Temple of Low Men

“I’d much rather have a caravan in the hills,

Than a mansion in the slums.

The taste of success only lasts you half an hour or less,

But it loves you when it comes.”

- Crowded House, ‘Mansion in the Slums’

As my operatic debut in the US ended last Sunday, my week began in heaven and
ended in hell.
Or rather, right back here on earth.

All week long New York rained and thundered. A rogue cup of coffee overturned when I was
making a hospital visit short-circuited my phone and sent me halfway around New York city.
People who were supposed to be paying me for work I'd done got thrown in jail.
I stood on a woman’s foot in a bus (she then proceeded to yell at me). I dealt with more than
my share of misogynistic gym-dwellers. And I experienced frustration and anger from most
of the people around me, which I’m learning to call resilience training.

Not to mention, this week, my audition for Sight & Sound ended with a dance call.

Surrounded at every corner in a room of Christians, I sat and waited to hear my
number, 38.
Holding it up to the camera, grinning, song and monologue, 90 seconds over and
into the dance. 
Trying to look like I’ve had 15 years of dance training. Some nice gents around me
helped me rehearse the dance steps they showed us. Right-left-right and don’t fall over,
think I got it.

Everyone told me never sing something more than eight years old at an audition. 
Here’s me trying to be contemporary, when the girl singing legit and wearing the moonboot
gets sides to read? Play to your strengths, Labone. 

Me trying to pick up choreography is like me trying to navigate my way from ego to humility. 
Awkward, and ungainly, with more than a few missteps. 

The airless heat makes it tough to sleep in New York.  I was already exhausted when I made my way
onto the F train, ready to tackle my audition at the world-famous Brooklyn Tabernacle. 

I stepped on the train with a big grin. The holy spirit was definitely calling me out! This was it, the
moment I left behind my need to impress others. Yes, I was doing this for God. 

I was a mess by the time the service ended.  An impossibly Walton-esque family - if the Waltons all
played musical instruments - were up on the stage, including a tiny four-year-old girl lisping along to a
song about Jesus. 

The trumpet-playing patriarch, pianist matriarch, and twin violin-playing daughters, seemed almost unreal,
they appeared so perfect, but it was actually something to observe the grace with which they interacted
with each other, giving up their obvious musical gifts to God’s glory in such a way as to completely
remove themselves from the picture.

That’s where I thought my ego was sitting, off on a beach of zen somewhere in Ibitha.  Or maybe pitching
a tent somewhere far up North in New Zealand. Or so I thought. Turned out, this egotopia I created was
purely mental. 

By the time the service was over, I was ready. I headed up to the little room upstairs, where a crowd was
already gathered. I happily took a seat, knowing this was a volunteer position, and feeling quite smug in
how good I was to be giving up my Sunday (I’d been to church twice today, aren’t I #holy?)

They called us up to audition - all that separated us from the other hopefuls was a screen. 
The first group went in. They sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and tried some pitch-matching exercises.
One of the girls was wandering like a lost sheep away from the pitch center. A collective sneery snigger
went up from the crowd.

It was our turn. I stood up, a sense of self-righteous satisfaction already rising in me. The rest of the girls
seemed pretty nervous. I smiled to myself.  This’d be a piece of cake. It was in the bag. If I’d had a file
with me, I’d be standing in that line polishing up my nails.

“Rosel, Rhondda, Riba” - the Rs were called. This was it. I breathed out. Well, it’s just a volunteer role for
sure, but no harm at all right? And who’s to say what other opportunities this might lead to, if the right
people hear me… and I’m doing the Lord’s work.

The worship leader greeted us warmly as we stepped in front of the screen.
“How are you all doing today?”

We all murmured our assent. I was the first to sing - great, let’s get this show on the road.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound/ that saved a wretch like me…”

I was singing those words, but not really hearing them. 

A bit of pitch-matching. This was basic stuff, nothing to get worked up about. I was getting more used to
being in a group audition setting, and getting activated, sure, bring on all those Don Greene centering
exercises. I could feel them kicking in...

A couple of questions about my membership, I blithely disclosed I was with another church.  ‘That’s all
we need, thank you.’

We were placed in the antechamber of the front row to wait for news about the choir. I was easily the
best singer there, I told myself, so I knew I had nothing to worry about.

One of the girls next to me touched me on the arm. ‘You have a beautiful voice.’

I beamed beatifically over at her. ‘Oh, well thank you.’ I added a second condescending smile for good
measure across the line. ‘You know, you all did so well.’

One of the ministers who hadn’t been in the actual audition stepped out about a moment later, and
called a group of us into a back room.

‘Please follow me,’ he said, and sat us down.

He had a pile of papers in his hands, which he started to rearrange.

‘Now, were y’all nervous? Because the notes here say you were off-pitch.’

I didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying. I know at one point I stood up, ready to leave.

‘You’re being disrespectful,’ the minister said to me.

By this time, I was definitely ‘activated’, and no amount of Don Greene centering exercises were
going to calm me down.

‘You don’t understand,’ I sputtered. ‘I’m a TRAINED opera singer. There’s no way I was off pitch.’
‘I shook my head. ‘No way.’  I couldn’t believe my ears. Don’t you know Who. I. Am??

‘Please sit down.’

I flopped back into my chair, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched. Several of the girls in the room
started to speak up. ‘How can you say that? She was the best one.’

A tryout from Ghana then stood up. ‘The only people that were off-pitch were the ones accepted into
the choir!”

With a flounce, she turned on her heel to leave the room.

“I’ll come and try out again next year, maybe you will like my face then.”

The Minister looked completely baffled by this point at what had just transpired.

By now, my head was down to the soles of my shoes. In one week, I had gone from leaping
and dancing before the Lord to being drenched in self-doubt with my soul and spirit completely
downcast within me. 

I tried to scan my mind a moment to find what might possibly have gone wrong. Walking in the rain,
I’d stepped onto the same streets in New York where I’d seen the two sides of heartbreak and triumph
since I’d arrived. This city, where the buildings and statues and inhabitants were haunted by
so many ghosts of the past and present, and a future that may or may never come.
Where one cup of coffee, spilled on keys, rendering a useless mess of jumbled cross signals,
had turned a week of joy into despair. God had entrusted me with so little, and I’d still
managed to screw it up. The same friends who rallied round me with tea and spare electronics as I’d sat
bewildered, I’d listened to as they whispered and shouted their own rage and frustration at their own
lives, a New York benediction roared into a seemingly indifferent sky. To get up each day, feeling so
small, and to try and reach the heights of those skyscrapers.
Waiting and watching as friends of friends get sick with serious illnesses. They fight on, demons are
exorcised, or strangled with bare hands, or drowned in the Hudson or the East Rivers. The desperate
multitudes crowding for the Almighty Dollar at once eclipsing briefly, in that same New York sky,
the sun of an Almighty God. 

Yes, I remembered, briefly, people had been kind this week, too, especially my friends.  Life was as big
and strange as all of New York itself. So what had happened? What was going on, really. Why was I so
upset?

The minister came back in the room. 

“Well, it seems that I indeed made a mistake. You were not off pitch. I apologize sincerely; in fact, it
would seem I got the wrong notes, not you!’ ’

All it took was the apology to rend my heart like Moses had parted the red sea. I was already in tears by
now. I had a feeling I was going to spill my guts to this man I had just met.

“I’m sorry for being disrespectful. I have an issue with ego.”

“That much is clear.”

“I had to busk just to get the train money to come here,” I said. “And I’ve been working crappy dead-end
jobs just to make ends meet. The worst, lowest-paid, menial jobs.”

The minister looked concerned. ‘We are having more auditions again in January, they said you have a
great voice but you need to be part of the church. But at first - we need to sort out what’s going on here,
with all of this. Here’s my personal number, so we can discuss everything that happened today.
Of course, we can’t accept you into the choir until you become a member of the Tabernacle.
I’m sure you understand.”

I understood. It seemed at some point, I’d spilled coffee all over my life. Nothing was working out like I
planned.  What if I was damaged beyond repair? Could God really use this, this broken, short-circuited
life of mine?

I dried my eyes, straightened my collar, and continued on to my next menial job as the clouds rolled
overhead. The city had just dealt me yet another hit that felt like a kiss. Another shot of pure,
unadulterated, humility. Not the fake kind. I’m still trying to figure out what it all meant.
It turned out my ego never left the room. Despite this, or maybe because of everything,
I had a lot of hope. It seemed like God would, indeed, be able to deal with a wretch like me.
In fact, this was a great place to start.