“I was always known as the soprano.” Alice wasn’t just developing a musical identity at an early age, either – even before her first “I’m going to be a singer” moment, her vocal identity as a “high voice” had been internalized and embraced. Even the growing awareness of gender and sex divides that becomes apparent at puberty didn’t shake her view of her vocal self: “I was always known as being the soprano,” she says. “I always had a high voice,” and by then, “it was
definitely already cemented.”
What, though, did being “the soprano” mean, for her? Even from just what I knew of her at that point, she struck me as someone who has very clear ideas about herself, her voice and her capability. Was this an early trait or something she acquired over the years? I didn’t even have to ask. She seemed to have a real sense about areas in her self-history that require further examination, for, later on in the interview, she returned to that theme: What does being a “good” singer, being a “good soprano” mean for her?
Felix: What I'm curious particularly here is you're saying that you felt that [there were standards to be “good”] in your early years of your teen years. I'm wondering how you might have
Alice: What singing good meant? Felix: Yes.
Alice: Beautifully. For me, it was singing beautifully.
Felix: Did anybody ever communicate to you that beautiful was the adjective, the objective?
Alice: I just was always validated for that. It was always like, "You've got blue eyes and your beautiful voice." It was always just– Still in the town I'm living now it's like everybody knows me in my town because I sing it publicly… People often think I know them and it's, "Oh, you have a beautiful voice. Oh, Alice, she has a beautiful voice".
“Loud wasn’t appropriate.” Beauty is always subjective, of course, but for Alice, beauty meant more than just an attractive voice. “I was trying to be smaller, lighter,” she explains. Smaller and lighter, she continues, meant pretty, and pretty meant feminine. Delving into this further with me, Alice comes to realize that being pretty and feminine and musical was a way to distinguished herself both from her brother (“absolutely my mother’s favorite!”) and her domineering mother, too. After she describes an aggressively overachieving mother who seemed to be both
supportive and toxic and highly preferential to her son, I ask:
Felix: Do you think that some of your need to be a pretty singer, to be a perfect singer was a way to establish that you had value in your family?
Alice: Oh, yes. Definitely.
Felix: "I may be a girl but see, I have this."
Alice: "I can do this." My mother doesn't sing. She's not the pretty one. Those were not her roles. She's the smart one. She's the political scientist. She's the print maker. She's the play writer. She's the extroverted. She's–
Felix: She's all the things that you [weren’t allowed to] be.
Alice: I'm [also] a cook. I was an athletic dancer. I do all stuff that she doesn't do.
The need to distinguish herself from her mother and societal expectations for what “pretty” and “feminine” meant magnified the growing divide between her sense of self/identity and the reality of her instrument. Physically, she was small,
delicate…but her voice was not, and in this, she was learning an uncomfortable social lesson: being loud wasn’t appropriate. Being loud, in fact, is still an issue she observes in teenage girls, decades later:
Felix: Did you feel like being loud was a problem? That being like a pretty girl and then being a loud pretty girl was a problem? Alice: Yes. [And] I see that with my students now. They don't want to
be loud. That's one thing, I am loud and I want them to be loud. I want them to feel like if they want to be loud, they can feel loud.
Felix: Where do you think you learned that loud wasn’t appropriate? Alice: I don't know. Because my mother’s very loud. [laughs] That's
probably where. I mean much of my dealing with her has just been I won’t get in the ring.
Felix: Were the girls around you when you were growing up loud? Alice: Yes. I don’t know. They were always the dancers and actors. I
tended to always to like big personalities.
Felix: Right. [As you said], singing, dancing, acting were ways of getting attention for you. But thinking of the broader
population, outside of the music and the theater, were the girls as loud?
Alice: No.
Felix: Okay. Were you loud in class or was this–? Alice: No. I was quite introverted.
Felix: You had very mixed messages then? Alice: Yes.
Singing, we discovered, was a socially acceptable way for her to get attention, but even with singing, there were limits on how loud she could be before she began to receive pushback. The disconnect between the size of her voice and her physical person would cause issues for her, for years to come, for she notes that when addressed her eating disorder and her weight stabilized, her breath support and singing in general began to improve.
“Touch me, see me, feel me, heal me.” Mixed messages continued to be a theme throughout her young musical life. On one hand, it provided intense
gave her a tangible link to her deceased father; on the other hand, by middle school, it was already becoming a source of torment. As a self-described “shy, awkward girl,” getting up and performing felt particularly vulnerable for her. One early incident remains particularly vivid in her memory – the first time she really understood what that being a soprano brought her attention, but also, attention meant being noticed…and in ways she’d never imagined.
My school had a huge music department – it was a public school that might as well be a private school. Very affluent, lots of arts, lots of music. The jazz teacher put together these phenomenal spring/winter concerts…there were auditions for solos and I got the solo from Tommy, “Touch Me, See Me, Feel Me, Heal Me.” It was really high, and this was the first time it was like, “This is [being] a soprano.”
I remember the dress I was wearing, I remember the melody, the song leading up to it in the melody in my mind. I was so nervous, so nervous, shaking, sure everyone could see me dripping sweat, but still singing. The validation of that, the applause afterwards, and that I did something that really blew people away.
That was the 7th grade, awkward… to sing “Touch Me, See Me” was like the thing I was identified by for years after that. Guys making fun of me for that… walking down the hall singing in a high, squeaky voice.
I don’t think my teacher talked to me [about it]… When I was in middle school, this whole culturally sensitive thing… it just didn’t exist. I don’t think it even crossed anybody’s brain.
Unaware of the sexual nature of the piece, she had seen it as a challenge to sing and had enjoyed the public validation of having performed something difficult; the boys around her saw the underlying sexual context and she was immediately tainted by that. “Touch Me, See Me” was a label that would follow her throughout high school.