food for those

I'm trying to find time between audition prep (I'll have had seven this summer!), festival prep, recital planning, freelance grantwriting, and dayjob to structure and write my impressions of Boston. In just a few weeks I'll have my one year anniversary of life in this town. Meanwhile, I can share this story with you that happened just this morning.

One of my gripes (not like I have that many ;-) is that Boston fails to fill me with wonder. That is, I haven't encountered one single spot in the city where I've paused, admired, and thought "Oh the greatness of man!" Am I being too demanding? Well, I felt something like this on nearly every subway ride over the Manhattan bridge. A walk through the canyons of midtown or the tall peaks of Wall Street makes one feel like a god.

And in Rome, don't even get me started. Not just the Pantheon or the Colosseum but a crumpled napkin from a rip-off bar or a pile of dust from a construction site were enough to make my eyes go wide. The Puritan ethic of austerity and utility seem to have imbued architecture and city planning in Boston for all eternity. Sure, there are a few iconic churches and a couple of interesting modern buildings, but it's all on a small, restrained scale that does not overwhelm.

But what I am finding - slowly, glacierly - is a bit of what I always had experienced on my visits to Boston over the years: humanity. Friends gathering for dinner at home, new acquaintences becoming friends, people planning excursions to the many pretty villages close to town.

The workplace, however, seems to be exceedingly frosty. I've had two jobs here now, both times sharing an office with someone else, and both times only speaking to my office mate and/or boss only when absolutely necessary. There is no greeting or only a very reluctant hello when you walk in the door each morning. I used to say "bless you" when the other guy sneezed, but it got awkward when he would barely respond and didn't return the favor. Sitting down with colleagues in the lunch room makes me feel like a ghost: I appear to be invisible, no one addresses me, and I can't seem to make my way into the conversation. Whatever happened to the good old, "Hi, how are you, how was your weekend?" I swear, if my heart stopped right now no one would notice until the cleaning lady came!

So I suppose when a little human interaction happens in this ice block it seems like an exceptional event. Here, at last, is my story:

Mary W., a Christian first name and an African last, crooked glasses and relaxed hair, prim office wardrobe and an ample rear-end. She sits at her desk every day from nine to five, headphones permanently on her head.

“Do you sing?” Her question to me would sound like an accusation, but her voice has that delicious West African lilt. “How do you know?” I am surprised. Someone had found copies of my sheet music in the copier, and thought it was hers. She composes, she explains, but she can’t read or write music. She marvels that I can. She sings melodies in Swahili and records them to beat. “Do you have a recording of your work I can listen too?” She hands me a homemade CD from her computer, and I listen, and thank her, and we smile like two schoolgirls sharing a secret.

She replaces her headphones on her ears, and turns back to her work. High above her desk in bold print is Psalm 111:5: He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever.

finding the words

I've been happily living part-time in the fantasy world of Haruki Murakami, whose beautiful and surreal writing defies description. Towards the end of Kafka on the Shore, his latest novel, a line leapt out at me:

"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."

Tearing apart reminded me of imagery from Bach cantatas, and I thought it would sound even more dramatic in German:

"Erinnerungen wärmen Dich von innen auf. Doch sie reißen Dich auch auseinander."

Nowadays, I think with fondness of the warm memories I have of the hot country I was in this time last year, so Italian came to mind:

"Le memorie ti riscaldano dall'interno. Ma ti fanno anche a pezzi."

I wonder what would I would think of if I knew the original Japanese....

New Look

Do we like it? Hate it? I got tired of the fuzzy typeface and went looking for higher resolution. Don't be surprised if this blog goes through a few face-lifts in the coming months. If I'm calling myself tech savvy, it's time to walk the walk.

I meant to write last night, but collapsed with exhaustion after a rather intense kickboxing class (stop laughing). Every so often it's a good idea to bring this journal back to my original intent: A Singer's Journal.

I practiced well last night, it's a great feeling. I got together on Tuesday to rehearse with a pianist friend (yes, we like making friends with keyboardists who actual want to work with me, not just collect cash to work for me!), but we ended up gabbing and planning instead of singing, so I had a night off. Maybe that's what made my throat more relaxed today, but somehow I was able to sing with greater ease and strength than usual. The trick that I have to keep reminding myself of is in the support system. I had thought of support as abdominal strength, but it actually has to do with using the stomach muscles to open the rib cage, creating more space for resonance. Newborns understand this extremely well, which is why they can produce such powerful sounds with limited muscle.

Good support also frees up the throat, which is the next important space for resonance. The more space, the better the sound, the easier the production, the less air you need, the better the carrying power. The paradox of studying any instrument is that you must work extremely hard for it to become easy. I'm owning the first part of that idea, and finally beginning to accept that in my practice, if it feels easy, it probably is right.

Well, that's enough for boring vacl technique now, isn't it? Back to dreary, soul-searching pity parties.

I've been writing

Really, I have. I’ve written quite a bit over these past two weeks, though none of it’s appeared here. I finished several essays about my impressions of Boston, and the latest challenges and opportunities that have come my way. I wrote a beautiful eulogy for the unexpected death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the woman who was not only my favorite singer but my role model, whose voice I hear when I envision the sound I am striving for. I wrote a charming parody of the sort of poetic free verse one finds in 17th century French secular cantatas. I wrote character studies – for the first time I’ve had ideas for characters! – and sketched outlines for soul-searing stories that lay bear the human condition.

It’s a pity that these texts have only appeared on the interior of my eyelids, and never on paper. Working as much as I do now – and not enough on music projects, unfortunately – I find plenty of fodder for inspiration, but less time and energy to write it down. My non-dayjob hours have to be devoted to an evening practice, and whatever I can do to work on the pile of repertoire I wish to learn this summer. Time to develop myself as a writer – and singer – will have to be found some other season, maybe next year.

Yet, being busy also keeps my mind energized, and has somehow given me the drive to have ideas for new things to write about and music to pursue. If I was back on my care-free part-time schedule, I might clock more hours in the library, but I would also find more ways to fritter away time, and new things to frustrate me. Leisure and contentment does not usually yield great art: when Brahms was pining away for Clara Schumann he wrote his masterpieces, when he was happy he wrote plonk, like the Hungarian dances.

It takes discipline to create a beautiful voice – written or sung. I would never characterize myself as a disciplined person. As a child I would be more likely to curl up with a book and then stare into space, rather than immerse myself in the story. I don’t have the ambition of some of my peers, never being able to tolerate long hours in the office or ruthless behavior with colleagues. This summer is a test of my dreams: can I make some progress on them while making some money?

I’m in the office right now, and should logoff to face my Monday morning and the (not altogether uninteresting work) at hand. My music sits in my apartment, damp with humidity. My voice sits silently in my throat, as if it didn’t exist at all. Those characters I dreamt up go about their days as usual, occasionally blinking at me with expectation.

Here's an idea for a new character: a relatively young women with some talent and drive, who quits bellyaching about not being able to do the things she wants to and actually knuckles down and gets the work done.