Opera Mosè In Egitto by Gioachino Rossini
This guy in the picture is me, a few years ago, very skinny and playing a slave of old Egypt in an opera by Rossini, one of the many war scenes that I have had to dramatize in my work; yet I do not intend to talk about the first topic proposed by Galenkp for this week, but the second “Pressure and Stress”, but they can really go hand in hand, because the internal war is the stress of day to day. It has been a long time since I felt like a prisoner in my own work, and although no one will take me to prison for defending my ideology, I can say that to oppose it is to condemn myself and even affect the welfare of my family. Now I will explain why...
Opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi by Vincenzo Bellini
I am Venezuelan, and I think it is no secret to anyone on Hive how much people talk about my country, politically speaking. You can't imagine how difficult it is for me to write posts daily and not mention anything about the politics of my country, in fact I make posts daily because I need the extra income, just like all Venezuelans, and it also saddens me when a post is not successful, although I have already fallen in love with Hive and that is the engine to continue every day. It is delicate for me to write about this, because although I love my job, my income comes directly from the state, but like the rest of my colleagues we do not agree with the ravages that politics has done in our country for so many years, that is our STRESS, that is MY STRESS!
Right now, for the month of July comes an activity that should be beautiful, there will be an attempt to break the world record for the largest choir in the world. I see it a bit difficult, we are talking about gathering more than 130 singers in one place to make a song, since the current record is from India with more than 120 thousand (I think). The saddest thing is that as lead singers we are forced to do tasks for which we are not prepared, besides my salary is for singing, not for doing other things. Don't get me wrong, it's not my institution that is bad, it's the government that is really the most interested, and boy that month there will be elections for president and they are using music and artists for their political acts, that's what I hate. We are caught in the middle of a war between the government and the opposition, a war that has been going on for years in Venezuela and that only affects us common citizens.
Now MY PRESSURE! You may be thinking, why doesn't Jesus just refuse to participate in these activities? And the truth is that it is as easy as saying no or not going to do them, but we already know what the outcome is, I work in a company where the government makes decisions directly. All of us in the group are afraid of losing our jobs for acting against them, and that makes us feel very bad and prisoners of ourselves. As the first theme proposed by Galenkp says, I can say no, become a prisoner of my decisions and leave my family without an income, or I continue to be a recruit of this war between Venezuelans where my own team sees me very badly for participating in big concerts where the government is sometimes present and they dirty our music with blood. The war between Venezuelans is so strong that although people know that I am not with the government, in this type of massive events they point me out in the same cruel way, without knowing that inside we are very bad for appearing in their televised events.
And when I say that we are bad inside, it is also a very strange feeling, because we are making beautiful music, and I am happy when I sing, in other words, I feel that we are being used, our talent is being used for political purposes and sometimes we don't even notice it. Sometimes we prepare a whole concert only to find out on the last day that it will be a political event, it happens quite often. I am not going to criticize the institution, I think that part of its success is to have an economic source that really benefits the musicians, and not everything is political, in fact it was years ago that I did not feel this dirty as I do today, but it still happens, many times I do not care anymore, I just go and do my job, but knowing that I can not refuse because my dream would end makes me feel very bad... I understand those who migrate and I admire them. Maybe I am a coward dressed as a soldier?