Wednesday, May 27, 2009

As if auditions weren't stressful enough...

Today is as good a day as any for this blog to go back to it's roots, chronicling the crazy life of a soprano with a healthy dose of audition-induced neurosis. Last night I had an audition after a few weeks off. You'd be amazed at how easy it is to "forget how to sing". Auditions and performances tend to come in waves, and the first time back out in front of folks after some dead time can be disconcerting.

I got to the warm-up room with plenty of time yesterday, and realized after a few minutes of vocalising that it just wasn't going to be my day. I was phonating, my range was fine, but it wasn't easy and I wasn't thrilled with the tone. Most singers will agree that the most interesting part of those 'off' days is the second guessing and blame: if I were on a different medication, if the open windows at work hadn't let the pollen in, if I'd slept better, if I hadn't had salsa six weeks ago...

Some famous singer whose identity currently eludes me once said that her voice was 'right' about twice a month, and those days were always days she had no performances. With that in mind I sucked it up and went off to my audition.

The great thing about auditioning a lot is that after a while your rep is so ingrained that you could sing it under any circumstances. If I were suspended upside-down underwater and I heard the opening rolled chords of "Chi il bel sogno" I could probably sing the whole thing and still float the high notes. Last night, though, I dealt with a new obstacle: my contact lens almost fell out.

There is plenty of blame to go around on that front, and it all lands at my feet, because I don't replace my disposable contacts enough. I'm completely exposed, standing in a dress in the middle of a big empty room with only two other people, and I'm trying not to blink ferociously in the middle of my aria. At one point I really thought the thing was coming out and I completely stopped counting. The pianist waited, I went on, and a few dramatic eye-closes later the issue was resolved.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Day One of Training

You now can add something else to the list of crazy things I have decided to do: training for a triathalon. Saturday was Day One of training, which really only means that I took my bike in for a tune-up.

Mid-morning Saturday I walked my old bike over to the local bike shop, which shall remain nameless. No one had answered the phone for a few days, and of course they don’t have voice mail or an answering machine, but I figured that at 11 am on a Saturday there would have to be someone there working.

I approached the front door, bracing myself for the onslaught of creepiness that usually accompanies a trip to the bike shop. Instead, two perfectly nice workers were standing in the shop which was clearly being renovated. I told them I was just looking for a tune-up, and they suggested I wait while they got one of the employees who was just next door.

So one of the electricians went into the bar next door (you may remember that this whole story takes place before noon) and got one of the guys. “Come back next weekend” he told me. I thanked him and mentioned that I would probably take my bike some place else. He looked at me like that was the most absurd thing he had ever heard: “There’s no other bike place in South Boston”.

Believe it or not, sir, occasionally I leave the neighborhood. It’s rare and unpleasant, but not unheard of.

My bike currently rests at a bike shop in the Back Bay, waiting for its tune-up and flat repair. I did use a stationary bike yesterday in an effort to get my training off the ground. Today, a few miles jogging and a trip to buy some goggles.

Monday, May 18, 2009

NPR lets me down

In some of the circles I frequent one’s cultural literacy is indicated by the fervor with which they support National Public Radio. For years I told people I liked it when I really didn’t. Then I owned to not really liking it, and around the same time I started to enjoy listening to it. I really became a fan when the economy took a bad turn. I was out most evenings at BC this year, so my winter commute back to Southie usually involved some commentary on the economy and the soothing tones of the NPR hosts.

Today I ran an errand mid-day and my radio was tuned to NPR. There was an hour long interview with Ryan Murphy, who created Nip/Tuck and who is currently debuting Glee, the new Fox show about a high school choir. The host of Fresh Air, Terry Gross, made this comment at the outset: “I had never heard of such a thing as a show choir. I assume this wasn’t just made up for your show”.

Oooh, that might be the blog post I have been searching for this week, I thought initially. Something pithy about how you haven’t lived if you don’t know what show choir is, and that would be the end of it. But later in the hour, after a few stops in stores, I started the car up again to hear the Terry Gross riffing on religion. That’s when things got interesting.

She brought it up because Murphy is gay. Her first question was about how his parents had dealt with him coming out since they were “religious” – there was no mention of creed or denomination, just the vague moniker of "religious" that seemed in context to be synonymous with homophobic. It was Murphy who brought up that his family was Catholic and that he had gone to Catholic school. “How did you endure Catholic school?” was the next question.

As the conversation progressed, Murphy explained that when he was younger he wanted to be Pope and had been told by his mother that the way someone became Pope was by not sinning at all during the day. So every day 6-year old Murphy would get up and pray that he wouldn’t sin at all that day. To me, that is charming evidence of the desire to do good. To the host this afternoon, it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

She really wouldn’t let up on the Pope thing, and Murphy went on about how he had been fascinated by the lives of the Saints, and that part of his motivation was that he thought it would be ‘cool’ to choose who gets to be a saint. The interviewer still couldn’t believe that he had wanted to be Pope; she was amused when he admitted to having ‘practiced’ with a fake crozier – all I could think of were the dozens of friends I have who admit to having ‘played’ priest, or ‘played’ mass when they were growing up.

Murphy spoke really eloquently about how his Catholic upbringing had impacted his art. He gave the most credit to the ‘storytelling and theatricality’ (his words) of Catholic liturgy and sacramentals. It seems that his religious background is life-giving to him, and some follow-up questions on that would have made this into the interview that I wanted to hear. Instead Gross hammered home this idea that a Catholic upbringing must have been damaging to him, and she was operating under the assumption that he was now anti-Catholic.

One of the final questions was “How have you dealt with the fact that you are now essentially persona non grata in the Catholic church?” Luckily I restrained myself from screaming at the radio so that I could hear his answer, in which he refuted the premise of her question much better than my irked tirade would have. He said, in short “I still go to Catholic Church, and there are other gay people there, and everyone is warm and welcoming”. Amen, brother.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Fraud alert

My credit card was declined at the Office Max in Dorchester last weekend. That's not the first time that has happened at the particular store - apparently my credit company has a fraud department freak-out every time I try to spend hundreds of dollars on worship aid printing.

Part of me is glad that they are looking out for me, but part of me wishes there were a box you could check on your credit card application that read "My life is weird". My recent charges include a round of apps at a Chili's in West Virginia, a round of drinks at a BC bar in Allston, and yes, $800 of copies. That's not fraud, just my life.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

On being where I'm meant to be, and finding God in the woods.

Those students who use this blog as a procrastination technique had a disappointing week this week, as I didn’t post during finals when procrastination is needed the most. The reason I didn’t write much is simple busy-ness. I was in a great production at Boston College featuring alumni who work in the arts and current students. We had an open dress for students who wanted to come on Friday night, and then last night was the ticketed benefit. As I was standing back stage waiting to make my entrance while the students sang and the band played, I got goosebumps as I realized that I was doing exactly what I wanted to do and that I was exactly where I wanted to be. I have worked so hard to improve as a performer, and I am so lucky not only to have opportunities to perform, but to have the perspective to appreciate my opportunities.

On a slightly different note, tonight was the last mass out at BC with my darling choir. I remember when I was growing up it was very cool to say “I don’t believe I need to go to Church, I just like to go out to the woods to pray”. I was pretty skeptical that those people ever actually went out in the woods, but I think I also was starting to have an inkling that faith is not just about us and God, but about us and us. I knew that I found God my family, but that was so normal that it almost seemed like cheating, and I didn’t feel like I could make the argument that you need others to encounter God without some stronger evidence.

I no longer have much of an interest in making any arguments, but I have a little more evidence toward my initial thesis. Worshipping with the community at Boston College brings me closer to God. I have people there who know me, and I see the students there live their faith every day in a way that educates me. They walk the walk when we leave liturgy, and in my limited time that I am on campus I am able to see that. We come together in love every week, and I believe more strongly in God’s grace because I hear their testimony to it.

It’s hard to find that these days, especially for Catholics. Parishes are not always the neighborhood centers they used to be, and it is easy for us to gather for worship not as a new Body but as collection of isolated islands, still bearing our burdens alone. On the occasions that I imagine what it was like for the early church (I probably do that more than most people, but still not so often that it’s too weird), I visualize personalities coming together. It’s not that these people decided to start a Church because they were all best friends, but because the power of their experience of Christ bound them to each other. Their shared experience made the challenges of being together and loving each other worth bearing. Their community was not about being happy or liking each other, not about power or eloquence (or even music) but about fellowship in the Risen Christ.

The point of this rambling? I experience God’s grace through the community to whom I purportedly minister. I am fortunate and I am grateful.

Monday, May 4, 2009

West Virginia report

I have returned triumphant from my West Virginia adventure, with a Creation performance under my belt and only a few near catastrophes.

Friday

I was very lucky to get a ride from a friend to the airport after working all day. When we pulled up to Logan he asked what airline I was flying, and drove to Terminal C after I told him I was flying United. I was running a little late so I dashed to a self-check-in kiosk and swiped my credit card to check in.

“Reservation on US Airways. Unable to process reservation for other airline”

Oops. I guess I thought the U in US Airways stood for United. A quick inquiry revealed that US Airways was in Terminal B, and I hauled myself and my bright pink luggage through the airport to the neighboring terminal. A few minutes later, boarding pass in hand, I went quickly through security and toward Gate 19.

Gate 19 was curiously deserted, and I checked my boarding pass again. As it turned out, 19 was my seat number, not my gate number, and I set off at a sprint again hoping to get to Gate 7 with enough time to board. As I ran through the terminal I passed another runner and shouted “you can do it!” He was not amused.

My late arrival left me in boarding zone 7, so by the time I boarded the plane there was no more space in the overhead compartments. Having been burned over checked baggage before, I felt the panic rise up when I heard my carry-on was going underneath. Sensing that emotion, the flight attendant asked if I had anything valuable in there I wanted to keep with me on the plain.

I did a quick mental inventory. Contact lenses? Already in my bag. Score? I could get another one at the university if necessary. Then it hit me. I needed my gown.

Surrounded by impatient travelers I opened my suitcase, took out my ivory ball gown, left the suitcase at the door of the plane and carried the gown down the aisle before I shoved it in my oversized bag. I can’t imagine what my fellow passengers thought, but if any of them take as great a delight in writing about weird behavior as I do, then I probably showed up on a few blogs over the weekend. Or maybe they were too busy writing about the preponderance of swine-flu masks on our fellow passengers.

After we landed I called the conductor who, with the bass soloist, was picking me up at Charlotte-Douglas. They asked which airline I had flown in on, and I still couldn't keep them straight. So after a two hour flight I turned to the person next to me and asked "What airline are we on?"

The gentlmen pcking me up had a good laugh as I took my gown out of my shoulder bag and put it back in the suitcase that had blessedly arrived with the plane in North Carolina. On the three hour drive to West Virginia I channeled my inner 8-year-old by curling up in the back seat and snoring.

We arrived at the conductor’s house a little after midnight. He set up the coffee machine for the morning, showed me how to turn it on, left to stay elsewhere (leaving us more room) and we all went to bed.

Saturday

Rehearsal Saturday was scheduled from 10-4. I woke around 7:30 and wandered downstairs to turn on the coffee maker which had been so generously set up for me. I pushed the suggested “on” button and nothing happened, so I checked the plug and discovered it was not plugged in. After arranging for some electricity there was still no sign of brewage. My first thought was that maybe the outlet wasn’t working, so I switched the plug to a different one. Still nothing. At that point I was a little concerned. Could I really wake the conductor up before rehearsal because I’m too dopey to figure out the coffee pot? After about 10 minutes of exploration I determined that I had actually plugged in the food processor. That was easily my third ‘soprano-moment’ in 24 hours. A delicious cup of Folgers followed.

Rehearsal was long, as promised. Concord University has a great facility, and the choir we were singing with was extraordinarily well-prepared and so welcoming. There was a chamber orchestra comprised of winds (string parts were played mostly in the organ part). Bostonians take note: There are some great players off the beaten path in West Virginia. We can become so arrogant by our glut of talent that we forget that there are very talented people in all different places, not just in big cities.

After a grueling day of rehearsal (our only rehearsal before the show) we went to a hibachi restaurant. Our conductor, sensitive to the fact that I am a vegetarian, recalled that they have a veggie dinner. The dinner was delicious, but our conductor seemed to have forgotten that by definition our meal would involve raw meat being cooked in front of us. Maybe not so sensitive to my vegetarianism, but as I have often stated, I don’t care what other people eat.

Sunday

Sunday morning I tracked down a Catholic church in that heavily Methodist area and worshipped with the community of Sacred Heart Parish. After Mass I fussed with my hair, changed into my gown, and we hustled over to the performance.

The concert was wonderful. The work that the conductor had done with the choir was so impressive, and the community was amazingly appreciative. I had a blast with the chorus and with the other soloists. I wish there were more to say about the performance. It was really a thrill and I felt so lucky to be there.

Monday

I came home. Not much exciting to report there. Now to getting dug out of all my emails.