life in art

I am a musical theater girl. I always have been. I make no apologies for it. I was taken to musicals as a child. I was taken to my first opera at 14. I’ve got a long list of musicals and operas on my performance resume. I have a CD binder dedicated exclusively to my collection of showtunes.

LH was a straight theater sort of guy. We would go to London and we’d each pick out one show to buy tickets in advance. He’d want something at the Globe. I’d get a splashy West End musical. When we’d arrive we’d go straight to the half price ticket booth in Leicester Square and see what other shows we could pack in. (We once saw 4 shows in 3 days.) There would always be a negotiation. Because he would want to see some boring straight play, most of which I’d never even heard of, and I’d want to see Starlight Express or Cats.

So when I landed at this particular theater, I was excited about being someplace so big. Not so much about the work being produced. I respect Shakespeare. I respect classic theater. I’ve seen enough and been around enough to appreciate good work. But it just wasn’t my kind of theater. Or so I thought.

Tonight I watched a technical rehearsal for a piece that I thought was the stuff only drama students read. Surely noone produces this kind of thing. Existential theater? In black box, sure. But not in a big house where it’s on your main stage. True that you’ll never produce yourself out of a financial hole (not in non-profit theater) but you do want to sell some tickets.

I’d seen a film version of this play several months ago. After our season was announced. Some staff got together and watched it. At the time I didn’t get it. I wrote it off. But then I did research on it. And I picked up a frame of reference along the way. And so when I watched tonight it was a whole new experience for me.

This play is about your past and how it haunts you. It’s about persevering when everything in your life is a shambles. It’s about loss of innocence and passage of time. It’s about finding happiness and a reason to go on when life has you stuck. It’s about putting on your best face and plodding forward even when you don’t know where you’re going or how you’ll get there or why you should even bother. It’s about doing all of this even when you can tell that the end is near.

Recognize those themes?

It took me a bit of Act 1 to settle in to it. But by midway I was hooked. The main character talks about the fact that she thought she would learn to talk to herself, to keep herself company but that she never did. But that so long as she can pretend that her husband is off in the corner listening to her, it’s ok. She can get by with the illusion of companionship. Act 2 is what sent me over the edge. There’s a line that says, in effect, “Something has to move, because I can’t anymore.” I get that. I get that on so many levels

And there’s an element to the relationship in the play that is so relevant to something going on in my life right now. She’s talking to her husband who has been silent for most of the play. He’s finally trying to come to her and she says to him, “didn’t you hear me screaming for you?” And she did. She did scream. And he’s finally come. But it’s too late. He came too late.

I sat in my theater with big fat tears rolling down my cheeks. My nose had started to run. The theater only held about 20 people or so and I was conscious of every sniff. When the lights came up the director, our artistic director, saw me and came over to see what I’d thought. He saw that I was crying and said, “it reminds you of life, doesn’t it?” I could only nod. And then he hugged me.

i believe in you

I have worked in the arts for years, both on stage and off. I signed my first contract when I was 14. In a few weeks I’ll be 32. I have encountered more dream crushers than I can count. Even among some of my close family and friends.

People don’t get it. People don’t get the arts. They don’t take it seriously. People are always asking me what my fall back career will be. I get the sense that some are waiting for me to grow out of this and get a real grown up job one day.

I think I can count on one hand the times that someone has said, I believe in you. SB once beseeched me to follow my dreams. My mom, once, after watching me patiently wait for the right job while trying to pick up the pieces of my life after the divorce, told me she was proud of me for not giving up on my dream. A voice teacher that I met for lunch, many years after my last lesson with her, told me she’d always known I would make it. A conductor who looked me in the eye and said, “I wish I had money so I could hire you. I want you on my dream team, when I start my opera company.”

LH used to tell me he believed in me. At least for a while. It quickly became evident that he was jealous of me. He couldn’t stand the fact that I could be more successful than him. He did everything in his power to hold me back. Not only did he not support me, but he made me doubt my own abilities.

I know that Aaron thinks I’m brilliant and can do anything. But Aaron is a lone wolf. He’s content to let me do my thing and have no part of it. He listens when I talk about things. He’s interested in hearing about progress. I know he’s proud of me when I do well. But he doesn’t go that extra step to really invest in my success.

SB tried for a while. To be a part of things. To actively help and support. But it always felt hollow to me. Partly because he never challenged me on things. Never questioned and made me think. He just said “honey you’re amazing and capable and of course you can do this” in a way that came off as wholly parental. Parents are supposed to say nice things. Which, in turn, makes those nice things not count because they’re supposed to be said. And other times there was simply too big of a socio economic divide between he and I.

Yesterday someone told me he believed in me. But he didn’t just stop there. He asked questions. He wanted to know what he could do to help me reach the goals I’ve set. He invested in my success. He is taking a part. He’s even gone so far as to offer to fly out, in a year, for my big annual fundraiser. So he can be there to see all my hard work realized, but also so that at the end of the night, I’ll have someone to share it with.

I feel so humbled. Because I have never had that. Ever. Someone who not only believes that I can do anything I set my mind to, but who actually wants to be a part of it. It hit me with full force tonight. Bringing tears with it. Because for the first time I feel like there’s someone truly in my corner. And I am not alone.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts-from the journal

I’m sitting in a gallery of an art museum. I’m on a bench in front of a beautiful Van Gogh. Olive Trees. It’s stunning. Sad music is playing softly in my iPod. I should be enjoying this moment. I should be present in this moment. But my head has taken me to another place.

I’m not at this museum. I’m in Paris. At the Musee D’Orsay. Remembering the first time I saw Van Gogh.

I’d been to the Louvre earlier in the day. I’d gotten bored. I don’t get excited about art until you start getting past 1850. The Louvre just didn’t trip my trigger. The Orsay did. In a big way.

I was happily going from room to room. Like the proverbial kid in a candy store. Delighting in works by my favorite artists. Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Renoir, Gaugin.

And then I caught site of something through a doorway. And completely forgot about the muted melancholy of Degas.

Van Gogh. A room full of him. With a brightness to his palate. Short definitive strokes. I was awestruck.  I lingered in that gallery.

The piece I’m looking is Olive Trees. Just last night I was talking about a place in Italy that I love. A little bed and breakfast in the town of Tivoli, outside of Rome, overlooking an olive orchard. I look at this painting and I’m there. I can feel the sun on my skin. I can smell the earthiness of the trees. I can hear the silence.

So often people think silence can’t be heard. Maybe some people can’t. I can. If I close my eyes and breathe and let all the noise in my head slip away. I can hear the silence. I can feel it wrapping around my body.

Right here, right now, looking at this painting, I am surrounded by noise. By people. But I feel still. I hear the silence.

sb’s spin on the raven

SB sent this to me a couple of years ago. A little spin on a well known poem. Inspired by BOF and certain magpie who tried to come between us.

As I nodded nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
as if somebody gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door.

As I slumbered simply sleeping,
suddenly there came a beeping,
as if someone gently peeping,
peeping through my Yahoo door.

Tis some “macho lesbian pyscho bitch” I thought,
and nothing more.

lanyard

I’ve been holding on to this poem for a while because I love it so. Mother’s Day seemed like a good day to post it. It was penned Billy Collins who was poet laureate from 2001-2003. Enjoy.

the lanyard

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the “L” section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench
at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard.
A gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard.
Or wear one, if that’s what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold facecloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard.
“Here are thousands of meals” she said,
“and here is clothing and a good education.”
“And here is your lanyard,” I replied,
“which I made with a little help from a counselor.”
“Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.” she whispered.
“And here,” I said, “is the lanyard I made at camp.”
“And here,” I wish to say to her now,
“is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even.”

(billy collins)