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! :-)

Solstice Post...ice.

Well hello, there, friends. Thursday was the summer solstice, one of my favorite days.  I sat in the park and read, swung on the swings, and walked around until nightfall. The color of the sunlight in the evening, the absence of time brought about by the absence of darkness, and the lazy heat combined to pull humanity out of its singular, isolated self. At least, that's what they did to me. I felt, with all the cheesy glory that sentences like this encompass, connected to a deep river of life. It helped that I was sitting at a picnic table, reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which is about a girl named Francie, growing up poor and Irish in Williamsburg. My grandmother, Frances, grew up poor and Irish in Sunset Park. When the book came out in 1943, her brother sent her a copy from the army, saying "I think you'll recognize this story." It also helped that I heard a lecture by Cornel West on the radio today, and when you listen to Cornel West for an hour, the whole "river of life" thing seems less like a cliché and more like a revolutionary statement.

I'm not going to preach about community, because Dr. West is approximately one million times better at it than I am. Also, this is an opera blog for the love of Izagi ed Izanami! I want to talk about theater, and what happens to an audience when theater is at its witchcrafty, alchemical best. What does this have to do with midsummer's night? What on earth does it have to do with Cornel West? Read on, brave river of humans, and find out.