Social Media Death. Also Mozart.

Oh hi. Well, that whole "I'm back" thing is only sort of sticking, but here I am, so that's something.

I'm singing the alto solos in Mozart's Coronation Mass this weekend. It is a beautiful piece, complex but clear in that particular Mozartian way. I will be thinking of a few things while I sing.

1. I'm really lucky to be singing this music right now.
2. I love music.
3. I need to call all of my friends from high school and tell them I love them.

Why this last one, you ask? Well, one of them just died. We lost touch and I hadn't spoken to him since probably 2008. But, in school, we spent a lot of time together. He was a language nerd like me, and he played piano. He was the only person at my science high school (which I loved, don't get me wrong) who knew what I was talking about when I talked about classical music. He was sardonic and sarcastic and smart. When I sang at graduation, he played.

It was June 2001, and the mayoral race was heating up. A bunch of democratic candidates showed up, flustered and late and apologizing for having been at a fireman's funeral. I remember us mocking them - oh, yeah, you're soooo great, you cut out on the bereaved to come curry votes with all the nice middle class liberals at the Bronx Science graduation - and then the valedictorian - we can all achieve greatness and 4.0 averages! - and then we went up. The tech dude tried to put a microphone out, and we said, no, no mic, and he looked at us like we were nuts. I have no idea how it sounded. It was a big theater, I was 17, and it was "Summertime." But, I am glad I got to sing with my friend. In the years afterward, in college when I felt like a total failure who couldn't learn how to sing properly, he always, always talked like it was a given that I had a beautiful voice, that I would sing great music.

I find the confluence of death and facebook to be one of the creepiest aspects of modern life. I found out about Alex's death on facebook. I messaged with his best friend about it. I liked some of his favorite music that she posted on his timeline. The timeline of a deceased person. It is as if we all have these ready-made digital mausoleums that we spend our lives curating. We memorialize ourselves.

Awkward attempts at reaching out to people will surely follow as I try to hold onto what was obviously lost a long time ago with Alex. Maybe I can get some email chains going, perhaps an odd phone call, real communication...madness! As I sing this weekend, I will think of Alex, and the friends he left behind, and the friends I am lucky to have.

I'm back!

Hey, I'm back! And I'm here to stay. And I have some random things to say.

NYCO?

I am afraid New York City Opera Renaissance might not be real. Looking at the lineup for their upcoming gala is reassuring, but then I read this and this and I get nervous. I loved New York City Opera. It was a huge part of my childhood. I sang in the children's chorus from 1993 - 1999, and my first opera solo ever was as the third spirit to Mark Delavan's Macbetto. He made funny faces at me every night as I walked towards him dressed in a black dress with a dead branch glued to it. (Yeah, the 90's were pretty much the best.) And yet, I doubt. With Gotham Chamber Opera and others being so undeniably awesome, where does this new iteration of LaGuardia's proletarian brainchild fit in? What do you think, internets? Are my misgivings unfounded? Should the presence of both Flicka and Sting at this concert reassure me beyond doubt?


California...

…is where I live right now. It's weird. I genuinely like winter, although my tendency to wipe out on icy sidewalks/walk like a duck to avoid doing so is definitely a downside to the season.

Part of me feels like making it across town every day with two mildly nutty children in full-body snowsuits last year makes it okay that I'm missing this winter. But most of me feels like my friends will shun me upon my return.


Things I like: sunshine, lizards, hiking, sunshine
Things I don't like: absence of precipitation, funny-tasting water, feeling like a terrible person every time I stay in the shower for longer than it takes to take a shower, having to confront how I feel about homelessness all the time.

Singing

I feel like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when it comes to singing. The two dudes from Shakespeare/Stoppard whose coin-flipping symbolizes our human tendency to stick to the path we're on, even when it's a shitty path. That's a huge simplification of both the plays and my life, but it's how I feel, dammit. I want to hit the reset button. Is there a reset button? How do I get rid of the crap and keep the good? Can I do a career cleanse? Have any of you tried to do something like this?

I think that's it for now. I hope you guys like my nerdy-ass blog and keep reading it. I'll be posting more than once every 572 days. Also please answer all of my questions. Thank you.

Brains Optional

Moving is like totally THA BEST no just kidding my hand must have slipped what I meat to type was THA PITS!

Phew. Okay. Will use punctuation from now on.

Well, y'all, this is just a (possibly redundant) post to offer some observations about three things:

1. The art/life balance
DOES NOT EXIST. As in, the balance doesn't exist. If you know anyone who does actually balance art and life perfectly in a lovely, 50-50, happily bobbing little scale, please introduce them to me. What we should really be talking about is, on any given day, the status of the art/life all-out war. Maybe I'll start a tally board. In fact, I think that's a really good idea. When life starts racking up too many points, art gets to go crazy for a few days.

Bugzooka

Well, I am extra-bad at blogging. It's been, what, a month since my last post? Three weeks? Pathetic. Much of this is due to the living-on-a-mountain-with-spotty-internet problem. By the time I have done ten internet rain dances, given burnt offerings at the altar of the most holy router, and achieved an hour of work in a mere afternoon, if I tried to do anything else my computer would very likely end up out a window. It's pretty pathetic that we're living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I'm complaining about the internet, but there you have it.

Some of my basic-human skills have actually improved from this situation, however. There is no radio, so I download podcasts onto my phone when we drive into the big city. (By which I mean small city with several gas stations and a Chipotle.) But when those run out, it's just me and the birds, chirping away, and the bugs. The bugs landing on things. Which I can hear, anywhere in the house, and which makes me freeze, look around furtively, grab my trusty Bugzooka, and go on the prowl.

Hey Y'all!

It has been almost exactly a year since my last post. And I didn't even plan it that way. I am just that good at being a really, really shitty blogger. Yesssss.

I am spending this summer in beautiful Rappahannock County, Virginia, where I will be performing the role of Most Excellent Wifey to hubby's Mildly Neurotic Tenor. Things are going well so far. We wake up, I make breakfast, he showers, I put on running clothes, we eat, he does the dishes, I slather myself in ten different kinds of sunblock, we drive to rehearsal, I run, practice, enjoy rural Virginian (mis)adventures, write pathetically underpaid and highly fabulous copy for people in Indonesia, (that's I a lie, I don't actually know where they live but I'm pretty sure it's not Sperryville) at the local library, and then go pick him up from rehearsal. I usually watch the last bit every day, and it makes me realize how much I love theater. Although I obviously would much rather be on stage, too, it is fun just to be around a production in rehearsal. There's no business like show business, and there's no people like the crazy mofos who actually do this for a living.

This is not a picture of me in Virginia, but it IS a picture of how I feel.

So, to cut the potent and pungent copy writing with something a little less brain-drainy, I'll be back to blogging as much as I can. I'm funny! I'm fun! Read my blog! :-)