FANCIFUL

Fanciful

An orange Italian cup I held at breakfast

made me happy—it was so fanciful—

and remembering how my own voice adorned me.

Selyna, now I do know I’ve got to go.

Maybe it was seeing a forgotten name on a notepad

that reminded me of that old metamorphosis by the piano,

when my voice became warm as coffee

and singing made me believe I was beautiful.

Selyna was an opera singer and teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music whom I studied with briefly after Mrs. Unruh’s stroke.

I have no memories of the work we did together, beyond a few words of a German lieder—and the fact that I felt at my lessons that I was straining. Concerned, I recorded myself singing on a little tape recorder I had—and was reassured because, though the fidelity wasn’t great, my voice sounded sweet.

When I played my recording for Selyna, however, she exclaimed, “That’s not what you sound like!” and promptly made a recording of me on her superior equipment. In it I heard all the strain and tension that I’d been experiencing all along—and realized that I if I continued, I was going to destroy my voice.

Years later I would read in the Contra Costa Times about an aspiring singer whose voice became so damaged during training that she now could hardly speak—and she’d had to turn to painting as a creative outlet instead. Like her, I finally accepted that I was going to have to find myself another dream.