I Am An Alien Castrato

Many times, I have thought that I am an alien. I am so different from everybody else that I feel like another species on another planet.

People cannot relate to me- sometimes, even my psychiatrist can't, and she is supposedly schooled in these things. But aha- knowing what it is like and actually LIVE it- therein lies the rub, as they say. Today I found interesting author, Stanley Victor Paskavich, who writes of being bipolar, "I feel sorry for every therapist, psychologist, and psychiatrist I've ever met. I know I've put thoughts in their mind they will never forget".

Yesterday, I listened to an old recording of a famous singer named Alessandro Moreschi. He is famous for one thing: Being "the last castrato". In short, he had his testicles removed as a boy in order to preserve his treble voice indefinitely. This Edison cylandar was recorded over 100 years ago when he was 46 years old! He wasn't the only castrato living at the time, but certainly the youngest, and hence the "only" one. What must he have felt to be unlike everyone around him? Then again, this is all he knew; the operation took place when he was a young boy. Hearing that a man had his "balls" removed is an idea that most people have a hard time getting their minds around- those "thoughts in their mind they will never forget".

I don't feel much different than Moreschi must have. I sing my songs to the world every day. In fact, I am compelled to. This is what I must share with those around me. And yet, I share confusing things- scary, yet beautiful things. I sacrifice the self I could have been, for the self I know in my heart I always have been. I am an alien. I am that castrato spinning hauntingly beautiful tones, one by one, blended together at the edges seamlessly.

Moreschi did have other castrato camerades. They were many years older, and apparently not solo quality when Fred Gaisburg came to record the Pope in 1902. All these years later, we can't know the true sound of Moreschi and his choir mates of the day, as the recording techniques were in their infancy. We simply do not have the experience of hearing a live castrato. This was the Sistine Chapel Choir's only way preserving and communicating their sound and thereby allowing us in the future to "travel back in time". I think Paskavich was onto something, when he said, "The greatest communication barrier known to man is the lack of the common core of experience. 'When's the last time you had a Manic Episode Doctor?'" When is the last time you heard a castrato?

I post on a bulletin board for those with bipolar. It is here that I don't feel so much of an alien. Those members of my choir that I can sing with. As a group, we help each other with our experiences or just a kind ear; I've also made a couple very close friends with whom I can share anything. After I wrote the entry on creativity, my dearest friend on the board, having read the entry said that she isn't creative. I had a hard time believing this. She said she had made some jewelry and it just wasn't her thing. I told her that she may not be good at arts and crafts, but she *is* good at empathy and being a good friend. Two soloist singing to each other. Different tunes, but same words.

As for being aliens, we aren't really. We can walk among the others and "pass" quite easily. And we need time apart from them and the board to show us what the rest of the world is like. We are always singing our bipolar arias to the universe- always walking through time moment by moment, sharing our songs through the hours, days, years and- if we're lucky- the centuries.