I Married A Performer

As Caspian becomes more and more skilled and increasingly driven to be a classical performer, I think more and more often about what it means to be the spouse of a performer.

As his wife, I enjoy the fun of being a by-association member of some very interesting circles of musicians and actors. I get to go to cast parties at the homes of the regionally rich and famous. I get to listen in on serious, well-educated (and usually passionate) conversations on the merits and demerits of certain schools of musical thought, composers, performers and teachers. Since knowing him, I've gone from being completely ignorant of all things opera to being able to throw around interesting words like tessitura, coluratura and fach.

Everything else in his life is just a side dish for him. Music is his religion, his exercise, his fuel, his product. It's like the flying unicorn that eats rainbows and poops butterflies. Er, yeah. He is a machine capable of taking in a subjective, difficult-to-process input and use it to directly shape a beautiful, universal production.

On Sunday, in the middle of a conversation with my mother, he suddenly got up, wandered over to the piano, found his pitch and hummed a phrase of notes - and the conversation was about tires or something. My mom (a piano performance major at one point) just looked at me understandingly, blinking and smiling, until he returned. There is always a song or ten running through his head at any given moment. I've never heard him take a silent shower - if not humming or running lines to himself, he's totally belting out some aria or art song or another.

When he's in shows, I don't get to see him very much and spend the majority of my non-work time alone or doing me-related things. This week is tech week for the show he's starring in, and I see him for a few minutes before leaving for work, and then again (maybe) if he wakes me up getting into bed at midnight. Sometimes I hear him talk in his sleep.

When his company moves to Montreal sometime this year, he will be teaching voice lessons, practicing and directing his choir full-time. I will likely see him a little bit more often then, but when he's ready to audition, we will pull up our roots and move so that he can go to graduate school - during which I will see him even less than now.

After that, he will be professional, and gone to other cities and nations for months at a time. I will have to be able to deal with long periods of marital solitude - and will need to find a place for myself in whichever community we choose to settle. Maybe I will get to travel with him occasionally - by association. When our routines settle down, there may be a child in our future; if Caspian is singing professionally at this point, I may have to be able to care for this child on my own for extended periods.

Whenever I ponder these things, I feel elated that I married such a talented, wonderful, brilliant human being. I also feel loneliness, and a vague fear of transience. I feel jealousy, and regret that I followed such a technical, academic path, regret of all of the "by associations" that mark many of the high points of my life. "Content to operate in the background" has never been my dominant quality, and yet I don't display the kind of imagination and drive that merits the spotlight.

Insights? Advice? Thoughts?