Something Is Always on Fire

by Measha Brueggergosman

  So, now that I’ve done A to Z, I’m starting back at A again. And just like in my day job as an opera singer, you never reach Z. All the fun is in the journey and the process and how you get through it. From this point on, perhaps everything that comes at me will be measured against the hardest thing I’ve ever done: the 9-week Bikram Yoga Torture Chamber. I’ll always be able to say, “This is nowhere near as hard as the time at teacher training when . . . ”

  Aha! The first, tasty morsel of perspective on the process they were constantly telling us to trust!

  I love you all very much,

  Measha

  I know the woman who wrote those letters and I know the excitement and trepidation with which she embarked on the next phase of her journey, because seven years later I feel the same way. I know more and I am more. I’ve expanded my territory and strengthened my resolve to keep hustlin’. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons and experienced profound joy.

  On July 8, 2012, after my final performance of Porgy and Bess at the Cincinnati Opera, Markus and I drove back to Ottawa on what we called our Last-Chance Road Trip. We took our time meandering through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, up through Vermont, on to Maine, and crossed into Canada at the St. Stephen border. From there we drove to the coast and caught the ferry to Grand Manan Island. We had wanted to take that beautiful drive from Cincinnati to the Maritimes as a kind of pilgrimage to parenthood. The last time we’d embarked on a road trip of this length was when we were carrying August David to his own memorial service, but this time, Shepherd Peter was a very active baby in my belly.

  Because of my enlarged aorta and hypertension, I’ve known exactly when and where my babies would be born. With both my sons, I had what I coined a “scheduled, super-civilized Caesarean section.” Both my boys had to come out at thirty-six weeks because in the last trimester the mother’s blood pressure rises to create more blood for the baby. Going deeper into that third trimester would have been too dangerous for me after my dissected aorta.

  In August of 2012, at Ottawa General Hospital, I gave birth to Shepherd Peter, named after a family descendant and his paternal grandfather. I was awake the whole time, though numb from my knees to my belly. You’re conscious, but you can’t feel anything. Pulling the baby out is a pretty athletic process because the surgeon creates as small an incision as possible. My surgeon knew I was a singer and that my diaphragmatic muscles were an essential part of my livelihood. Since Markus was now a paramedic, he was allowed to look over the sheet, acting as my eyes. His happy face was reassuring. Shepherd also did his part. Apparently, his last-minute swim in my womb had tied his umbilical cord into a perfect knot. Praise the Lord he hadn’t wrapped it around his neck! Just like his brother Sterling Markus would do two and a half years later, he was screaming before he was even out, maybe because of all the screaming Mama had done while he was in there. When the surgeon turned him around so I could see him, he started yelling again: Hello, World, this is Shepherd Peter! Let’s get this umbilical cord cut so we can get this party started!

  The medical staff cut the cord, and counted his fingers and toes, and weighed him, and performed the necessary tests to make sure he was all there and healthy. Then they brought him back to me. I recorded the whole event on my phone so that later I could relive his birth.

  As I’ve already described, Markus and I recited together Psalm 139, the citation carved on August David’s gravestone—the very first thing Shepherd heard upon entering this world. I gratefully accepted the miracle that Shepherd Peter had arrived almost a year to the day that August David left us. Everything went smoothly and according to plan. During the whole process, my heart rate only went from ninety-one to ninety-four beats a minute, then went down again. Though there’s no upside to losing a baby, at least my body had a better idea of what was expected of it this time around.

  Shepherd was classified as premature because the C-section had interrupted his development process. Though he was fully cooked and apparently perfectly healthy, he was a compact five pounds two ounces.

  The nurse tried to take him away: “We want to monitor him to make sure he stays warm. You’ll have him for six or seven minutes every hour.”

  Wait. What? Oh, that is not happening. “Shepherd will receive his heat from Mama and Daddy,” I said. “If there’s nothing wrong with him, you can come every hour and remove him for six or seven minutes, then bring him back to me, instead of the other way around.”

  I fought for that contact, and I believe all mothers and fathers have a right to make that demand. All research says that the best thing for a newborn, particularly a premature one, is to keep him warm and get the colostrum into him to increase weight, and these nurses wanted to take him away? I’m sure they meant well, but I wasn’t letting him away from my skin unless it was absolutely necessary.

  A few years later, when Sterling Markus was born in April of 2015, I was so thankful that his birth also went off without a hitch. We recorded the birth on a voice memo, and like his brother, a reading of Psalm 139 started his life outside my tummy. I had moved my growing family to the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia to be closer to my parents and to raise our boys in the Maritimes. In contrast to our experience giving birth to Shepherd in Ottawa, the Halifax hospitals don’t have their cardiac and obstetrics units under the same roof. It’s absurd. This meant that Sterling had to be incubated and transported in an ambulance to what is now the IWK Health Centre down the street for his checkups, while I stayed at the Queen Elizabeth II general hospital. It was the worst. When he was with me, his stats would improve . . . he would gain weight; and then, after less than a day over at the children’s hospital, Sterling’s weight gain would slow down because he was away from his mama. They were having me pump colostrum at another hospital to transport to him at the children’s hospital so that they could get him strong enough to send back to me. It seemed ludicrous and it was beyond frustrating.

  I stayed in the hospital for two days—the standard length of a hospital stay for a C-section in Canada. Both my boys took to nursing really well, and I am grateful for the time we had to bond. I often heard breast milk described as “liquid gold,” and to us low-yield milk producers, the term is incredibly accurate. I ate the greenest, most nutrient-dense foods I could get my hands on so that my milk would have the most bang for its buck. I like a good plan of action, so I methodically kept track of my babies’ pees and poops to make sure I wasn’t starving them.

  Prior to Shepherd, in response to those well-intentioned people who would tell me, “Oh, you’ll figure all that out,” I would think, No, I won’t. But I’ll know what my options are before he gets here. I wasn’t interested in multiple-choice motherhood: Will I choose A or B? And I’m not a big fan of surprises. (It would be very difficult to throw me a surprise party because I’d want to control everything and know in advance how it would turn out.)

  As I’ve said, both my babies had their birth certificates, social insurance numbers and passports before they were three weeks old, and Sterling even had a Brazilian visa. I was quicker on the draw with Sterling than I had been with Shepherd because after Shepherd was born on August 20, I was supposed to fly to Berlin on Friday, September 8, to begin rehearsals with the Berlin Philharmonic for concert performances of Porgy and Bess with Sir Simon Rattle. It would have been our follow-up collaboration to the performances of Carmen I’d sang in Caracas. I didn’t want to cancel and I didn’t see why I should. Unfortunately, Shepherd’s passport didn’t arrive till Monday—three days too late. There was no way I was leaving without my Shepherd, whom I had committed to breast-feed exclusively for three months before supplementing with formula.

  Children are so adaptable. Their home is where their parents are (at least until they’re in school, when you have to release them to God knows who, to be taught God knows what). Having my boys only means that my life is made fuller . . . while my bank account gradually becomes emptier. But at this stage in my life, I don’t see the point of making mon
ey at all if it isn’t to spend on having a life where my boys and I can be together. Fortunately, I’m blessed with a good job, and though I do enjoy fine meals and great clothes, lustfully binging on that life is what I did in my twenties.

  I struggle (daily) with leaving my kids to do my job. When I decided to have children, I made a commitment to being present with them. I know it’s not enough to just be there. Your physical presence isn’t the be all and end all. The fact is, there’s not a lot of work to sustain the career of a classical singer in Falmouth, Nova Scotia. My job has to be done outside the home, and more often than not, outside the time zone.

  After more than a few tearful conversations with my mother about how I feel guilty all the damn time, she asked me if I ever remembered her being away from me. She said to me, “Think back. Do you ever remember a time when I wasn’t there?” The answer is no. My mother reminded me that she had a full-time job outside the home but that the time she had with me counted. She was present and she was mine. And I’m sure a lot of the satisfaction she got from being a mom had to do with her having her own career.

  The best mother is a fulfilled mother. One of the most subversive forms of child abuse is an unhappy parent. Some sacrifice is necessary, but if I hope to be a worthwhile example for my kids, I can’t put myself through the torture of pretending I’m someone I’m not. I’m teachable and I respect my elders, but I will never be pressured into having my gift of parenthood tainted by the judgment of strangers who don’t know me or my boys.

  I was disappointed to miss my concert with Sir Simon in Berlin, but I wasn’t disappointed about spending an extra couple of weeks at home with my baby. Instead of going to Berlin, I did a thirty-day hot-yoga challenge to help me bounce back from sharing my body with another human. I figured if I didn’t get some endorphins pulsing through my veins, I was at risk of postpartum depression, during which I might turn into one gigantic eating-and-feeding machine.

  What surprised me most about becoming a mother was the bottomless depth of my love for my boys. There is nothing I won’t do for these little meat sacks. I catch myself looking at them, admiring them, in awe at how connected I feel to them.

  I’d never kept any kind of schedule before I had kids, because my days were my own and I organized them according to what needed to get done. You can’t do that with kids. Not mine, anyway. Not if I want them to sleep. I put Shepherd on a schedule he could depend on, and by his third month he was sleeping six hours in a row. Like clockwork. While I say that about Shepherd, we hadn’t yet made room in our lives for Sterling, and my youngest has proven to be quite the rascal.

  Shepherd sleeps like the dead, while Sterling can be woken by the sound of me blinking. Shepherd can roll with the occasional disruption to his schedule, while Sterling? He’ll make you pay for the tiniest hiccup (bless his heart). Sterling will tell you exactly what he wants and when he wants it (and he doesn’t even speak!). Shepherd will make you work just a little bit harder and bargain so he can jostle for the upper hand. He’s his mother’s son . . . so he can also hold a grudge and be secretive. But he’s four. So I’m usually onto him pretty quick.

  People talk about a mother’s intuition. This was something I’d always possessed, but it was a muscle I’d never flexed before. The doctors were right to warn me that having babies would risk my life, but not for the reasons they were talking about. I never once doubted my physical abilities to produce them, but once my boys were outside the protected cocoon of my womb for all the world to see and influence, this is when the real danger to my health began. I have spiralled down the rabbit hole of hypothetical scenarios, potential misadventures and overkill against boo-boos. Don’t even get me started on how I bolt out of bed if I suspect they’re even having a whiff of a nightmare. I understand the importance of introducing risk into their (awake) playtime to expand their capacity for problem solving; but that they would have nestled into the tranquility of slumber only to be betrayed by the unconscious activity of their own brains literally keeps me up at night. Despite all that, if you saw my boys—or their dad with our boys—you’d understand why I’d do it a million times over for the same result. I have to believe this is a “parent thing,” because I don’t even recognize Mama Measha sometimes—she’s sooo much more intense than the other Meashas.

  The ungrudging adjustments of becoming a parent doesn’t mean time stands still. Truer than ever to the title of this book, over the past year (within the span of eight months, in fact), I was dropped by both my agents—the one in New York and the one in London. You’ll remember the first one, Bill Palant, whom I’d been with for over a decade, downsized his roster and I didn’t make the cut. The other one retired from the business . . . in his forties. And I got the boot.

  I wish both these guys all good things as they move forward in their lives and careers as best they know how, but WTF? I know it could not have been easy to look down the list of opera singers on your roster and know you would need to have a frank conversation with each one of them. I’m truly grateful to have at least gotten that courtesy, because not all artists do. But leaving an opera singer on her way to her forties, established or not, with the task of finding new management, the economy being what it is and classical music being the industry it is? That was tantamount to a nail in my professional coffin. I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories of agents and managers running off with their artists’ money and prospects—but if the upside to my situation is that I didn’t get robbed? That means the downside was that I found myself destitute—financially and professionally—with no managerial prospects. And it happened in laughably quick succession, too. One minute I had two large, reputable companies making my business happen and the next I was on my own.

  I create this sense of high drama only to illustrate that a test can present itself as so obviously a test that you have no choice but to roll up your sleeves and give up sleep, because only you can pound the proverbial pavement to protect your bread and butter.

  I took to the internet and worked my way backward. I looked at the singers whose careers I liked or revered. I saw where they were performing, who was representing them, and the repertoire that that orchestra, concert hall or opera house was prone to programming, and decided whether there could be a home for me amid them. Then I looked to see if those companies tended to prefer certain artist agencies over others—because it’s no good to sign on to an agency with no hold in the market. I started my career seeking name recognition in my representation, but now that I’d made a name for myself, I was looking for a specific agent who was up for the challenge: representing the type of opera singer who has a good reputation, an impressive biography and discography, many fingers in many pies, and who is always on the lookout for more pies . . .

  I’m not what you’d describe as “easily classifiable” and I don’t see any reason to change that, because I’m having a fascinating career, by anyone’s standards. I was searching for a classical agent who would take one look at my body of work and say, “How exciting!” not “Sorry, too difficult to categorize.”

  I spent countless hours researching, investigating and creating a road map for my way forward. To keep the panic at bay, I would remind myself of what I had built over my several-decades-long career. After I put the boys to bed, I would continue my due diligence, formulating my plan of attack and praying to God that I would find a home that would welcome what I had to offer with open arms. That my breath of fresh air would blow into the life of someone who was just waiting for me to arrive.

  The God I pray to sent Alan Coates to take over my worldwide classical management. In hindsight—after all the bellyaching I’ve done about being downsized—I actually needed a change in management because my priorities had changed. I now needed to use the currency of whatever influence and reputation I had built throughout my career to customize a team to represent my output as a creator, singer and performer.

  In addition to Alan, I am immortalizing Steve Zsirai, Evan Newman and Tom
Kemp in this memoir because I owe them big time for being the right fit at the right moment. I think history will show that they came from extremely good stock and had a hand in making the lives of many great artists manageable, fulfilling, lucrative and balanced. Managing me isn’t easy. There’s the classical (my bread and butter), the non-classical (my legacy projects), the crazy (my travels), the sane (my time alone), the time off (my non-singing appearances), the babies (my everything), the “I’m off the grid at a yoga retreat (or language course),” the “could you book this flight because I have no money,” the hustle, the frank conversation about what this or that presenter said. The role of any artistic management team is to confront and comfort.

  They aren’t the only ones hustling. It’s a two-way street. To any artist wondering why management isn’t doing more for them, I would say that there are lazy managers out there to be sure, but this career doesn’t just happen. It takes time to build new bridges and open doors—that goes double if you’re new to your agency. Don’t be an artist with unrealistic expectations attached to unrealistic timelines. But trust your instincts. If you see the signs and you can smell that something’s off—you have no work; he won’t return your calls; she’s cagey when you ask for a progress report; you’ve heard cautionary tales from reputable sources—then do not forget that you’re not helpless. You are not a name on a list. You are the president of your own company.

  Have a well-defined list of what you bring to the table. If you’ve sat back and waited for your calendar to fill itself without knowing enough about the inner workings of your business to actively engage your management with potential solutions and opportunities that they could easily turn around and knock out of the park, then that’s on you. Of course, your hustle is different from your agent’s, but you are the voice (and face) of a mutually agreed upon plan for Total World Domination. You are the engine—and the financier!—of that plan.