If only I was a concert grade contralto!

Helen was my surrogate singer, as I have said often!  I made her a soprano, for many reasons.  In my imagination, sopranos have one sort of personality, and contraltos have quite a different sort.  Sopranos are dominant, brilliant, tall, beautiful, have a powerful need to be loved; have a strong sex drive.  They're charismatic, highly strung, and have a powerful drive to succeed. 

Contraltos (altos; contralto is the word used for soloists) seem to me to be more retiring, more earnest, more serious, more nurturing, more concerned with success of the group, and less with their personal advancement.

In the Helen story, I did not stick to these—personal—stereotypes.  Yes, Helen was brilliant, tall, beautiful, a little needy, and somewhat highly sexed; but I gave her a strong sense of responsibility, and self-control.  Helen was given less of a drive for personal success, than for achievement, more broadly.

In my incomplete story about the Weihnachtsoratorium (the Bach Christmas Oratorio), there are two soloists: the contralto Maria Schreiber, and the soprano Amalie de Groot.  These two characters embody my personal prejudices much more closely.  Amalie starts off being somewhat immature, but grows throughout the story.  The contralto is delightful, and I have put a little excerpt about her in one of my Blog pages. 

Loving Women

I came across this photo of a painting on my Fb feed.   I don't know what makes them send these my way, but—it just stopped me in my tracks.  There's nothing prurient in it; it is so very loving, I have no words. 

Damn!

This morning, a strange song unexpectedly popped into my memory.  I had seen it being performed live, but then forgotten it for ages.  It is Sophie B. Hawkins, singing 'Damn!  I wish I was your lover'.

The meaning of the lyrics is somewhat disguised, but I expect that Hawkins explained the meaning of the lyrics to someone, perhaps while on a talk show somewhere. 

Someone, on Reddit—take it for what it's worth; being on Reddit is no guarantee of reliability—explains that the song is about a woman friend whom the singer is wanting to remove from an abusive relationship.  I'll look after you so sweetly, the song says, you'll feel good and whole again. 

How often I've watched someone from a distance, and felt that strong protective instinct, to take her away from someone who hurts her.  But you cannot say the words of the song, however much you may want to, unless you're in love with the victim.  A lot of women could convince themselves that they are in love with the victim, and that could lead to even more pain. 

The girl I used to observe, who regularly wore bruises—quite openly, something I couldn't figure out; perhaps a cry for help?—let's call her Kelly, was quite pretty.  But I didn't want to approach her.  I wasn't seeing anyone, but something prevented me from talking to her.  Looking back, I think I wasn't confident that I could keep her safe, and happy.  I think I was a little too old to assume I could pull it off.

I guess I could have made myself fall in love with her.  That's an interesting possibility.  But I guess I was a bit more cynical back then; you got to see all sorts of unhappy things while you attended graduate school. 

Another thing you pick up very soon in grad school is that nothing is as easy as it looks.  After a while, you look at everything as if it were an impenetrable maze in which someone is trying to get you lost.  Suspicious.  These days, I could walk into some disaster with my eyes wide open, but not back then. 

But I still think, I wonder whether Kelly is safe and happy.  She won't be with the same guy, or perhaps she is, and has a prosthetic arm.  She was so pretty, and when she smiled, which was rarely, she totally glowed!

Damn.

Kay

Voyager

I just re-read a portion of Voyager.  Guys, I felt like crying; it was so sad.  Not the whole thing; there were emotional parts, which were very emotional, and in between them, I guess I was typing fast to hurry the story along.  If I could have kept up that level of emotional intensity (of the emotional parts) throughout, that would have been a completely different piece of writing. 

There are several people that Helen loves in this story:

Cass Hutchinson, the chief administrator of the ship, whose idea it was to resuscitate Helen from the hibernation array.  She was more a great admirer of Helen than the other way round, but Helen did love Cass.  Cass was the grandmother of Summer Levi.

Melanie Arnaud, who becomes Helen's partner, the Captain of Cutter Alpha.

Lena and Summer, two teenagers whom Helen loves, and who adore Helen.

Daisy Warren, Alison's daughter-in-law, and Lena's mother. 

Sheila Connors, and Yvonne, Jennifer and Madeline Connors.  Yvonne (Vonnie), Jennifer and Maddie Connors, are clones of Sheila.  All of them have very strong feelings for Helen, and Helen, in turn, loves these women. 

Lucy, a dropout woman, who befriends and supports Helen while she was living with the Dropouts in their camp. 

Megan Barrows, the child of Lieutenant Peter Barrows, the original EVA specialist.  Helen loves Megan like crazy, and so do Lena, Marissa, Maya, Diane, and Athene.

When I'm describing the interaction between Helen and these women, the narrative naturally becomes intimate, and emotional.  All the characters are generally innocent to the point of being naïve, reflecting the naivete of the author (me) at the time I wrote the story. 

Kay