win, among other awards, the Tony award for outstanding lead actor in a musical.

Georgia and I went to his opening performance as his guests, and we were blown away by his abilities to transfer his operatic talents so seamlessly to a broadway stage. We also noticed Peter Gelb sitting in the same row as we were, and I leaned over to Georgia and whispered, "Paulo is TOTALLY getting a Met contract after this. Just watch!!!" And I was so right.

His name is Paulo Szot, and the reason that I'm telling you this story is that Georgia and I and some other friends had dinner with him last night, after having not seen him for quite a while. He's now starring in the production of The Nose at the Met - which has been his very successful Met debut - and since I had the opportunity to attend the dress rehearsal, I can agree with the reviews that said he was absolutely wonderful in the role. But the thing that's the most refreshing about him is that he is still the same exact calm, kind, warm person that he was when we performed Figaro together all those years ago, despite the fact that on his piano sits a Tony award and a photograph of him hugging Liza Minelli. He remarked to me, in his sweet Brazilian accent, "Who would have thought I would get to the Met from Broadway? But that's what happened!" and it honestly couldn't have happened to a better person. It's so gratifying to see people who deserve to have success because of talent both achieve that success, and wear it so well. And I can tell you that when Paulo was a struggling Brazilian opera singer, he never in a million years imagined that his introduction to the Metropolitan Opera would be through his singing "Some Enchanted Evening" and "This Nearly Was Mine."

So you really never know what path your life will take, how you might achieve your dreams, or even how big you can dare to dream. I'm sure he never imagined Liza Minella would be presenting him with an award along side Patty Lupone, but that's what happened. It's just nice to see good things happening to good people.

review rant

My question of the day is the following? Why are there some reviewers who seem to HATE singers so much? It's like they are personally offended by what they deem our shortcomings, and are really mad at us for them. I read one review recently where the reviewer seemed SO PISSED that he couldn't hear the singer. As if it were the singer's fault. I mean, dude - we're singing as loud as we can! We aren't purposefully whispering just so you won't be able to hear us!! I'm not saying that reviewers shouldn't criticize what people are doing, but there are some that do it gracefully and fairly. I happen to think Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times is a good example of someone who is a very fair reviewer, and who I think genuinely seems to like singers. I never get outraged on any singer's behalf when I read his reviews, even if he didn't particularly like something. There was one reviewer who left the New York Times who used words liberally like "shriek" and "screech". I mean, come on - that's a little dramatic, don't you think?

I used to literally have panic attacks before I would open up a newspaper and look at a review about myself. That is totally ridiculous - it's one person's opinion, and I shouldn't care so much. But I felt this very visceral fear about the unknown of what might and could be said about me, regardless of how I felt I had sung in the performance. And the funny thing is, I've gotten very few horrible reviews, but somehow I developed this fear- like waiting for the other shoe to drop. And the more successful you become, the more likely it is that there will be reviews that completely rip you to pieces. I've always wondered if people like Renee Fleming are bothered by bad reviews or not, since they have so little impact at this point on her stellar career. And now with all the blogs that exist, there are more people telling the world their opinion of you than ever before.

I had a boyfriend once who refused to read any reviews about himself at all, period. We were actually in a show together once, and happened to be on an airplane flying across the country when we saw that someone had a paper with a review of our show. I read the part about myself out loud to him (and it was one of the few really terrible reviews I've gotten) but he didn't want to know what it said about him. I thought that showed remarkable self control - I don't think I would have been able not to look. But poor him - because the review of me was so bad, I spent the last three hours of the flight crying on his shoulder. As far as I know he never looked at the rest of it to see what it said about him (the reviewer pretty much crucified everybody, so it was probably for the best) and as far as I know, he still doesn't look at reviews. My mom always says. "what you think about me is none of my business" and if you take that advice regarding reviews, I bet you'd be a much happier person. Unfortunately, I'm overly curious and can't seem to do that. Maybe some day my self control will improve and I'll lead a calmer existence. But until then, I'll just have to stick to; "What you think of me is none of my business. But quick, tell me anyway."

opposites attract

As I've stated in previous posts, when I have too much free time, I can get a little cray-cray. In fact, a good friend of mine pointed out that my need to PLAN PLAN PLAN things when I don't have enough other stuff to occupy my brain is actually something of a menace to society at large, and the only job suitable to me during these periods is dictator of North Korea. So I figured it was about time I started doing something productive and musical. The only thing is I'm kind of a last minute music learner - that is, I rarely feel motivated to learn music unless there is some time pressure to get my brain interested. And since my next opera is Barber of Seville, I realized I'd have to buck my usual trend and do some actual ahead of time music learning!

In the last couple of days I pulled out some music I have to learn for upcoming projects and realized that the two pieces I was looking at were almost hilariously diametrically opposed to one another. The first is the incredibly serious, depressing, and moving Kindertotenlieder of Mahler, which I will sing with an orchestra in Austria this fall. Just reading the poems about the death of the narrator's children makes me want to close the score up and curl up in the fetal position and cry. But the other role I have to learn is Veruca Salt in The Golden Ticket, the new "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" Opera which will have it's world premiere in St Louis this summer. The opera is about children so horrible that we as an audience are happy when they self destruct and disappear one by one. My character in particular is so repugnant that when she falls down a deadly chute reserved for "bad nuts" I'm pretty sure the audience is going to applaud.

I've been sitting here trying to find lessons one piece can teach me about the other, but you know what, that would really be stretching things. I'm not gonna get all high fallutin' on you all and suggest that the gravity of the Mahler will inform my deep and insightful performance of Veruca Salt. Nope. I'm gonna relish playing that bratty, entitled kid, and I'll clap right along with the audience when I jump in the bad nut chute to my squirrely death. Then I'll go to my dressing room and soberly study kindertotenlieder. Or maybe play poker backstage. We'll see.

Laura Claycomb

I have no idea why, but today I was thinking about how I might be able to create a website for young artists entering into this business to help them navigate the treacherous road that is having an opera career. I think a lot of young and aspiring singers seem to be reading my blog, so I was just brainstorming (in my own head) about ways to expand my help for them. Or perhaps warning them to run screaming from this career as if their houses were on fire. I hadn't really decided which. Then I suddenly had this recollection of someone telling me that one soprano, by the name of Laura Claycomb, had put some advice for young artists on her website. I've never met Laura, never heard her sing, but her name just popped into my head, so I checked out her website to see what she had up there.

And WOWIE WOW! She has written about basically every single subject a young up and coming singer could want to know about with complete honesty and frankness. I am just so impressed that purely out of the kindness of her heart she has decided to share this information with the world, because frankly, most singers aren't willing to discuss subjects like agents and PR publicly with as much honesty and insight as she does. And besides all this, I listened to her sound clips, and she's really a world class artist, and one who hasn't necessarily taken that most traditional route that I mentioned in an earlier post. But she has obviously thought a lot about this career and what tools you need to make it, to all of our benefits! So, I know it's kind of a cop out, not having had my own original thoughts for the day, but I'm sending you to her website. If you're a fan, you can listen to her sing (and check out her crazy ass out of this world high E at the end of Caro Nome), and if you're a singer or an aspiring singer, you can use her website as an invaluable tool. I swear I'm not just trying to give her PR or something - I've literally never ever met her - this is completely a case of admiration from a far via the internet (and based on reading her writing I have this idea that we would be friends if we ever met)! Anyway, here ya go: www.lauraclaycomb.com Enjoy!!

City Opera rebooted

Today I had the very strange experience of watching a dress rehearsal for Chabrier's L'Etoile at the New York City Opera. It was strange because the only time I've ever had any experiences with this production were the two times I performed in it, when it was first seen at City Opera, and then at Cincinnati Opera. I had never actually seen this production from the outside, and I also hadn't been in City Opera since I last sang there and since the massive renovations have taken place. The first strange thing was seeing big pictures of my face in the the L'Etoile costumes - first outside the theater on a life size poster, then on the video playing in the lobby. I was entering the theater with a friend of a friend, and was explaining to him how I had sung in this opera, and just as I said that I pointed up to a big video screen and said, "oh look - there I am." It was surreal.

I spent my formative years at City Opera - I sang in over 80 performances during a total of 8 seasons from the time I was still a student until the last season of the former management. And L'Etoile in particular was my first starring role with the company, and the first really big thing I did in New York while no longer a student. I adore this particular production of L'Etoile because it's fantastically absurd and full of energy and life. And for some reason, I have made several friends who have turned out to be incredibly important in my life during both productions of L'Etoile. So, I'm a little attached to the piece, to say the least.

It was great to get to finally see the whole opera from beginning to end from the outside. I had tons of moments where I said to myself "Wow - that's what that part looked like???" It was also really nice to see the new and improved theater - the renovations seem to have worked quite well because the seats were more comfortable and spacious, there were nice big aisles (where you were formerly trapped inside 3,256 seats on either side because there were NO aisles - NIGHTMARE!!), and the notoriously horrible acoustics seemed to me to be greatly improved.

But I also really miss City Opera, I have to admit. I grew so accustomed to taking the subway to Lincoln Center and entering through that stage door on 62nd and Columbus. I was lucky that when the management changed, I managed to find other interesting places to work and was able to move on - some people weren't so lucky. But I miss Suzy and Tom in wigs and make-up, and my favorite Supernumerary Raven, and my favorite house director Albert, and even the dinky little break room with the broken down snack machines. And they're all still there, even while I'm off galavanting in Europe, eating bratwurst and drinking Hefeweissen. I'm just glad City Opera seems to be finding it's footing and sticking around. It's an important part of New York's cultural scene, and a good place for young American singers to get their starts.

Here's one of my favorite photos of me from L'Etoile:

pep talks

I've been giving a lot of them lately - to myself, but also to a lot of my friends in the business. It's a difficult time to be an american opera singer, and there are so many talented people who are either struggling to make headway in the careers they are having, or who are struggling to find work at all. After one such pep talk today, I started thinking about the way american opera singers in particular define success. On the one hand, we are lucky to have an established "track" that one can follow - if I had to elucidate the path that most people define as successful, I would guess; conservatory (or school of music), summer program, young artist program, competitions, get an agent, regional opera work, Met/Chicago/San Francisco and BAM - YOU ARE NOW A SUCCESSFUL OPERA SINGER!! Other artists, like visual artists for example, don't have such a clear and distinct path to achieving the standard notions of success. But the problem with this "clear" path is that when someone veers off the track, or takes another route, or doesn't arrive at the pinnacle - singing at one of the major "A" houses - they aren't looked on by the general operatic community as successful, and so they don't consider themselves successful. They beat themselves up and wonder why they can't seem to break beyond whatever step they might be stuck at.

When I start getting overwhelmed by this idea of "you are only successful if a, b, or c" I am inspired by a friend of mine who is not an opera singer, but a cabaret artist. My friend Kim Smith came to New York City from Australia only knowing one or two people, but bubbling over with a huge passion for performing. He had trained in musical theater in his native Australia, but he didn't want to be on a sitcom or in a broadway show necessarily - his passion was for writing and performing Weinmar style Caberet shows. Not exactly the easiest field in which to find your path. Because there is no specific "path" for how to make a name for yourself in this particular field, Kim had to do everything himself - he had to find a venue, write his own show, publicize it himself, get an audience in there, and perform it- and the end result wasn't going to make him a millionaire. But the first time I saw him perform, not only was I astounded by his talent, intensity, and passion, but was equally impressed by his commitment to make it all happen completely on his own.

We opera singers can often become complacent - sitting around and waiting for someone to hire us. But Kim inspired me because he took matters into his own hands, and put on his own show, and it was fantastically effective and moving. Since he has been in New York, he has continued to create his own shows, although because he is so talented, people have taken notice, and he has begun to receive awards and have offers from presenters. He has become successful in his field by any standards, but he also still maintains a day job to pay his bills while continuing to perform. The thing is; he never had any doubts about what he wanted to do, and he made it happen. And no one who sees his shows ever has any doubts about whether he is "successful" or not - they are too busy admiring his ability to make them laugh and cry during the same song. We opera singers often ask ourselves - "Am I even an opera singer if I'm not performing in an opera?" but Kim never wonders whether he is or he isn't a cabaret artist. He just is, and we see him, and we know.

Okay, so what we do as opera singers is definitely a little different, and we do have to be part of a team, and we need directors, conductors, and orchestras in order to create the music that we love. But does all that mean we have to doubt ourselves and our own success as artists based on whether or not we're doing what we think is the definition of success? I say NO. I say we take a lesson from my friend Kim, and realize that making your own success is far more satisfying than trying to fit into some mold of what we're told success means. He should inspire us all.



Kim Smith will next appear at the Cafe Sabarsky at the Neue Gallerie in New York City on April 1st. Please visit his website, www.kimdavidsmith.com for details.

outside looking in

I bet you thought I wasn't going to make today's quota being that it's 11:04 PM NYC time, but here I am for my daily blog entry.

So, yesterday I was in the shower singing una voce poco fa, and I started to notice that when I began to sing with emotion, my eyebrows were going crazy. (The crazy part is actually that I was in the shower noticing the movement of my eyebrows, but let's leave that for a minute so I can get to the point). It lead me to start thinking about our bodies and our faces, and what happens to them when we sing and act. Singing opera is SUCH a weird thing to be doing, it's not surprising that our bodies and faces can inadvertently contort when while we're in the act, but how much is too much? I love Cecilia Bartoli, I think she's a goddess, but I know some people criticize her for her facial acrobatics. When she does it, it really doesn't bother me, but when I do it and see it on video, I want to vomit on the screen and run screaming from the room. And in the last couple of videos I've had the chance to watch of myself, I have noticed that a few things were going on with my body and face that I had absolutely no idea were happening. Maybe nobody cares about these tiny details but me, but I do care, so I decided to do a little experiment.

I set up my webcam on the top of my piano yesterday, and sang una voce right into the camera several different times. I tried it once in the full acting mode and noticed my eyebrows were having a field day. I tried it once purposefully trying to emote without my eyebrows, and it looked a lot better. Then I tried singing it without the idea of emoting - just how I would practice if I were thinking about vocal technique and without any "feeling" and my face was very placid. I tried a couple more times, once focusing on a certain point on the wall, and once seeing some kind of images in my brain but imagining them in the air in front of me. I watched all the videos to see what was what.

Why all this fuss? Well, I think that the things we do physically that are unconscious can possibly take away from our ability to transmit our emotions out of our brains and into the audience. It's so easy to think you are emoting when you're actually only emoting for just you - maybe even with your eyes completely closed. Just because you're feeling it on the inside doesn't mean you are transmitting it to the outside, and that's a rather selfish way to perform. And I actually think that at the moments when I'm feeling things very deeply only on the inside is when my body and face do unconscious and unnecessary things. And I made this discovery by webcamming myself and seeing what was going on up close and personal with my errant eyebrows.

The funniest part of this whole story is that I wasn't exactly sure how to use the camera in my computer for anything other than chatting with my parents on skype, so I had to google "how to make a video using your webcam," and what I discovered is that most people who want to know how to do that are up to NO good. I can tell you that very few of them are seeing what their eyebrows are doing when they are singing an operatic aria.

30 day challenge

Wow, that last post was kind of a whine-fest, eh? Waa waa, you have free time, poor baby. No wonder there were so few comments, you were probably all pulling out your tiny violins and playing them for poor old me. But you know what I decided? When I have time between gigs, what I need to do is challenge myself in some way to keep my brain active. The reason I personally am in a better mood when I'm working is that I thrive on challenges, and rehearsing and performing opera is always that. Writing is also a challenge, but it's not such a big challenge when I'm feeling inspired - it just flows. But recently my dad asked me if I ever thought about blogging every day, and I replied, "Noooooooo, Dad! I can only write when I am in-spaaaaaaahed." But what if I forced myself to get inspaaaaahed every morning? In the book The Artists Way, which is about tapping into your own creativity to the fullest, the author suggests that you write something called "morning pages" every morning to get your creativity flowing first thing. I tried that and I think I was able to do it for about a month and then I stopped feeling it. But that was before I had started blogging, and my writing has changed a lot since then. So my challenge to myself this month is to blog every single day (gasp) for 30 days and see what it does for me. Which means, people, that sometimes I end up blogging about some really boring crap. Or maybe I will become funny again, because lately I feel like I've been sort of not so hilarious in the ol' blog entries. But I'm gonna try the experiment to see if it kicks me in the butt a little bit.

The subject kicking around in my head today is justice and fairness. "Whoever told you that life was fair?" my mom is fond of saying to me (she's good at keeping me grounded). And yet I still get absolutely incensed when I see an injustice occurring, especially when it happens to someone I care about. This week I witnessed what I think anybody would agree was a great injustice happening to a friend of mine - someone incredibly talented, hard working, and kind - who had an opportunity that should have belonged to them yanked out from under them. My first reaction was to fly into a rage ( I was in the process of doing my laundry when I found out and those dryer doors got some abuse) and then I started to feel sort of despondent, asking myself why we even BOTHER when talent isn't rewarded?

I called my parents (as I often do in times of stress and confusion) and they made a good analogy. This business (or any artistic endeavor in which you are trying to make a living and not just doing it for fun) is basically a lottery. If you are talented enough, you are allowed to buy a ticket, but once you buy a ticket, it's basically up to fate whether you win the lottery or not. You might win $5 or you might win ten million, but it's all a matter of chance. Will you meet the right person, who will introduce you to another right person, who will decide you deserve being pushed to the top? Will you get sick the night of your big debut at a huge house and blow it? Will you sing your audition before lunch when the intendant is hungry and in a bad mood or after lunch when he's full and feeling better? If you want to be in this business, you have to be willing to buy that lottery ticket and leave your fate up to something way beyond your control. BUT you have to keep working at your craft to even be allowed to buy a new ticket every day. And of course, many people believe that our attitude and energy have a huge affect on what our fate turns out to be, so those things are important too.

I guess the lesson is always the same - as trite and cliched as it sounds - that you have to decide when you succeed and fail, and not leave it up to the outside world to determine that. Does success for an opera singer mean singing at La Scala or does it mean challenging yourself to improve in some small way every day? Does success mean making a recording or being able to sing a high C for yourself in your living room, as perfectly as you can? Does success mean having an article about you written in a magazine or teaching third graders who hated opera something that makes them interested in it? I'm saying all this for myself, by the way, not in order to sound all grandiose and patronizing. In the same way that success in an artistic field can be all about perception (did a 5 year old splatter paint on that canvas or did Jackson Pollock create it? knowing the answer will almost certainly affect how you feel about it the painting), success for oneself is about your own self perception. It's something to remind ourselves of every day. I certainly need to.

Whew! So much heavy stuff!! I REALLY need to find the funny again. Well, I have 30 consecutive blogging days to try.....

Free time = doing time

For most people, the one thing they wish they had more of was free time. If they just had more time off, they would get so much accomplished, go on vacation, relax, spend time doing the things they loved. Except when the thing you love doing the most is also your job, free time SUCKS.

Don't get me wrong - after I've been working for awhile, I'm quite happy to have a week off, where I can see my friends, get my life organized and relax a little bit. But after about a week, I start to go stir crazy and get a little depressed. I have too much time on my hands to do things like worry about my career (and my personal life) and I wish some job would magically appear and whisk me away and make me busy again. I've gotten much better about organizing my time and reminding myself that the way for me to stay happy is to stay productive, but I'm not going to lie, it's a challenge. It's amazing to me the difference in my general level of happiness when I'm working as opposed to when I'm not working. Last year I was at an audition in Germany when I ran into a colleague that I had met before but I couldn't figure out where. I was asking him if he had worked at company x or y, and he sarcastically quipped, "oh no, I really don't work that often. Only a couple of jobs per year - just enough to keep me going. Emotionally I mean - not financially."

He was being darkly humorous, and I laughed when he said this - but I laughed because it is so true! I should be thrilled that I have a month where I don't HAVE to work, and that I have enough money to live on. Most normal people could think of a million things they would do with this time. But most opera singers I know just don't like it. Because when going to work is so much fun, it's when you're not going to work that you start to feel like you're in jail. So many people make analogies about their offices being like prison - but for me it's the opposite - when I don't go to the "office" is when I feel scattered and hopeless. I even get annoyed when I'm working but I have too many days off. You can ask the director of Agrippina how many times I jokingly asked him, "am I even IN this opera??" because I hated the fact that I would sometimes have two days in a row without rehearsal.

This "obsession" with work (and I put obsession in quotes because I don't really want to admit that's what it might be) is probably something that some people would call unhealthy. Or maybe some people would tell me to get a life so that I have other things in this world that make me happy. But I DO have a life - I have fantastic friends and family, many many things other than singing that interest me, and could totally amuse myself all day with a paperclip, a record jacket, and a glass of pomegranate juice if it came down to that. I just really love going to rehearsal and jumping around and singing and diminuendoing a phrase and interacting with colleagues. What can I say? It's a really, really fun job.

But to put it all in perspective, I happened to see the movie The Hurt Locker earlier this week. I saw it the night before it won the Oscar for best picture, and found it incredibly moving. It's a movie about soldiers in Iraq who diffuse bombs, and who spend every single day walking the line between life and death. Of course we all know that this is happening intellectually, but the reason the movie was so good was that it was able to put you psychologically into the head of someone whose desperation and fears go beyond what we all feel every day because they literally fear for their lives every moment. The movie shook me to my core and demanded from me "Why on earth do you ever think you have problems? How could you ever feel fear, or nervousness, or depression when there are people out there in the world dealing with THIS?"

But then, that's life, isn't it? We live inside our own worlds, our own problems, and sometimes we can step outside and gain some perspective, but only sometimes. The rest of the time we just have to be content with whining about things like free time and not getting to sing enough dimenuendos, and hope that life jolts us back into humanity with enough regularity that we can be happier more often than we're complaining. And hey, I can always go sing some dimenuendos for the crazy lady that seems to live on the corner near Riverside Park. She often gives me the thumbs up. Or the finger. And I can find a reason to be grateful for both.

Honesty is such a lonely word

Or is it? I don't mean to dorkify myself by quoting Billy Joel (although I fully admit that I did really enjoy listening to his Live from the USSR CD in college) but I've been having some interesting discussions lately with people about whether or not it's prudent to be an opera singer who writes a blog about all her fears and vulnerabilities. Performers are supposed to be confident - confidence gets you hired - so who would be stupid enough to talk about being freaked out or insecure on the internet where everybody can read it??? Me, apparently.

Last week I was blogging about the "IT" factor and had a lot of interesting comments, many of which came from an anonymous source, whose only clue to their identity was that they are a "principal singer at the top level". Okay, so why would a famous singer feel the need to be anonymous when commenting on my blog? If that person is already at the top level, they should be able to relax and say whatever is on their mind without the fear of repercussions, right? No way! People who are savvy about the business know that you have to present an image from all angles, and that revealing your true thoughts can often do damage to this image, which you must protect because a lot of people's salaries now depend on YOU, the product! Yes, it's sad that singers are now products (which is partly what this commenter was noting) but of course that's the case in every entertainment industry, especially with the media playing such a huge role in any artists success in any field. So anonymous has to stay that way in order to protect him or herself and all the people whose salaries he or she might be helping to pay with their fame.

But what about me? I'm not paying anybody's salaries yet, that's for sure. I'm lucky if I'm paying my credit card bills (but that's more a result of my own addiction to shopping and not necessarily an indication of my earning potential) but there could be a time where I have to become more of a product to sell cd's or tickets or limited edition t-shirts with the slogan, "Trying to remain opera-tional - blogging for punny opera nerds!" So what do I do about this need I have to be honest with myself AND in my writing? Well, the honest answer is that I don't know. But what I'm hoping will happen is that this honest and open dialogue is able to become a part of my product. That one of the reasons people enjoy hearing me sing is that they have a little insight into who I am and what my innermost thoughts and fears are, and that insight actually gives them another angle on my artistry. I hope that I will both be able to continue to succeed in my career at a higher and higher level, and that I won't ever have a PR agent who says, "OH MY GOD SHUT UP!! STOP WRITING THIS DOWN FOR THE PUBLIC AND GO TELL IT TO A SHRINK!!!" Because my writing has become a creative outlet for me, and if I had to be something other than what I am, (which is a slightly neurotic if somewhat eloquent and ultimately relatively confident human being) I don't think I would be particularly inspired to write. So I just open up and let you see my beating heart, and hope that everybody is cool with that.

I've gotta go. My future publicist is chasing me with a big red delete button.