Life is what happens to me while I am busy making other plans!

All of my first Blogs will be about finding a certain CALM. We humans drive ourselves crazy. If others don't. As a child I used to run around in the fields with wildflowers. Bucket in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. To make my witches soup! I was as happy as I could ever be. I had no idea about what I would become later. I never thought about tomorrow. Life was still an adventure. A few years later when I was twelve I was walking up to school when a classmate  approached me to tell me I was going to be an opera singer in the future. You know these moments? That someone tells you something that is true..it stays with you...but you have no idea what to do with the information you just received? Michel Schimmel! I even remember his name. He must have been clairvoyant for sure. In the same year my parents divorced after being a dysfunctional unsafe family with absent parents for years. O they were there allright but absent. Get my drift? It didn't get any better living with my mother visiting my father on the weekends. I forgot all about the opera singer stuff. My parents were both teachers.  And being totally unguided and didn't know any better I just chose to become a grammar school teacher. I did great. I loved the kids, I loved teaching, but I hated teachers. Schools...I say this word as a growling tiger. I hated schools! Caught in a school desk sitting still , being quiet, doing what I was told. I was bored to death when I attended school myself! Where was the adventure? Where was life?!

Another 8 years later I was cleaning houses at my mother's musician-friends.  while I was vacuuming I used to put on records and sing . Arie Spiero came home early and heard me sing. He was once the first violinist at the residentie orchestra in The hague. You must become an opera singer, you should go to the conservatory. There it was again! Opera singer. A friend of Arie sent me to a singing teacher. And so I began my studies in 1988. Then followed all kinds of life events. I got married , had my first son. I planned on living happily ever after but he fell in love with someone else. Got divorced , married again, had 3 other great kids, worked as an actrice and singer, got an agent Inge Tennigkeit in Düsseldorf and then the Bomb dropped in my life. My 13 year old son Benjamin was diagnosed with a brain tumor as big as an orange! The nurses  told me I could forget my career because I was going to be a nurse for the next two years. So of course I dropped everything and did whatever I had to do to help and support my son. 

      "If you get all tangled up you just Tango on"

Al Pacino

To keep singing I became Operawoman. I am a singer also when I am a mother and a wife. I made my first operawoman - show washing line 2009. With the help of Peter Nilsson, my husband Ali Cifteci and Ruut Weissman. A year later I started to work at the National Opera house in Amsterdam on the educational department. My husband landed in a depression and money had to be made. It was a great opportunity to get to know the world behind the scenes of the opera stage. And I made great friends. I learned a lot gaining confidence because I had to use other competenties and skills I didn't know I had. I struggled though with how people saw me. What they would think of me. Remembering comments of people in the past. Such as: Those who can't do teach. Such load of Bullshit. Or a bad news fairy would tell me: " I heard this person so and so say: Esther is pregnant. She is no longer competition." ( Come to think of it: I think I will write a whole blog on that word. Competition) Image. I watched myself far too long from the eyes of others. Other humans struggling themselves with God knows what. I heard people think:"why isn't she singing?" I gave up I guess. 

Then something extraordinary happend again. I was overseeing one of my projects . A Traviata flash mob with lot's of amateurs in the choir. Members of the opera choir were soloists. But according to collective labor agreement they had to leave early leaving us without soloists for the Libiamo duett. The conductor knew I had performed the opera and asked me if I wanted to jump in. There was a  former member of the opera choir present who offered to sing the tenor role. Not being on a serious stage there was no pressure and I sung really well. After the rehearsal the tenor blew me a kiss and amateur choir members ran up to me , asking me who the hell I was and why on earth I wasn't singing. This triggered me. I started working less for Dutch National Opera and made my second and third Operawoman - show directed by Klaus Bertisch and there is one coming up with Bart Oomen. Luckily there are also Good news fairies. One told me :" Peter Nilsson said that Esther is never going to stop singing. Not if she gets married or get kids." It has kept me going.

      " I'll gladly tell you who I am but don't quote me on it. " 

Loesje

What I've learned from these experiences is that I am so much more than just an opera-singer. I have learned not to take myself too seriously as an Artist. Life itself is what matters.

This Blog is a day late. Yesterday was my first day at the restaurant Bayonne where my son Benjamin is the Chef. I help out in serving Breakfast and lunch. Since there is such a shortage in staff they even consider me! Haha. And again I was proud of how I did. You need a good memory and strong legs. I never would have imagined I could do this. 

But here is another Al Pacino quote for you:

"be careful how you judge people, most of all friends, you don't sum up a man's life in one moment"

Of course there is this fellow opera singer coming to the restaurant on this particular morning! I'ld just love to scream out her name but I won't. She goes : " wow this is quite a career switch!" I feel myself go into defense and hear myself respond: "No No! I'm just helping out." Diminishing myself again. It feels bad.

Recognizing the feeling I just flag it. And walk away.

Yesterday I was a waitress. Today after finishing this Blog I am a pergola constructor. And when I have my brainstorm appointment in the first week of juli with Bart Oomen I am an Artist. And all this time I am Operawoman. It's a full and truly fulfilling life.