The Worst Insult I Ever Heard as an Opera Singer

Dear James,

In my younger days, I was an opera singer. Like most trained singers, I found the lack of significant success extraordinarily painful, but that’s the reality in the field. I wasn’t the greatest singer, but I certainly moved audiences and earned the respect of my colleagues.

Recently, I was playing guitar and singing a cute little country ditty that required no vocal skill. My sister-in-law, who was listening, exclaimed, “That was so beautiful. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard your real voice.” She’s been hearing me sing for 40 years. I couldn’t believe she could say something so awful to me. It makes me think she has great hostility toward me, something I never would have dreamed of before. It hurts so much.

Afterward, my husband said she was just telling me that she never liked my voice, and he couldn’t see any reason why she would say such a thing, except to hurt me. I think he is exactly right, and my daughter agreed.

The professional disrespect is amazing to me. She is a clarinetist … It’s as if I’d said, after hearing her play kazoo, that that was the first time I’d heard her real musicianship. The insult is staggering. Do you think there is any other way to interpret her remark?

Dear Reader,

What a fascinating situation. Like a short story by Edith Wharton, with a splash of Larry David. A careless remark, lightly dropped in a domestic setting, touches off a failure cascade that ends with the unraveling of a family. And was the remark made innocently or with mischief in mind? Or both? Was it made, in other words, in innocence of its own mischievous purposes? The cunning of the human psyche is bottomless. (This is why people write short stories.)

As it happens, I do think there’s another way to interpret your sister-in-law’s remark. She’s a musician herself, which slightly complicates things. But hear me out. You will know, of course, that opera, and the operatic singing style, is not to everyone’s taste. Why? Because to a late-modern philistine like (for example) me, it can sound fleshy, forced, overdone. I hope one day to educate myself out of this particular prejudice, but for the time being, I’m stuck with it.

And perhaps your sister-in-law is too. Perhaps, clarinetist though she is, loyal sister-in-law though she might be, she harbors trace elements of anti-opera bias, such that when she hears you—after 40 years—singing quote-unquote normally, nonoperatically, she bursts forth in words of praise. The easy-breathing simplicity of your country singing surprised her, moved her. At last: you! The irony being, of course, that your real voice, the voice where your you-ness truly lives, is your opera voice. And this is the source of the hurt, I think: the career-long lack of affirmation you felt as a working opera singer. Which sucks, no doubt. But it’s not your sister-in-law’s fault.

A word about indignation. Indignation on another’s behalf: fantastic. Indignation on one’s own: less so. It’s to be guarded against. It’s wrapped up with pride. I’ll quote Hüsker Dü: “Stupid pride! Selfish pride!” So maybe use the feelings aroused by your sister-in-law’s thoughtless, certainly injudicious, possibly naughty remark as an opportunity to rise above. To let it go.

Wishing you harmony,
James

Dear James,

I am in a perfectly healthy, safe, loving, and committed relationship with my partner of over a year, but I still feel a nagging worry that I am wasting my time being with this person instead of pursuing other people, especially because I am so young (in my mid-20s). This worry makes me question my feelings for my partner and adds a layer of anxiety to my relationship that I wish wasn’t present.

I desire to be married one day, and monogamy seems to be the ideal relationship structure for my lifestyle and values; however, the thought of spending my entire life committed to just one person can send me into a spiral. Can I ever be content with loving one person?

Dear Reader,

“People are finite beings with infinite desires,” Billy Graham said. To which I might add: “And Wi-Fi.” Because desire today is aggravated, exacerbated, compounded, and inflamed beyond all measure by the goddamn internet. Whatever you’re doing, you could be doing something better. Whoever you’re with, they could be more … whatever. More this. More that.

What is desire? A great hollowness. A gnawing lack. A sex-shaped nothing. We think it’s inside us, but it’s outside us. Today, 2024, it wears a digital face, but it’s been around forever: the apple in the Garden of Eden—that was the first algorithm. And desire has designs on us. It wants us to buy things, replace things, replace people, replace ourselves. I say: Switch it off.

Of course, you can’t switch it off, not really, or not without a lot of praying on mountaintops and vomiting in the huts of Amazonian spirit-doctors. And you can unplug, unsubscribe—the restlessness will still be there. Monogamy is bananas; everyone knows that. An insane way to proceed. Marriage? Jesus Christ. But everything else is bananas too. So make sure you’re loving whatever’s in front of you for what it is. Which includes your current partner. I’ve no idea whether you’ll end up married to them, but I can tell you this with complete certainty: They’re real, right now, and so are you. Make the most of it.

Pounding the lectern,
James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.