Ramblings...(from high school naivete to gender identity)

Graduating from college is much scarier than I had thought it would be as a high school student eagerly anticipating moving 1,000 miles from home, despite being a bit of a daddy's girl, and refashioning myself out of sight and mind of my critical high school peers. Back then, I naively thought that upon graduation I would immediately land a job in my career of choice (not that I knew what that was at the time) and that I would instantaneously be on the road to success...Life, as it turns out, is not that easy. Although, come to think of it, instant gratification isn't necessarily a good thing. If my life had turned out as I had planned five years ago I would probably be in New York, slumming it and desperately trying to make my way as an actress on Broadway, despite the fact that my performance anxiety level has skyrocketed over the years and singing and dancing in front of thousands of people holds little appeal for me these days.

Instead of pursuing a career as the next Christine on Broadway, which is laughable considering that I am not a high soprano, I participated in Commencement with the rest of my class last spring, and received a blank diploma, which put a bit of a damper on my celebratory mood..." The case which would have held my diploma held a sheet of paper which was blank, with the exception of the following statement: "will receive degree upon completion of course requirements." Oh yeah, so I wasn't really graduating. I still had a semester of student teaching to go before I would officially receive my undergraduate degree a year later without any pomp and circumstance. But, in all reality, I was fine with that...Graduation ceremonies are incredibly dull, with the exception, of course, of my brief moment of glory on the stage shaking the hands of two people I have never seen before (the president and someone else high up on the totem pole) who are wearing ridiculous looking robes, and moving the tassel from one side to the other. Is it left to right, or right to left? Does it even really matter?

Speaking of student teaching, after halfheartedly convincing myself that I wanted to pursue a career as a high school choral director for a couple of years, I discovered my true passion by accident, in a gender studies intro. course I signed up for to fulfill a gen. ed. requirement. I never would have guessed that I would end up pursuing a career in musicology. Up until my sophomore year in college I had never even heard of such a thing! Who knew that after taking a gender studies class I would begin to consider what it means, and has meant, to be a woman. I had always taken this particular aspect of my identity for granted, and probably still do today in certain respects. Although many women around the world continue to be a marginalized group, several of them exploited and even abused as a result of their sex, I have never personally suffered due to my lack of a y chromosome. However, being the history geek that I am, after having taken this gender studies course I became fascinated by the history of women in music: as performers, composers, and muses. I began to realize that many of these women had to carefully negotiate their gender identities in order to survive in a male-dominated profession.

Last year, while preparing my senior recital, I had a rather emotional encounter with a certain song by Debussy. Its main appeal was is its otherwordly, sensual, and exotic harmonic language which I found, and to this day, find to be incredibly beautiful in a mysterious sort of way. I immediately fell in love with the song and decided after hearing it for the first time that I absolutely had to learn and sing it! However, upon reading the translation of the text and learning that the song was not merely about a young girl's sexual awakening, but also a woman's reflection on her rape, I was angry with myself for not being repulsed by the music. Then I began to consider how my engagement with the piece, both as a scholar and performer, could reclaim power and control for the female character whom I was portraying, and for women everwhere who have ever suffered as a result of their sex. Performing this song in my senior recital made both myself, and hopefully my audience, at least a little bit uncomfortable. I had very mixed feelings about this piece which strongly influenced my interpretation of it. How I felt about the piece mirrored the internal conflict of the character I was portraying: arousal, lust, fear, anger, and a whole litany of other emotions. By performing this song I hoped to draw people's attention to the loaded meanings that music, despite its ephemeral quality, manages to capture. I wanted people to come away from my recital feeling confused and perhaps even a bit disenchanted with music, upon acknowledging that it has more than a purely aesthetic purpose.

Despite my developing passion for the examinination of gender and identity in the rather esoteric sphere of musicological research, I still have not found my own gender identity to be of much significance in my daily life. How can I make valuable contributions to the increasingly popular feminist sub-field of musicology and should I even attempt to do so? I want my career to have a profound impact on myself and the world around me. I must admit that I feel rather conceited for having made that statement. It seems to me that people who truly wish to make a difference in the world can't be self-absorbed enough to make a claim like that! I think I am going to retract and rephrase that statement; I want my research to make a difference for me in how I conceive of myself and how I shape my gender identity for years to come. At this point my research has yet to become that personal, however, I hope that as I work towards my PhD my research will begin to hold a deeper meaning for me. At this point, I am merely intrigued by the role of sex politics in music, but cannot claim to have experienced or struggled with them myself. I hope that this changes, however, I do not mean to say by any means that I wish upon myself suffering because of my gender. I do not wish that on anyone, be they man, woman, or anything in between, but I do hope that through my research uncovering the complex life of a particular seventeenth-century Venetian singer-composer named Barbara Strozzi I will begin to understand what being a woman means for me.