OK. You heard it here first, baby.
I can offically announce that opera is now the new rock and roll.
I’m sure it all started when I had a tweet from the lovely Reese (web designer extraordinare) in January, who confessed that she had almost gone into singing (I hope she won’t mind me sharing):
reese January 22, 2010
@thetinysoprano hey natalie…I nearly went into being a voice major or minor. I envy your career choice
Then Emma Alvarez-Gibson shared her passion for Les Misérables (which I know isn’t technically opera in its purest form, but I shall embrace it for the sake of this post and also because it’s got Frenchy literary overtones so it must be highbrow) with a very entertaining YouTube clip of Doogie Howser MD and Jason Segel singing the Confrontation Scene on the Megan Mullally show. Hilarious. (More chat shows like this, please.)
When Megan M and I started riffing on how being an opera singer had given me super duper creative ninja mojo powers and that she wanted to unleash my secret weapon for the good of the blogsphere, I had a strong feeling that opera’s time was nigh…
And then Chris Guillebeau goes and bases a whole post on Pavarotti. (Talk about stealing my thunder, Chris. 
)
So evidently, opera is sexy, ergo so am I. Yay for logic!
However, I should confess I have a rather complicated relationship with opera. It’s like a “can’t live with, can’t live without” kind of thing. We were on a break. I started seeing other ways of living, opera just kind of pottered on without me. Now we’re kind of back together and seeing how things go.
But you know what was really interesting about my time spent apart from the stage?
Occasionally during a conversation I would let slip that I “used to be an opera singer.” And the reaction to this was always laughably predictable.
First would be an incredulous stare. Then the question “Why did you stop?” with a tone of pity blended with surprise. Finally, “Oh, don’t you miss it?”
I would get this reaction from people who had never even been to the opera before, often because they imagined it was somehow more glamorous, more creative, more rewarding than whatever it was I was now doing (you know, that terribly uncreative job called motherhood.) They just imagined that it would be painful to let it go and that somehow I was left artistically and creatively bereft by the break up.
Ha!
I’m here to tell you, with totally certainty – that this idea of a creative, inherently artistic profession is a MYTH.
Just because opera has singing and dancing and costumes and makeup and the occasional violent death doesn’t make it any more creative than any other line of work. This just buys into the craptastic idea that creative equals performing, or music, or writing. Or paint, even.
But wasn’t Einstein creative? Edison?
Maradona? Gandhi?
How many people have described their accountant as creative? (Hands up all over the place.)
Creativity is not a profession. It’s a rebellious, muscular way of thinking that just gets beefier the more you use it. It gets fat on possibilities and tightly hugs the alternative perspective. It’s gentle too, diplomatically shining light on the darker corners you almost missed.
No matter how mundane you perceive a task to be (because nothing is inherently mundane either, but thinking makes it so) – if you inject it with super duper creative ninjarific divatastic mojo – it becomes mind-blowing, heart-expandingly brilliant.
When you create a fantastic meal from a few meagre ingredients in your cupboard. When you pretend you are sick to stay home from work. When you invent a reality that protects the innocence of your child. You are creating, creative, compiling a magical something out of a seeming nothing.
This is where your job becomes your work, and your work becomes your art.
So I insist you stop saying to yourself “I wish I could do something that was more creative!” right now, and get sparky over here.
(Diva-disclosure: I am one of the stars of the Creative Spark Plug Lecture Series, so that is indeed an affiliate link. However, you can call me crazy, but just being in this program is awesome enough for me – and I basically love everything that Megan pulls together. ‘Nuff said. )
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