Oh oh oh oh oh Transition

I am turning 36 in a little less than 3 months. I have been telling myself since the day after I turned 35 that I was already 36. It's weird to think about, that 20 years ago, I was being told by adult authority figures that I would not make it to 18.

Whilst I am not immune to the artifices of social media, and only posting the best shots, the most flattering photos, or the ones that make me look like a much better photographer than I am, I do not filter or face tune my photos. If that were the case, do you think I would leave in the scars around my mouth from wearing masks for hours at a time during the height of the Pandemonium, the Nutella crumbs or nose hairs? I think, my all accounts and metrics, I am doing okay! I still get regularly asked where my parents are. I still wear the same clothes that I wore in high school and college.

It also stands to reason that, by opera standards, I am still considered a very young singer. In fact, your voice as a classical singer does not fully develop until you're 40-45, so you basically just spend a lot of time faffing around until your voice comes into its own. A lot of this feckless layabout faffing comes in the form of one's incredibly wealthy parents paying for you to do summer overseas galivants, unpaid YAP programmes, and other pay-to-play opportunities. A lot of the times, these people aren't actually that talented, they are just supplemented by their incredibly wealthy parents, and continue to forever rise to the top like a rancid cream. One of the reasons I have refused to give up is because I am tired of the industry being over-saturated by these people; I will not allow these people to be the only ones who are heard. I grew up as "Denny's is fancy, special occasion eating out" poor, and I will not be shut out. Sorry, not sorry.

For the last 11 years, I have been making synth and electropop music to various degrees. I have had a few semi-mirco hits (by my own standards) and occasionally make some rounds on TikTok (the songs that are chosen legit baffle me lmao). I remember when the whole SadFrenchPeople thing was happened (yeah, I still remember, fuck you guys), and some of the members were trying to say that, at the time, I was in my mid-20's and that I was "too old" to pursue pop (this was after I was maliciously bullied off of Tumblr after some art theft shit, because one of the worst things you can do online is stand up to people who steal your art, apparently). Even though I am currently transitioning out of pop music, it stands to reason to be said that I actually prefer the music of people who started in their mid-to-late-20's and even into their 30's--because they have life experience and have more things to say. Artists like Bat For Lashes, Allie X, Shura, TORI AMOS, Allison Goldfrapp, and My Brightest Diamond come to mind. In my case, I was certainly not short on life experience, having lived a harder lifetime by the time I was 6 than most people do in the entirety of their lives. But I had enough sense to know that I knew nothing and was just a wide-eyed little Candide sort of a figure. There are a lot of artists who start as teenagers who will just blow you away with their abilities and their voices (both their singing voice and their storytelling voices). A lot of times, you have people (regardless of age) who don't have a lot of say or don't know how to say it, and are just  noise. I didn't officially release my first music under the moniker Le Bas-fond until after my grandmother died--I had to take care of her, I had shit to do. The only 'problem' with starting later is that women have expiration dates and men don't. Men can take their warbling shitshows on the road for eons, being less alive than the animatronics in the Hall of Presidents at Disney World (and their music wasn't even that great to begin with, and boy howdy, does it show).

I made the choice to wait. I made the choice to get better, to hone, to perfect. I don't regret waiting to put my first EP out when I was 26. I had spend decades prior recording little demos on my phone, or, even earlier, cassette players. I recently recovered a tape I made of fake Sailor Moon soundtrack songs. In the late 90's/ early 2000's, they were finally dubbing the other 3 seasons, and I....I decided that I... was going to write songs for new seasons. I didn't know how they were going to hear these songs, or where to send them, but I just had it in my baby 12-13-14 year old brain that I was going to do this. And, you know what? These songs are unironically great. Like, I gave myself this assignment and I studied my material very, very carefully. These could have 100% been used in the show, giving the parameters set by the styles of the other songs. I am not going to release the digitalization of the tapes because they are too rotted now, but I am 100000% going to re-record them at some point  in earnest. I am not shamed or ashamed or embarrassed by these recordings. I am like, "wow, fuck yeah! I did that!" I absolutely respect the fuck out of it and respect tiny lil baby me for getting a crazy idea and just... well, doing it. I often wonder if I had written in earnest, to write-write, not to write in the style of someone else, how my song-writing would have developed organically.

I love singing. I came into this world singing. I even used to sing fake kid opera (which I am SURE was SO ANNOYING, but my grandparents, to their credit, never told me to be quiet, but instead said that if I "insisted on doing that," to listen to these opera singers to emulate instead). I taught myself how to play songs I heard on Looney Tunes (which I later found out many of which were DEEPLY problematic) and themes from Star Wars on shitty little keyboards. Doing music just seemed like a natural extension of my very being.

But there is something that I have to confess that I have never said before out loud, and I think it has to be said--I feel like part of me originally made music for the wrong reasons. I think now, especially, as I am working on making a career transition from pop to opera, that this is worth talking about. I had people, whom I thought at the time were my friends, in the industry that I wanted to impress. I wanted them to see me as their peer and equal. I wanted them to be impressed by something I did. I wanted their attention, and I wanted their accolades. A lot of them were my age, or around my age. I wanted them to think I was as good as they were. I wasn't making music because I enjoyed it. I wasn't making music because I had anything to say--I was making music because I wanted attention from people whom I thought at the time were my friends.

The same, unfortunately, can be said of my classical training. I had been passed over to someone who had gone to a *fancy* ~prestigious~ brand name school. I would later find out that this person could not sing for shit, and, in fact, my godchild referring to this person's voice as "a stuck Power Wheels jeep sputtering around in a chicken hole" probably being one of the most accurate statements I have ever heard. I was determined to prove that I was better than them. I wrote an operatic song cycle before I had even had a single voice lesson. Then I had one. Then I had a coach. Within less than three months of some mild coaching, I had already surpassed this person's  'skills' brought to them by their [parents' money and]*fancy* prestigious brand name education by leaps and bounds. With very little effort, I could already out-sing laps around this person. Now I fully recognize that this might not have been the best motivation, or the most flattering thing to reveal about myself--but it's worth acknowledging, because it IS the truth, and it IS the reason why I decided to just go for it. And, listen, I know that someone else being good or not doesn't make me more or less good--but in this specific case, it WAS about that--it was about being passed over and discarded for someone who WASN'T as talented, who wasn't as attractive, who wasn't as smart as I was--they just had the intergenerational wealth and a few better credits. And, no, I do not buy into the scarcity mindset. I believe there is room for everyone, and that if there isn't a stage for you, make one. It's why I wrote my song cycle, I wanted a venue for my voice because I didn't have one(one of the few good things about social media). I also don't see other people as my competition--but, in this rare case, I had something to prove: that I knew I was better than this person's insulated wealthy AT BEST mediocrity that had been weaponized against me. I was purposely made to feel as though I was less than this person, and I was out to show the world I wasn't just as much as them, I exceeded them. Like in Dumbo when they made Dumbo a clown to shame him, and his friends said, you know what, you're not just going to fly, you're going to SOAR."

A lot of this harkens back to the "Denny's is fancy" level of poverty growing up, to people telling me I wouldn't make it 18, to people wanting me to fail because of my racial and socioeconomic background. There has been a lot of sentiment over the years towards me to the tune of "how dare this person" [meaning me]"take up space here." I have faced a lot of push back over the years, of what I have come to believe is jealousy (what a Leo thing to say, am I right?), that despite everything "wrong" with me and "wrong" with my life, that I still had all of these natural gifts and talents. The girls in high school could buy all of the fancy art materials, but they still couldn't draw as well as I did. There was a lot (and I mean A. LOT.) of not even  remotely covert sentiment to the tune of, "how dare this girl, whom I deem inferior to me, from the bad and broken home and the wrong racial background my parents tell me not to associate because her father is a Drunk Indian and her mother is a Maid have THIS THING I can't have when I have EVERYTHING." 

Also, just so we are clear, I do not think I am the best singer, or the best anything, on the planet, I just do the best that I can to my own personal abilities, and strive to constantly work on my skillset.

I still LOVE pop music. I still love making pop music. I still love synth pop. I love doing remixes for other artists. I love mixing and mastering other artists' songs. I will still always put out pop music at some capacity, whether it's remixes, or co-writes, or top-line rescues. I love love love the vintage drum machines, the freedom you feel making something you want to dance to, the creation of soundscapes. I love all of those things. And I am always going to do those things. I have a pile of songs I am sitting on as we speak like Smaug the Dragon on his treasure (not literally lol). Part of the transition harkens back to the age thing: whilst some women have been able to do it, the industry treats the youngest person in the room like they're the most interesting; no one wants a woman pop star in their 30's. At once too "old" for pop and just barely old enough for opera. The other is that I have this opera voice that I can't bring myself to waste. I've been held back by many, many things throughout the course of my lifetime--even over the course of trying to finish this opera album alone, I have been repeatedly thwarted. But the album is 2 arias away from being finished, and then the real work begins.

I lengthen this transition, as I do with most things in my life, to Brer Rabbit. "He left his old troubles behind, but headed straight for a mess of brand new trouble."  I am off into a mess of brand new troubles. I'd say I am ready; I have spent a lifetime working ten times harder than my peers for exponentially less. I am ready for my mess of brand new troubles.

Le Bas-Fond · LEGIT FRAUD

Ha!, and here is a great example of one of my own photos I actually think is a great photo that makes me seem like a better photographer than I am.

PS: Hey! Little Me! 20 years out and you're still here, cutting capers and you're about the release your first opera record and transition to a classical music career. How about that? Bonus points for the fact that you look exactly the same as you did 20 years ago--now how about THAT?!