It's been a while...

It's been a while…

By Lynn Mendoza-Khan

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. So I suppose that’s where I’ll start.

It’s been a while since I’ve sung professionally. It’s been a while since I’ve had dinner with my family on an ordinary weeknight. It’s been a while since I’ve had time to relax, or time that was simply mine. It’s been a while since I’ve practiced solo repertoire with a performance on the calendar to work toward.

Most of my days lately have gone to fundraising and writing policy for the Latinx Choral Project. Grant applications, budgets, governance documents, donor email—the quiet work behind the singing.

Paid in joy

I’m not complaining, and I’m not surprised. I knew this would be a lot of work. Nonprofit work is hard, and funding the arts is harder.

Much of my pay comes in other forms. I see it in the joyful faces in front of me every Monday night at rehearsal. I feel it in performances where we sing music that is close to our hearts and share it with people who came to listen. I’m paid in that joy and that appreciation, and it is truly wonderful.

What I didn’t expect was to feel so conflicted. The meaning and purpose this work gives me sit right beside a sadness I didn’t plan for.

Watching him go solo

I homeschooled my son his whole life. I taught him to accompany the choir on piano. I gave him voice lessons. Now he’s using it all in rehearsals for A Christmas Carol at Portland Playhouse. He's thriving on cello and preparing for competitions.

And I'm not beside him in the practice room anymore.

I watch him go it solo with a mix of pride and grief. That chapter of our lives is closing. He's about to start high school, and I know how fast these last years will go. One day he'll leave for college, and our home will feel very different.

I'm proud of the person he's becoming. I'm also scared for him. The job market changes so fast that I don't always know how to guide him toward a career that will give him the life he wants. Every parent wants their child to face enough struggle to build grit, to stay with hard things and find solutions. But not so much that it breaks them.

I know what it feels like to be broken. I want to spare him that. And yet I know that being broken was also the making of me.

Building something different

Those hard years are part of why the Latinx Choral Project exists. For a long time I was dissatisfied with how I was treated in other arts organizations and by other people. So I'm investing deeply in a different way of governing an arts organization.

I want young creatives who come after me to find a supportive, encouraging place to explore what's possible. A place that welcomes different learning styles and different ways of expressing the art form. So much of the choral world, and the arts more broadly, settles into one structured way of doing things. For me, that never felt creative or artistic enough.

If I'm honest, my investment in this work is also about the future. When my son does leave, I'll need something with deep purpose to fill that space. I'm proud of what we're building. It's been a long time since I felt the future was this full of possibility.

Music is still my lifeline.

Through it all, music has been my lifeline. I do miss pursuing my own work as a solo artist. But I have the joy of community, and of singing with people I’ve grown very close to. That’s a lot. It’s more than many people have.

I also have my studio. My voice and piano students at Music With Lynn have been performing solos and stepping into shows, and watching their progress is one of my greatest joys. When a student walks on stage a little braver than last time, I remember being their age, nervous and hopeful, finding out what my own voice could do. Teaching keeps that spark alive in me. In a season when I'm not performing much myself, their music is a gift I get to share in.

Finding the light within

It's rainy and cold here in Portland, and I'm sure the gray plays a part in how I feel. But this is exactly the season to look inward and find the light that's already there. A small spark of excitement, buried deep, waiting to be noticed.

Here's what I want you to know: there is nothing wrong with holding both dark and light at once. Pride and grief. Purpose and longing. Joy and exhaustion. That's not a sign something is broken. It's what a full life feels like.

If this season feels dark for you, look for the light within. Start small. Ten minutes at the piano. One song sung just for yourself. One dinner where the phone stays in another room.

What’s something you haven’t had time to enjoy in a while? What would you like to rediscover—or try for the first time?

’Tis the season to be busy. Let’s make it the season to stay ourselves too. Let’s find our spark together.

* * *

Rain threads the window,

kitchen cold

A cello sings without me.

The table sits bare.

We glow apart each face lit by its own screen.

My songs wait,

folded like winter linen.

A whale breaches the surface, an exaltation of breath and spray,
somewhere in the dark of me it catches:
a pilot flame,

blue and patient,
waiting for a hand to turn it up.