Something Is Always on Fire Read online

  DEDICATION

  To my parents, my siblings, my elders, my family,

  my besties and my offspring

  EPIGRAPH

  But the one who did not know and did things deserving of blows will be beaten lightly. But much will be required from everyone to whom much has been given.

  But even more will be demanded from the one to whom much has been entrusted.

  —LUKE 12:48

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Who Am I and Why?

  What Do I Want and How Do I Get It?

  What’s Holding Me Back?

  Why Am I Here?

  Acknowledgements

  Photo Section

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  As I was wheeled into the operating room for emergency open-heart surgery, I didn’t know I had only a 13 percent chance of living to see my thirty-second birthday.

  Just two days before—on June 8, 2009—I was at the Black Hoof restaurant in Toronto, when I suddenly felt a sharp pressure at the base of my throat and a strange numbness in my extremities. Am I getting a cold? I would be starting rehearsals for my concerts of Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra the next day, but I was still anticipating a hearty dinner when I realized my arms felt tingly. I eyed my red wine: Am I having an allergic reaction? Dear God, please don’t let me be allergic to wine!

  I was concerned enough to cancel my charcuterie plate (and I love a good charcute) but sure-footed enough to climb into my car and drive myself home. By the time I arrived, my legs were also feeling tingly. My husband, Markus, called 911 and an ambulance rushed me to the hospital. I was given medication for hypertension, then kept overnight. I was released the next morning, with an MRI scheduled for later in the week.

  After a day and a half of me lying on the couch, woozy and just not quite myself, a friend drove me to my family doctor, who sent me back to the hospital with a strongly worded note requesting an MRI immediately. Three hours later I was in surgery. My blood pressure was so high it had ripped a hole in my aorta, the largest blood vessel branching from the heart. The blood was escaping from my aorta instead of circulating through my limbs—hence the numbness and the tingling. This condition—a dissected aorta—is extremely rare in people not of retirement age, let alone a young woman who has never had any children. It is usually diagnosed in an autopsy after sudden death from internal bleeding.

  My surgeon opened my sternum, then repaired the tear in my aorta with a stent. When I regained consciousness, my parents were at my bedside, having flown in from Nova Scotia. As much as I do not fear death, the terror in their eyes told me how unbearable losing me would have been for them. Though my father, a man who himself had had a quadruple bypass, had constantly warned me to watch my health, I cockily believed I was too full of life to die. I now have a nifty scar—just like my dad’s—running like a zipper down my breastbone, to remind me otherwise.

  I knew that I would have to cancel some key engagements I’d been looking forward to. I had been invited to Cape Canaveral to watch the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour in which Canadian astronaut Julie Payette would carry my album Surprise! into space. My Strauss concerts with Peter Oundjian conducting the Toronto Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall and my debut in Porgy and Bess at the prestigious Styriarte Festival in Graz, Austria, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting, were both casualties of my emergency open-heart surgery.

  But pulling through my operation spurred me forward: Okay, I’ve survived. Now, get me out of this hospital. My own impatience elevated my blood pressure and delayed my hospital release for a couple of days. When I finally did escape, it was with five medications to take daily, including a beta blocker and a diuretic. This didn’t stop me from resuming my schedule. Less than two weeks after my surgery, I appeared on the national morning show Canada AM to let the public know I was recovering well. Two weeks later, I performed one song at a dear friend’s wedding in my hometown. Then, a little over two months after my sternum had been opened, I travelled to Prince Edward Island for my first concert: Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été at the Indian River Festival. After the Berlioz, I had arranged for a two-week vacation for my family and my long-time voice teacher and mentor Mary Morrison, in an old farmhouse on the ocean.

  From the outside looking in, my life seemed on an upswing. But it would soon be in shambles. There’s nothing like an encounter with mortality to force you to look from the inside out, to examine your world with a hard eye and see what’s working, what’s missing, what may need changing. And sometimes you come to the wrong conclusions . . .

  Adding to the confusion and instability growing inside me was the fact that I wasn’t taking responsibility for much of anything in my life at this point. When you’re a child prodigy, the focused nature of your training goes a long way to convincing you your needs are the only ones that matter. I came to believe the rules didn’t apply to me. Over the years, I’d grown very comfortable with (and proficient at) lying to pretty much everyone: my parents, my husband, my management, myself. Until I was twenty-eight, I hovered around 350 pounds, and you can’t be that fat without telling yourself a few big ones.

  In October—four months after my surgery—I temporarily separated from my high school sweetheart and husband of ten years. Our dissolution wasn’t dramatic. There wasn’t any yelling or screaming. I felt adrift and unreachable. I knew I was in a prison of my own making, but I didn’t know how I’d even gotten there, or why.

  Arguably, my separation had been coming for a while, even if my reasons weren’t entirely clear. I just let it happen. I didn’t fight it. My career always affords me an exit strategy: getting on a plane and “escaping” somewhere is the nature of my job. Anyone can use a career to swallow up a relationship. Any job can make it possible to abandon anything stressful without having to deal with the consequences. I used my job as an excuse and I left. My husband moved out of our Toronto home because he didn’t want to be surrounded by all that was ours. I sank into the steady stream of ever-changing countries and repertoire. I certainly had nights when I choked on the grief of it all, suffocating on the personal failure and shame. I didn’t know what would happen or how I would end up, but I had the merciful sanctuary of distracting myself with the changing scenery my job afforded me.

  I also had my Bikram yoga practice to help me maintain some semblance of accountability. I’ve been an avid hot-yoga practitioner since 2006. I would enrol in a daunting nine-week teacher training course in the spring of 2010, but in the months leading up to that, my calendar would take me to Seoul, New York, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, Oslo, Luxembourg, London, even to christen a ship in the Netherlands. Becoming a hot-yoga teacher would turn out to be a transformative experience. At the end of each of the nine gruelling weeks, I wrote a detailed dispatch from the trenches of teacher training to my “nearests and dearests”—the circle of friends closest to me who were supporting me and praying me through what I knew would be the hardest thing I’d ever done. Excerpts from these emails are included in this memoir because I believe they provide insight into the consistencies of who I am, while also revealing who I’ve become and how I’ve changed.

  While I might have been trying to squeeze more out of life after nearly dying ten months before I went to Las Vegas for my yoga course, I was also miserable and numb. I was trying to find words that wouldn’t come. Trying to find answers that weren’t ready to be found. I didn’t know what I believed anymore. I was unable to authentically engage in the most instinctual of pleasures. I had n
o reliable connection to anything but my job, and sometimes I didn’t even like that very much.

  My parents were worried. My friends were worried. My husband was worried. I was worried. This moral confusion was new to me after having been born and raised in a loving home with a strong Christian faith. Faith was the spine that had held my life upright and given it meaning. With no clue how to fix it and no will to do so, my vision blurred by guilt and shame, by the fall of 2009 I had developed a kind of comfort with this searching sense of confusion. It had become my new reality.

  In the times when I add cheese to my whining, I remind myself that I’ve won the cosmic lottery by being born in Canada. I reaffirm that God has blessed me on a scale almost ridiculous in its rewards. I also believe that my life has been balanced by genuine heartache, not all of it self-imposed through what I like to call my own “emotional splurging.” Everything in my life—good, bad, sad, triumphant, tragic—has served its specific function in steering me to where I’m supposed to go (or not go), and after some conspicuous faltering, I now find myself at a place of relatively consistent contentment, slowly inching toward peace. I can begin to understand the trajectory of my life as being divided (so far) into seven-year periods separated by some pivotal life change.

  At thirty-nine, I’ve attempted to take stock, to examine the questions that have bubbled to the surface over the last few “sets of seven” and steer myself purposefully forward through the next seven years. Because if not now, then when? Why put it off any longer? I mean, it’s never a perfect time. Something is always on fire. No matter who you are or how much you do or do not have. Some part of your life is always going to be in flames. If it’s not your finances, it’s your relationship, or your work, or your house, or your play, or your kids, or your mind, or your parents, or your car, or your health, or your taxes.

  I’m sure there must be a study somewhere that examines the cosmic, undeniable shift that enters the reality of all sentient humans every seven years or so. The fork in the road where you ask yourself, Am I really where I want to be? and Am I feeling how I want to feel? Because one thing I know for sure: Nothing has turned out how I thought it would. And it’s in those periods in my life where I feel something percolating, a groundswell putting into question every decision I’ve made, that I ask myself, Who am I and why? I search for an answer I can live with but try to find a hypothesis that will keep me hungrily moving toward a destiny of greater purpose. If I don’t, I run the risk of becoming bitter or, worse, apathetic.

  I also ask myself, How do I get what I want? Because I believe you can have it all, with the right timing, heaps of patience and the core veracity of what it is you actually want. Asking the question all on its own is a huge part of the equation for me. However, unless I ask myself What’s holding me back? I’ll never fully examine the obstacles and the openings that come into my life to guide, teach and, ultimately, maneuver me toward getting what I want. Because really, we’re only here to pinpoint, or even clarify, the existential prognosis that results from answering the age-old question, Why am I here?

  This memoir will contain some universal truths because we’re all in this together, but you, dear reader, will decide for yourself what parts of the book are inspirational and what parts are a cautionary tale. I have the words SELF-CONTROL, WISDOM, LAUGHTER, TRUTH, FORGIVENESS tattooed on the inside of my left forearm. It’s my cheat sheet. I have yet to experience any of them to their fullest and have never achieved them simultaneously. They represent the gifts I most want present in myself and in the people who surround me. And not one of us has it all figured out. But like getting pregnant, the fun part is in the trying.

  PART 1

  WHO AM I AND WHY?

  DATE: SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 2010, 9:37 PM

  FROM: MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN

  TO: NEARESTS AND DEARESTS

  SUBJECT: LIFE ON THE STRIP

  To my Nearests and Dearests,

  I’m literally on my last leg. And it’s taken me forever to get here. I have mixed feelings about how quickly the time has gone by, but the irony is I almost didn’t come. A hefty mix of fatigue and fear provided ample reason for me to drag my feet with my application. I think because I put this yoga course in my calendar over 3 years ago, it somehow took on an objectivity that made its actual arrival somewhat of a surprise. I certainly didn’t think that I’d feel like a whole other person than the one who started this practice over 3 years ago. As you all know, in June 2009 I almost died. I never indulged in the so-called me time that’s supposed to help the dust settle. I just jumped right back in, and I’ve been focusing on getting better, getting back to work and getting back in shape. But I haven’t been to a yoga class in 3 weeks and I’m about to start an intensive 26-posture course that sees me practising twice a day in 42-degree (Celsius) heat for ninety minutes—in addition to learning all the anatomy, the history and the class dialogue in three languages (my choice).

  I’m trying to stay positive, but I keep wondering if I’ve made a horrible mistake. I owe so much to this practice. I’ve lost a ton of weight; it’s strengthened my spine (literally and figuratively); it’s connected my mind and body, strengthened my singing technique. I’m also convinced that it’s the reason I healed so quickly and completely after my open-heart surgery. I make my living as an opera singer, but I’ve been often asked if I’m looking to start a new profession as a yoga teacher. I know many of the yogis at this course will be future studio owners, but I’m not sure that’s my end game. I’ve never been very good at staying in one spot. I’m mostly looking to accomplish something truly daunting, and it would be nice to be able to teach while I travel for work. Which is why I plan to learn the series’ dialogue in English, French and German. But I don’t know if that’s a realistic goal, since I’ll be grateful to just make it to the end of these 9 weeks. For now, I’ve been given very insightful advice to focus on me, be open and approach each class like it’s my very first one.

  I’ve never been to Vegas. I’m ready for something new and intimidating and good for me. I hope this is it. To avoid wasting time and energy on hair elastics and wet hair, I chopped off all my Afro this morning, so I’m newly shorn and good to go. We’ve started our descent into Las Vegas. I’m sitting on the aisle, but I’m catching intermittent glances of lightly snow-dusted peaks and the Nevada desert. This vista is undoubtedly more calming than what awaits me on the strip.

  Much love to you all,

  Measha

  Interviewers often ask me when I first decided to become an opera singer. I usually wonder if that means when did I first decide I could sing, or when did I first discover what opera was and that it was something for me? (I do know that these journalists aren’t likely to be interested in the semantics of their question.) The question itself implies that they don’t know that a singer is its own species. Not a profession. I decide to assume that they are asking me when I decided I was, Singer. When I became conscious of whatever genetic cocktail formed the ingredients needed to make up that rarest of breeds called Singer, and the ultra-specialized subcategory Opera Singer, that has made my friendly freak show complete. But in the way you can neither decide nor influence your own DNA, I can best describe my animal as always having been one possessing the compelling predisposition to be, Singer.

  This doesn’t mean by any stretch that people who are in love with the sound of themselves singing, or beguiled with the process of singing, are not good singers. Not at all. However, to be the animal that is Singer, there has to be a hunger that cannot be sated by anything but singing. You feel most alive by the process of creating evocative sound. Now, sometimes the people who claim to feel this way are not good. They’re actually quite bad. Sometimes those people are delusional. They may have very strong portions of their souls that believe with great intensity that they should sing, even though they should not. Everyone knows someone who fits this description. But, mercifully, that’s not the kind of person I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the perso
n who honestly could not be anything else. I’m talking about the planets aligning and knitting together in my mother’s womb a human who, seemingly without any free will, and subjected to a force stronger than gravity or the tides, neither “comes to a realization” nor “decides to be” but instead simply knows she is fulfilling her responsibilities to herself and to mankind by pledging her allegiance to, and pooling all her energies and resources to become, Singer.

  I couldn’t tell you when that happened. It just always was.

  But since this is a memoir, I should tell you that I was seven years old when I took my first voice lesson. I don’t think I truly knew what I was doing there. To learn piano was what I really wanted, because my sister had lessons and I wanted everything my older sister had. I went to these voice lessons, and because I was raised to respect authority, I did what I was told. I have never been an (overtly) subversive person. It is of no interest to me to stage a mutiny or do any overthrowing nonsense. I like to think composers such as James Rolfe and Michael Tilson Thomas have written pieces for me because I’m willing to fully commit to trying just about anything, since I’m confident that I can usually give or get people what they want.

  To be good at a skill as specialized as singing, something that so many people love and cherish, is a huge responsibility, and I take it very seriously. I’ve had over thirty years to have that calling take root and grow within me. I remain passionate about, and committed to, knowing everything there is to know about singing because . . . well, it genuinely interests me.

  I honestly can’t imagine myself doing anything else. That is not to say I don’t have any other interests or skills, but all my greatest joys can be linked to the life that singing has gifted to me. All my greatest agonies have been made bearable because of the outlet singing has afforded me. Becoming a mom was made sweeter by the bonding time with my babies that I was able to build into my schedule because I had built enough of an infrastructure within my small business that, to a certain extent, it could gift to me the closest thing I would ever get to “maternity leave.”