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'Be Courageous,' Renee Fleming Charges Graduates
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| Renee
Fleming sang "On the Beginning," composed by Pre-College
Director Andrew Thomas, at the commencement ceremonies. (Photo by Peter Schaaf)
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When asked to give this address,
I immediately said yes, because I possess that mutant gene that compels me to
agree to absolutely everything I find terrifying. I suspect some of you have
that gene too, or you wouldn't be here at this wonderful institution. So I've
agreed to the responsibility of summarizing your Juilliard education, while
inspiring you to glorious futures in 10 minutes or less--terrifying indeed.
But then I took a poll, and not a single friend could remember who spoke at
their graduation, which increased my confidence dramatically.
What on earth could I say, since I honestly don't feel very different from you
or removed from my graduation. My search for a purpose, feelings of confusion,
hope, and ambition still make up a major part of every day. But then I stopped
thinking about me--not
easy for a singer--and began thinking about you.
You are extraordinary,
courageous, beautiful, and historically unique as a graduating class.
Think about your Juilliard experience.
In the middle of 1999, your freshman year, you joined the world in a giddy, exhilarating
Millennium celebration--a fever when we all, even those of us old enough to know
better, imagined that the next century would be different.
Then in 2001, the beginning of your
junior year, you witnessed our young city's loss of innocence in September just
as you began your studies. Those weeks made me question my very worth as a musician,
as I rehearsed Otello
in Chicago, and made me ask questions about my function and purpose in society.
And as you graduate today, with Afghanistan and Iraq, the world has transformed
into a more uncertain place than when you began here. You have not only gained
mastery of your disciplines and instruments these past four years, but have experienced
a lifetime of joy and sorrow. So you and I are very different. When I graduated,
I suffered primarily from the gnawing fear that I would never once approximate
something as glorious as Leontyne Price's high C no matter how much I practiced.
I was equally concerned about whether or not the quality of pizza would be as
high at my next destination. I've since given up on Leontyne's high C, and fully
boned corsets do not allow for much leeway on the pizza front, sadly.
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On the Beginning
Lyrics by Gene
Scheer
When you wake up
tomorrow with a diploma in your hand,
You'll feel thrilled, proud and absolutely grand.
You've completed all your course work. There's not a thing you've
left undone.
So forgive me if I tell you that you've only just begun.
For your muse is a lover whom you can't help but adore--
Even though you give her all your heart, still she asks for more.
"You're good," she says, "but not quite as good as you could be.
Study that score, script, dance again and then come back to me."
And so you practice
all your life, then one day (at La Scala) you get booed.
You'll feel like someone's mistress, 'cause, God knows, you'll
feel scrutinized and criticized. To be honest it is tough.
Trust me; no one escapes the feeling that you're not quite good
enough.
But for those who understand it's not really about you--
That your greatest glory is the privilege to pursue
A lifetime of learning about the language of your heart--
Your lives will be, Class of 2003, your greatest work of art.
Reprinted with the permission of the author. |
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So, while you're standing in the grocery line holding spam
instead of foie gras for a few years, ponder the following: Those of you who perform--musicians
and dancers--will have by now practiced perhaps 3,000 hours a year, times 15
years, which equals 45,000 hours. Which means collectively that you as a group
will have practiced 11 million hours. The tyranny of performing is that the drive
is unrelenting and inflexible. It's never good enough; our critics don't even
begin to know how inept and awful we feel we are, how undeserving of success,
the torture of a constant striving for perfection for actors, historians, composers,
writers, choreographers, musicologists, and more--all of you called to the arts,
to creativity and to self-expression.
What to do
with this extraordinary legacy of experience you've had in four years? You're
already primed to "make a difference," to begin your lives with one foot rooted
in eternity, because your experience has aged you more than you can imagine. Civilizations
are judged on their wars and their arts; that's the measure that's taken. How
do we want to be judged? Here are just five ideas:
Lead.
You are artists--keepers of the human spirit and our noblest thoughts and feelings.
Throughout time, Art has proven to be the highest expression of mankind while
History has consistently proven to be the opposite--greed, hatred, and lust for
power. Be history's Greek chorus. As Homer's King says to the tearful Odysseus
regarding the fall of Troy: "The gods arranged all this, and sent them their misfortunes
in order that future generations might have something to sing about." Often, what
man does is base. What
we have to say about it, after the fact--and hopefully before--is inspirational.
Be resilient.
If you find that your chosen dream becomes unattainable, there are many types
of success. ChevronTexaco has just announced the end of its sponsorship of the
"Live From the Met" radio broadcasts. Six orchestras have closed this season,
and a few others are on the way. The greatest service you can provide for the
arts in this country is finding an audience for your colleagues. Recent decades
have seen tremendous growth in performance organizations, conservatories producing
wonderfully trained artists, all dressed up with less and less of a public to
perform for. The recent Pew Charitable Trust study called for a profound policy
shift from strengthening the supply of artists to stimulating the public's demand
for the arts. The trust report further reports your
generation with solving these problems. Challenge
the idea that the arts are for a select few--teach, make more people love what
you love, and help them to understand why you dedicated those 11 million hours
in the first place.
Be creative.
Please give our citizens an alternative to television (and especially reality
TV) as a substitute for anything resembling the creative process. Help them to
think more, experience more, and live vicariously less. Be creative in your own
lives every day--it feeds the soul. Even those of us who perform are fed by our
imaginations. I am always humbled by spontaneous inspiration, that moment on
stage when something new occurs to me and, thanks to the now more
than 45,000 hours of practice, I have the courage to try it. I never, ever feel
more alive than in that moment.
See humor
in as many things as possible. After a recent benefit concert, a breathless couple
pressed a gift into my palm. Earplugs. They proclaimed with enormous enthusiasm
that they came to the concert armed with earplugs because they hate concerts with
singers, but came to support the cause. Wonder of wonders, they never used the
earplugs. I said, "That's the most wonderful backhanded compliment I've ever received."
Let's face it: in how many fields could one have such unconventional praise?
Stay
balanced. If I knew then what I know now, I would
have had a lot more fun while I was worrying about how I was going to claw my
way to the top (not that I was ambitious, mind you). My favorite tempering statement
is: On my deathbed, what choice would I wish to have made now? Your life is a
series of choices, and you may find yourself standing at this podium one day,
as I am, wondering if you made the right ones.
Always
be a student. You think you've graduated--but this
is just the beginning. Not long ago, bored at a spa (or escaping exercise), I
saw a psychic and I asked her about my beloved Juilliard voice teacher, Beverley
Johnson. Without skipping a beat, she said, "Oh, she's learning a great deal,
studying with scholars." I don't know if it's true, but it really sounds like
her. I still see every engagement as an opportunity to learn something new, and
I hope I always will.
We have chosen a rare and privileged
profession, one which actually encourages our uniqueness. In the words of Martha
Graham: "There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer,
divine, dissatisfaction: a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us
more alive than the rest."
I want to tell you a story. I was
asked to sing "Amazing Grace" at Ground Zero. Faced with thousands of people whose
loss was so profound--a sea of grief--I didn't know how I could sing. I couldn't
look at the faces, once I began. It wasn't until sometime later that I had the
realization about why I was there: to bring music, to comfort and provide solace
for these people.
Please, remember your
legacy of experience. You are extraordinary--historically unique as a graduating
class--and we need you
to be courageous.
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