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Aug. 1st, 2004 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeYesterday was very busy. I got up around 11:30 and had to find the sheet music for "I Cannot Tell What This Love May Be" from Patience for the Iolanthe audition tomorrow. There's a performing arts branch of the NYC Public Library on 65th and Amsterdam Ave, only 20 blocks uptown. They have an awesome system where you go to a computerized "Song Index," enter in the first line or the composer's name or keywords for the song, and up pops a code, which you give to the desk person. They go and get the book that the music is in, and you can go and copy it. Isn't that awesome? I can copy anything I like--I have access to thousands of songs. One of those things that makes me love living in the city.
Saw a show yesterday. It was a one-woman show about fear--how fear permeates our modern, American lives, and how a lot of that fear is deliberately induced so we'll buy things. The woman got the inspiration from Bowling for Columbine (which goes into length on that theme and even compares American and Canadian news broadcasts, hilariously). I tend to view many one-person shows with a gimlet eye--the concept seems so masturbatory--but this one was quite good. The performer was astoundingly talented. And she was also very welcoming and opening--she was really seeking a dialogue with the audience. A very, very intelligent woman.
And I had my voice lesson with Chuck yesterday. That man is just so talented. I think he's one of the best voice teachers I've ever had. Seriously, he just blew me away with his common sense feedback and notes. I've noticed I can sometimes be kind of prickly with directors--well, Julie, mainly--and I have to restrain myself from arguing with their notes. With Chuck, as soon as he would give me a note, I would start nodding because I knew he was right. I said this to Chuck and he said "it's because you know all of this already." It was interesting--I haven't really sung in a long time. Even in Iolanthe I was singing Strephon, a male part, so I was belting everything, basically, although I did get to hit a D or something at the very end. But I really haven't had much opportunity really to use the muscles and technique for which I'm trained--I have a degree in music and trained in opera, but mostly what I've done since college is musical theater and classical theater. I miss it. I love singing; I love using all those instruments. I felt nourished after this lesson--my whole body just felt great.
Jason and Paula had their housewarming party. Their apartment is a half-level down and opens onto the backyard! There's a terrace across which they had draped lights, and a gateway to the grassy part. There's also an enclosed seat/bench with an arch--they could cultivate roses through the wooden grill. I draped myself across the seat and gazed up at the unbearably beautiful moon. It was full and fat and round and so bright. It was so close, I wanted to reach out and grab it and watch it melt like bright golden mercury through my fingers. Jason told me it was a blue moon--that is, the second full moon in a month. "Once in a blue moon/I think you love me...I am your once-in-a-blue-moon girl." Lying there on the bench staring at the moon as the clouds scurried across its brightness, with the warm sexy New Jersey air--oh, it was lovely. I kept thinking of Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"--
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess which sweet
Wherewith the seasonable months endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death...
And the perfect ending of that poem:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?
*Sigh.* Keats. Poetry. The night. The moon.
Saw a show yesterday. It was a one-woman show about fear--how fear permeates our modern, American lives, and how a lot of that fear is deliberately induced so we'll buy things. The woman got the inspiration from Bowling for Columbine (which goes into length on that theme and even compares American and Canadian news broadcasts, hilariously). I tend to view many one-person shows with a gimlet eye--the concept seems so masturbatory--but this one was quite good. The performer was astoundingly talented. And she was also very welcoming and opening--she was really seeking a dialogue with the audience. A very, very intelligent woman.
And I had my voice lesson with Chuck yesterday. That man is just so talented. I think he's one of the best voice teachers I've ever had. Seriously, he just blew me away with his common sense feedback and notes. I've noticed I can sometimes be kind of prickly with directors--well, Julie, mainly--and I have to restrain myself from arguing with their notes. With Chuck, as soon as he would give me a note, I would start nodding because I knew he was right. I said this to Chuck and he said "it's because you know all of this already." It was interesting--I haven't really sung in a long time. Even in Iolanthe I was singing Strephon, a male part, so I was belting everything, basically, although I did get to hit a D or something at the very end. But I really haven't had much opportunity really to use the muscles and technique for which I'm trained--I have a degree in music and trained in opera, but mostly what I've done since college is musical theater and classical theater. I miss it. I love singing; I love using all those instruments. I felt nourished after this lesson--my whole body just felt great.
Jason and Paula had their housewarming party. Their apartment is a half-level down and opens onto the backyard! There's a terrace across which they had draped lights, and a gateway to the grassy part. There's also an enclosed seat/bench with an arch--they could cultivate roses through the wooden grill. I draped myself across the seat and gazed up at the unbearably beautiful moon. It was full and fat and round and so bright. It was so close, I wanted to reach out and grab it and watch it melt like bright golden mercury through my fingers. Jason told me it was a blue moon--that is, the second full moon in a month. "Once in a blue moon/I think you love me...I am your once-in-a-blue-moon girl." Lying there on the bench staring at the moon as the clouds scurried across its brightness, with the warm sexy New Jersey air--oh, it was lovely. I kept thinking of Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"--
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess which sweet
Wherewith the seasonable months endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death...
And the perfect ending of that poem:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?
*Sigh.* Keats. Poetry. The night. The moon.
