What I've done with my winter break

A few people suggested that I post while on my little break so that they could be kept up to date on what I am doing. Please don't take my silence as a sign of my ignoring your request, take it as a sign that I haven't been doing much of anything. Auditions start up again the first weekend of January; all I've been doing is working on some new rep, starting my training for my next race, and lying on the couch.

I did have a church gig today, and even though they read the shorter option for the Gospel, I've still got Anna and Simeon on the brain. In honor of our boy Simeon, here's some T.S. Eliot:

A Song for Simeon
T.S. Eliot

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.

Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come ?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.

(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

I suppose one of the reasons I so enjoy ol' Thomas Stearns is that he and I are equally fascinated with the liturgical calendar. See you on Ash Wednesday, T.S.

Ecce ancilla domini - the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Yesterday's Gospel was the story of the Annunciation. I taught a lesson on it last week which had me pretty well Annunciated out, and when I heard the familiar opening yesterday I groaned a little inside. But if you have to choose one pericope to spend the better part of a week with, that's a pretty good one to choose.

No matter how many times I hear the story, no matter how many times I make the point that Mary said yes to God, no matter how many times I pray the Angelus, there's never an answer there to the big question: Why did she say yes? There was no reason for her to suspend disbelief. Why in the world would she have believed that God had chosen her for something? There's nothing in the text that tells us why should would have believed - or maybe, more appropriately, there's nothing that would convince most of us if we were in her shoes.

Faith is a habit. My guess is that most of us have been in a position before to say "screw it. I'm saying yes. I'm diving in." to whatever has been asked of us. When there is no reason to say yes and the evidence is piling up against taking the risk, we put doubt on hold and decide to try against better judgment. Maybe we have made a habit of believing God's promises of good for us. Maybe we have made a habit of trusting the people around us to catch us when we fall. Maybe we have stopped caring about the consequences and decided to value the potential good above the potential disaster. Our boldest decisions can be illogical and unreasonable, and if we're lucky they are the daring choices that change our lives or change the world.



- Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation

My Christmas Tree

I don't have a lot of holiday decorations. [There are a lot of things that could go in the blank of the sentence "I don't have a lot of ____________", mostly becuase I don't have a lot of space .]I told myself this year that I couldn't put anything out until I cleaned up a little, which is exactly what I did on the snow day.

When I lived in New Bedford my cousin sent me a little tree that lights up and that has been the centerpiece of any holiday decor for the last 5 years. Last year as I was plugging it in a fuse blew and it stopped lighting up. I had some unresolved anxiety that day because I flipped out, crying in the kitchen about not even being able to keep a fake, foot-tall tree, with the end point of my tearful musings being the usual one: dying alone.

I kept the tree in the box of seasonal stuff and took it out again Friday, finding a bag with replacement fuses and bulbs. I replaced the fuses, jiggled all the bulbs in their sockets, and plugged it in again. Nothing.

When I walked into my kitchen this morning it was lit. I don't know why it started working now, but I'm not looking this gift horse in the mouth. It's a Christmas miracle.

SNOW DAY!!!

Is there anything more precious in all the world than a snow day? Coming as they do in the thick of the school year (it's no longer 'the beginning' of the year, and the end isn't even close to in sight), these random free days are license to be lazy. The state is shut down, there's nothing much to do other than sit around.

I speak, obviously, on behalf of teachers. Students have a completely different experience, one which doesn't really concern me on a day when I am not required to be in school.

This extra day begins our Christmas break. Another blessing of 2008: the holidays fall in the middle of the week, which means that we get two full weeks off.

I have been going flat out since the first of December. Sleeping until 7:45 this morning was the highest of luxuries.

Everybody stay safe today!

Last Audition of the Month

Tonight I will have my last audition of December - the fourth, by my count. After this audition (and a subsequent rehearsal - no rest for the weary) I will buy a bottle of wine. Then I will drink some of it, reflux be dashed. I haven't had any since the beginning of the month, fearing the vocal issues that can come with a glass of red wine. Tonight, I live it up.

NYC auditions, December 2008

Yesterday was my third trip to NYC in as many weeks for summer Young Artist Program auditions. Last weekend I spent the whole weekend down there, staying with old friends from Nativity, watching the ACC Championship game at a crowded BC bar on the lower east side, and somehow ending up in Hoboken on Saturday night playing Rock Band.

I have been so busy that I didn’t want to spend much time away from Boston this weekend, so I decided to go down and back in one day. I have been riding Bolt Bus, the new discount Greyhound line that has wireless and outlets for computers. By the time I had my schedule figured out many of the buses were sold out for yesterday, so I got stuck with a 7am bus down and a 7:30pm bus back. Luckily for me my lovely brother agreed to come into midtown and goof off with me between my noon-time arrival and 3:30, when I had to be at the audition site.

Our bus got in a little early, and my brother wasn’t off the train yet. I left him a message and decided to head over to Penn Station to use a bathroom after the long ride. The only thing standing between Penn and me? A parade of hundreds of Santa Clauses.

I love Boston because it is an active city but it’s manageable. When I am there, I always feel like I am in control. There is nothing to make you feel like you are out of control like swimming upstream on 8th Avenue through a crowd of Santas while having to use the bathroom.

I made it into the station and into the line for the ladies’ room. It’s always disheartening to have to wait in line for a bathroom you know will be disgusting. It’s like waiting in line for a portable john. As I was in line my brother called as we went through the normal “Where are you? Where are you?” “I’m in line for the bathroom at Penn Station!” I said. My brother’s reply “I’m stuck in the middle of a Santa Claus parade!”

The rest of the goofing off went relatively well. Manhattan was ridiculously crowded, even more than usual, because of the various holiday festivities. We swung by Rockefeller Center because we had heard rumors of a tuba festival, and we were still seeing wandering Santas hours after the parade began on the steps of the post office. I spent an hour warming up, sang well, changed back into my sneakers and hauled to the bus stop, hoping to get on an earlier bus. I was successful, getting an open seat on a 5:30 bus and walking back into my apartment at 10:10.

So I did it. I had colleagues in grad school who would go down for NYC auditions and I just wasn’t ready for that. Making demos and sending them to these programs that only audition in New York was just too much for me (and in retrospect, I wasn’t even close to ready vocally). It took me until I was 25 to start doing summer programs, which many singers start doing around 19 – first I did one in Boston, then one in California, and finally one abroad, where half of my fellow singers were 6 or 7 years younger than I am.

I’m finally ready for a challenge as small as going down to New York to audition. Another thing I thought I could never do, that would be way too much for me and my routines and anxiety and neuroticism, I just got on the bus and did. I was lamenting to my mother a few weeks ago how far ‘behind’ I felt in that I am just now doing the things that many of my friends have been doing for years, and she simply said to me “you’re not done yet”. So I’ll keep plugging away at my own pace.

Congrats to all friends and readers who have completed their December auditions as well. You all inspire me.

My double life

Last night I heard auditions for BOC all night, but I had to hide my hands from everyone because they were covered in dye from making a gingerbread Nativity in the morning.

Church Police

During the communion procession at Immaculate Conception Mass I saw someone drop the host and start to walk off with it in his hand. I managed to turn to him on his way back to his seat and whisper during two beats of rest "you need to eat that!"

He did. Multi-tasking at it's finest.

Hidden Treasures

To my great dismay, I knocked a can of Static Guard behind the dryer before 7 am this morning. Convinced that an aerosol can was more likely than other detritus to explode when exposed to the heat of the appliance, I took an excursion into the dusty corner before sunrise.

I found a pad of star-shaped post-its (now tragically warped beyond the point of usefulness) and a bottle of stain remover. Most surprisingly I found a large baking pan which I had not noticed was missing. I'm happy to have all of these items back on the radar.

Living Single

I had hoped this post would lead with the clip from 30 Rock of the Red Cross nurse saying to Liz "35 years old, 3 sexual partners in the last 10 years? Maybe it's time to settle."

It only irks me mildly when people call me "Mrs". It's inaccurate, but I usually don't make a big stink about it although occasionally I will say to students "It's Ms! Mrs. F was my grandma!" Yesterday I said that to a student and we went on to make more small talk about his classes. While talking about French class we flipped into French, so when the conversation was over I said "Au revoir" and he responsed "Au revoir Madame!". I gently corrected him again with a "Mademoiselle!"

He looked at me confused, and then shouted at me as I walked out the door "Wait - you're not married yet!?!!"

BomBomBomBomWooooo

Little Luxuries

I was dreaming out loud about a particular appliance that I would purchase if I lived a more extravagant lifestyle, and my mother decided she would buy it for me for my birthday.

So on Saturday, after church, we went down to CVS and spent $20 on a coffee pot that will turn itself on before I get out of bed.

I felt a little guilty because I already have a perfectly good coffee pot, but I can bring the old one to my parents' and shove it under the counter so that I don't have to buy Dunkin' every time I visit. Normally I put the coffee on and get in the shower, but my apartment is so cold that I can't get in the shower until the heat has been on for at least 10 minutes, so this will give me something to drink while waiting for the place to warm up.

What can I say? I'm easy to please.

I should also add that my darling cousin sent me socks to replace the ones stolen in the burglary. My birthday gifts tend to be cold-weather themed.