Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

I look at myself naked. Yes, this is my confession. In the full-length mirror in the armoire in my room. I look at myself just to remind myself that I’m there. No, I look because I like to look and that’s how I know it’s wrong. But how could it be? I feel an ache. I want someone to see me and touch me before I’m old. Before it wrinkles and fades and falls, I can’t believe that will ever happen to me.

14th — Intervals of seconds. Up and down and up and down and up and down and lasciatemi morir

15th — spent a month’s carfare on a new dress — pale green silk chiffon, très chic, très moderne , I look about twenty-five. I have no place to wear it.

16th — Intervals of thirds

Sunday, March 17 — No lesson today, no torture chamber. Also, I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to WALK there on time owing to the fact that I squandered a small fortune on that stupid dress I’ll never wear. But oubliez all that! I am happy as a clam because I’m in Central Park all on my own, it’s sunny, life is long, I have all the time in the world and I will sing. He has put my voice into a sad solitary cell but she will fly. I know because I can feel her beating, getting stronger the longer she is silent. Could it be that the Kaiser’s training is working? Or is it possible my voice is thriving on adversity? That is the perverse unbreakable Piper spirit. Thank you Daddy.

There is a couple “spooning” in broad daylight not three steps away from me in full view of a nanny and a six-year-old girl with a face full of freckles who keeps grinning at me — reminds me of Frances. Little imp just whipped her rubber ball at me, it bounced off the bench, now it’s landed in the pond.

Fished the ball out, played like an idiot with her for the next hour and a half much to Nanny’s relief.

après diner: — Because this is my diary, I will ask this question: Do you think Giles has ever been impure in thought and deed? Why do I have to think that about a perfectly innocent old lady?! But no one is perfectly innocent. A good singer knows that. I am terrible. I don’t care. I want to make love with my voice to three thousand four hundred and sixty-five people at a time.

Tues. 19 — I have been exiled to the mezza di voce. Il passaggio . He calls it “the no man’s land of the voice”. It is another of his sadistic techniques. I am being held prisoner an octave and a half above middle C between E and G.

Wed. 20 — He wants to ruin my voice.

Fri. — Il passaggio is abandoned. Il passaggio is all but silent.

Il passaggio is another word for limbo.

sat. — I was late this morning. Couldn’t get to sleep last night and couldn’t wake up this morning. Herr K worse than usual as a result.

Monday March 25 — It seems Il passaggio is inhabited after all. Haunted is more like it. Full of ghostly sighs and groans.

2:00 am — I dreamt of Pete. He was wearing Mumma’s apron and Daddy’s pit boots and he was crying and wanting me to hug him. There is no such thing. The lights are on now. No such thing as Pete.

I want to go home. I want to see my daddy.

Kathleen, grow up.

3:30 am — don’t write it down

I can’t stop crying.

What if there’s someone outside my door?

Oh God. If I think about it, my door will open.

“Let nothing disturb you; nothing frighten you. All things are passing.” Saint Teresa, ora pro nobis .

thurs. 28 — Giles made me drink a special tea so I could sleep last night. It worked. Has she been spying on me?

fri. — One heck of a middle C today. Felt like I was gorging on a chocolate éclair. Kaiser none too pleased — after all, I’m a soprano. Sopranos don’t sing in chocolate.

sat. — Today I cried. he told me to sing the C-major scale, my first time allowed to put more than two notes together at a time. But still no consonants, just “ah”. I felt like I was climbing stone steps in the dark and when I got a glimpse of light towards the top I started crying but I finished the ruddy scale.

APRIL FOOL’S DAY — Today Herr Knibs gives me that bloodless vulture eye and — no, he’s more amphibian, he’s probably covered in dry scales (scales, ha ha!) from collar to cuffs and dines furtively on furry creatures thrice daily. I can just see the squirming lump making its way down his narrow throat. Does he regurgitate bones every evening? Well today he says to me, “I vill accept you as a shtudent, Miss Pipah.” Why didn’t I say the perfect icy thing? I said — and I am being completely honest here, so I’ll tell you — I said, “Thank you, sir.” May I be struck dead.

Wed. — Daddy sent me a book today and Mercedes and Frances sent me salt-water taffy! I never thought I’d miss my little elves so much. I wish Daddy would put them in a special crate and mail them to me like kittens for a day or two.

Thurs. — “La voix mixte”: In every head tone, the resonance of the chest. In every chest tone, the rarity of the head. Ascend directly to heaven.

Fri. — Giles asked me to sing something for her this afternoon and I had to say, “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to sing anything but scales and arpeggios.” The Kaiser says he can tell if I’ve been singing “ditties” on the sly. It’s like I’m committing adultery with my voice or something, he’s disgusting.

Mon. — He’s making me wear my hair in a scalp-tight bun. What does he think I am, a ballerina?

Tues. — I have had an epiphany. I now know what people mean when they say you have to suffer for your art. I always thought they meant rehearsing till you drop, performing when you’re not in the mood, starving until you get discovered and I always thought, “Great, I can’t wait to suffer” but that’s not it at all. The real suffering is this teacher trying to kill me with boredom by marching me up and down every scale known to man. Fine. I will beat him at his own game. I have begun repeating the entire morning’s lesson three times every day.

Wed. — “Your vocal range is a freak of nature, Miss Piper, no more or less impressive than Mount Everest. It remains to be seen whether or not you have the stamina and skill to scale it.” Scale!

Thurs. — I love the buildings. They’re called skyscrapers. They’re the closest thing to an ocean here. But it’s an ocean that goes straight up, not flat out. They say that the body of water stretching away to the east of Manhattan is the ocean but it isn’t. Not my ocean, anyway. It’s weird because back home I just took it for granted, my grey-green sea. Now I have a granite ocean. It gives me the same happy-sad feeling I need sometimes. When I look straight up at the buildings I can feel alone in a good way. Not in that horrible way of no one knows me.

fri — This is not a city. This is a world with whole countries in it. You could go mad here if you were the type of person who thought you were sane in the first place. I have found something past the granite ocean. It’s a whole amazing world. You can walk for an hour and never hear a word of English, you can eat in five different countries in five blocks, you can hear music everywhere. Why am I studying, why do I want to be caged on a stage when the real singers are out here, singing about fish, hollering out rhythm across wheelbarrows full of fruit to the timpany of tin pan alley, a chorus of trams, horseshoes, knives and live animals, this is where the opera is. The Met is a mausoleum. The music room is a funeral parlour. God I don’t want to wind up in a museum.