The Easter Picture

My brother and I, in the parking lot after 10 am mass.

My morning laugh

When I was a senior in college I worked at the coffee shop across the street from campus. It was a great job, giving me the opportunity to chat with people and give them something that they really wanted. Even the early start time (5:45 am!) was tolerable because I really liked the job. The one issue that I had was that by the time the regulars started rolling in around 8 am, I was already wide awake and was operating at full volume. Those of you familiar with my full volume know that can be overwhelming at any time of day, and often one of my mid-morning laughs would force someone out of their sleepiness whether they wanted to be woken up or not.

Nowadays I don’t do coffee shops much in the morning, mainly due to their absence in my neighborhood. I make coffee at home to save money or I stop at Dunkin’ on the way to work. This week, however, in order to fuel my spring break paper writing, I have been stopping at Starbucks for a latte on the way to the library.

This morning the milk-foamer made a beautiful latte right up to the top of my travel mug. I could tell the lid wouldn’t fit quite yet, so I had a few sips, put the mug down on the counter, and snapped the lid on. The foam apparently was still too high because a plume of steamed skim shot out of the lip of the lid like a geyser, spraying my glasses, hair, and the counter. I laughed.

Let’s be honest, I cackled, and I woke the place up. It was very funny. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy (probably because I am), and a kind gentleman helped me get the foam out of my hair. Now, to finish this paper.

I cracked my knuckle today!!!

I know what you're thinking: FeliceMiFa has finally plunged into the complete banality. Finger cracking?

This interests you, I swear, especially if you were reading the blog last summer when I fell repeatedly. In August 2008 I ate it while running (a few weeks later I ate it again in a truly spectacular display at Castle Island). I seriously jammed up my hand and my fingers haven't been right since. I figured I would wait a year before I would see a doctor about it.

Excurses: Time and healing in the mind of FeliceMiFa (can you tell I have been reading scripture commentaries all day?)

My ecclesiological inclinations lead me to live on "Roman time". Most major change in the Church that I study and teach happens over generations. Should I be shocked that it would take one year for my hand to heal? I also tend to believe that health problems will work themselves out in time. So I stayed gimpy in the right hand for a few months, unable to open jars.

Anyway, today I was able to crack the knuckle on my right hand by tugging on it. I'm still not quite able to achieve full range of motion, but hopefully by the one year mark I'll be able to!

goodbye, vacuum

Due to a combination of frugality, minimalism, and just not caring, I buy little and covet even less. Not only do I own few things, when I do decide that I want something, it takes me about 18 months to get around to purchasing it. The last major purchase of any significance was probably the Jeep, in November 2006. Even though the car is not terribly sensible, I was self-aware enough to know that that sort of item-lust comes along rarely. I wanted it, so I bought it.

My futon was another thing I knew I really wanted, and that took me well over year to get around to purchasing. I recently purchased a new bathmat which filled me with shame because the bathmat I already owned was perfectly good, other than the fact that it filled me with loathing and rage.

When I moved into this apartment I got a lot of my things from Freecycle: a table, chairs, iron, vacuum. This vacuum had to be held together with a belt, but I have such little surface area in my apartment that a crummy old Hoover wasn't the end of the world. As time went on I started to miss wearing the belt that was being used to hold the vacuum together. For some added excitement, the vacuum would occasionally set the smoke alarm off.

This past weekend I bought a cute little stickvac after months of deliberation. It's a Dirt Devil so it will probably fall apart after a month or so. Today I put the decrepit vacuum out at the curb. I feel liberated.

Second Sunday of Easter

Driving home tonight from my fifth mass of the day, for whatever reason my mind wandered to my policy for make-up work. If I give an assignment that is tough or complicated, there will always be some kids who can't quite follow the rubric the first time around. If they are willing to give it another shot, I am happy to dump their first grade and give them the second grade - no averaging, no deductions.

So of course, on this Divine Mercy Sunday, my thoughts turned to God's mercy (not mine - my pedagogical style is rarely described as merciful). Maybe that's what God's mercy is like: always waiting with the red pen to write encouragement in the margins, always ready to delete the first feeble attempts from the gradebook. Mercy allows us to be defined by the best we can do, and mercy always waits for us to come around, to follow guidance, and to try again. In the merciful eyes of God we are capable and good, and God is always eager for us to manifest our goodness.

All the wickedness in this world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal in the sea. —William Langland

Tonight is the night!

Get yourself to Boston Opera Collaborative's 2nd Annual Gala at the Dante Alighieri Center in Cambridge! Tickets are still available for the second half of the evening: Dessert, Coffee, and Rossini's La Cambiale di Matrimonio.

The problem with liking everything

I have always been described as curious (in an intellectually curious way, not a peculiar-curious way - I hope). For as long as I can remember I have wanted to know more about whatever I was looking into, and that's part of the reason I am still poking around in academia despite of having done my time (and then some!). I have this problem that any time I start to learn about something new I decide I want to change majors/careers and focus on that. In the past five years have called my parents to announce I want to be an ecclesiologist (is that a thing?), a canon lawyer, a press secretary, you name it. Anything I have dabbled in has become my newest passion.

Today we heard speakers on immigration, so today I want to be an immigration lawyer.

Does all this make me a dilettante?

Triduum recap

Did you know the Triduum ends at sundown on Easter Sunday? That means it is ending RIGHT AS I TYPE!! How cool is that?

Faithful readers are familiar with my propensity toward one of two things around significant liturgical feasts:

a. getting all squishy and emotive
b. quoting T.S. Eliot

It must be an Easter miracle, because I am going to do neither. Instead, a few musical notes.

1. Holy Thursday included a last minute change from the Faure Pie Jesu to Andrew Lloyd Webber's. The Faure involves extensive singing in the passaggio and was what I had warmed-up for. The Webber is theater-y (tediously Brightman-esque), includes a series of surprise A-flats, and IS A DUET. I just sang the melody all the way through. Feeling a little under the weather, I had no choice but to sing a blaringly loud A-flat every time it came up. I attempted a little decrescendo the last time around, but simply ended up holding the note too long and sounding like a show-off.

1a. I know assemblies want to show their appreciation, but PLEASE DON'T CLAP just before we are about to transport the host for the nightwatch.

2. You do not know dirty looks until you walk through a soprano section when you have been hired as a cantor "ringer". Yikes, was I glared at on Saturday night. I'm sorry they didn't pick you to sing the psalm! Don't take it out on me.

3. Speaking of Saturday, in case you were wondering I am still WICKED ALLERGIC to lilies. So my ears plugged up and my throat closed up as I was trying to keep some sort of ensemble togetherness with a far off organ at the Easter Vigil. It was not my most beautiful work.

3a. In an incontrovertible sign of the spirit at work in the community, the litany on Saturday included the Venerable Bede. I just love that name.

4. Easter morning only comes once a year, so I had to bust out the Mozart Alleluia regardless of any lingering ailments. That meant, however, that I would be singing high Cs at around 9:20 in the morning, which is fair neither to me nor to the assembly. I soldiered on, and by mass #3 things seemed to have fallen into place...until just after the Mozart I had to lead the Bernie Farrell classic "I am the Bread of Life", which with the organist's transposition goes down to a low G, a full 2.5 octaves below the C I had honked out but a moment before. That was vocally interesting, to say the least.

Up next on the liturgical calendar? Divine Mercy Sunday, when I will no doubt make the case once again that Doubting Thomas got a bad rap.

In case you didn't believe we were there

With thanks to Dwight for the picture.

preliminary footage

This is the first set of footage of the anthem I have been able to find. It amuses me to no end that this person video taped their own television. I also find the 'pop-up video' moment around minute 1 to be highly amusing.

For the half a second you can see me I'm all the way to your right.

What makes today different from any other day?

Today was indeed different from most other days. After the rain-out of opening day yesterday our engagement was rescheduled (and the nat'l anthem was added to our line-up!). Unfortunately it was rescheduled for a time I had a conflict, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon reshuffling commitments and then feeling guilty about having to re-prioritize.

The alarm went off this morning a hair earlier than it usually does. Yesterday I couldn't find my phone before work, so I dumped everything in my bag on the floor where it still sat this morning when I tripped on it trying to get at my alarm. Knowing I was going to take more time to fuss with my hair because of my gig today, I realized I couldn't wait to get coffee on the way into work. But I was out of grounds...There was only one solution: make coffee with the used grounds from the day before. After my shower I started to put in my last pair of contacts. Then I dropped one on the ground.

I managed to disinfect it and get it back in my eye, but it reminded me that I need to call the Opticians to get an appointment for an eye exam, and I should call today because they have appointments mostly on Wednesdays. There's something else I need to remember for Wednesday I thought, and then remembered that it was the eggs that need to be boiled in order to be died.

So I went into the kitchen, and at 6:20 in the morning, scrawled EGGS in sharpie on my prospectus from Webster Bank.

I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some event-related snacks, saw some students and pretended not to, and got to work feeling sick as a dog around 7:45. I had to teach the first 5 before going over to Symphony Hall, and fortunately I had already been planning to show a video for four of those five. Also fortunate: the video was narrated by James Woods, whose dulcet tones kept me company the first four periods of the day.

During lunch, rather than eat, I set up the chapel for my evening event. With about 6 minutes left in lunch I dashed into the faculty dining room planning to grab a PBJ and run back. I was told there was no PBJ. I started to cry (but I hid it while hovering over the peanut butter jar and trying quickly to make my own).

I made it to Symphony Hall by 1:45 where we rehearsed the Anthem and then got our police escort to the ball park. That's right, a police escort. For one reason or another we went by the MFA on the way to Fenway (think about that, locals). Upon our arrival we went immediately to where we would be singing. A good friend of mine was also at the game with his boss, and when I saw him from a distance I started shouting his name. Unfortunately his name happens to be Keith, and all of the people there thought I was calling out to our conductor Keith Lockhart and I was frantically shushed.

I can't even describe what it was like to go out in center field and sing the anthem. I was feet from Josh Beckett, and i kept thinking I saw people I knew who turned out to be TV news reporters. We sang. It was on TV. And it was good.

Our seats were on the right field terrace, and we watched the first 5 innings there as evening fell and it became very cold. Taking off my coat again to sing during the 7th inning was torture, but at that point the crowd on the Green Monster was severely amped up and they...gave us some of their energy, to put a charitable spin on it.

I zipped off after the 7th inning stretch to the prayer service we held tonight. I am way too tired to adequately address the meaningfulness of the service, so we will save that for another day.

Go sox!

Practice Room Crisis

Quiz for the musicians in the house: How often do you break down in the practice room?

I suppose the answer for me is based on how frequently I practice in any given period, but in general the breakdowns come every two or three months. Today was one of them, and it was an event.

It usually starts when something’s not going quite right: I’m running a phrase over and over and it won’t fall into place, or I keep inadvertently slowing tempo down. The last few weeks it’s been all about evenness between registers and my transitional clunkiness has been getting to me.

So what happens after I start to get frustrated? First I tear up a little and try to keep working. I try to work the emotion into my singing, thinking that maybe this time I will work on characterization and not think so much about technique. At this point technique (and possibly phonation) goes completely out the window and I briefly make sure there is no one outside the practice room window when I plop down on the piano bench, put my head down on my knees, and cry.

Like a good soprano, my small moments of frustration plunge into the downward spiral of neuroticism common to most artists. With my head on my knees I ask myself “what the heck am I doing this for?” And there’s no real answer. People have compared the artist’s vocation to a bad relationship – you love it but you hate it, you want to stop but you can’t figure out what else you would do. There’s no big goal, just “learn this piece”, “perfect this phrase”, “tune this note”, “smooth out the register change in that measure”. You will never have success that feels at all permanent or final. You will work this hard until the day you die – or quit.

After “what am I doing this for?” My thoughts often turn to “what am I sacrificing for this?” because there’s always a sacrifice. Sometimes it’s something simple like an hour goofing off at home – or even an afternoon of cleaning up the apartment. But the hours add up over time. I think of the hundreds of choices we all make every day in an effort to sing better and to have a career. We give up nights out with friends and time with people we love. We have a passion in our lives that by definition will edge out some other passion.

Depending on my mood, the time of day, and if there is anyone out in the hall, I keep my head down on my knees for while until I calm down. Then I start plunking out notes again (after determining how I am going to repair whatever book I threw across the room in my fit). So how often do the rest of you have a good ol’ practice room freak out?

A little something for Palm Sunday

with thanks to Robbie for suggesting it:

News: Last Minute Engagement

As if the beautiful weather and the imminence of the baseball season weren't exciting enough, here's some exciting news: On Monday I will be singing during the seventh inning stretch at the Red Sox Opening Day.

I'll be singing with a small group from TFC and the Pops. We will perform two songs, so hopefully at least one of them will make the TV broadcast.

Go sox!

Gala Tickets on sale Now

I'll be there - it's going to be great!

www.bostonoperacollaborative.org