From dad.

Play the tune again: but this time
with more regard for the movement at the source of it
and less attention to time. Time falls
curiously in the course of it.

Play the tune again: not watching
your fingering, but forgetting, letting flow
the sound till it surrounds you. Do not count
or even think. Let go.

Play the tune again: but try to be
nobody, nothing, as though the pace
of the sound were your heart beating, as though
the music were your face.

Play the tune again: It should be easier
to think less every time of the notes, of the measure.
It is all an arrangement of silence. Be silent, and then
play it for your pleasure.

Play the tune again: and this time when it ends,
do not ask me what I think. Feel what is happening
strangely in the room as the sound glooms over
you, me, everything.

Now,
play the tune again.

from 'Weathering' by Alastair Reid.

Such a poser.

I am playing a confident woman right now who wants to maintain her youth and glamour and who wants to have fun. She sees herself mainly as a sexual commodity. Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. She feels a little trapped in her town and I've been exploring the physical aspect of this character-- how she would stand and move.

The self is so fluid: I had trouble shaking this woman off at the end of the day. This evening as I sat on a box waiting for the C. An educated looking older man said to me as he passed "That's quite a pose." I was slumped with my legs crossed leaning back on my hands with my shoulders thrust high to my ears in a posture that said "slightly contemptuous female alpha dog in heat."

Normally I would be much more self-conscious and would have had on the New Yorker "Don't approach me, I'm no one to bother about" mug that we all practice daily. But this evening-- without knowing-- I was still the prettiest girl in town surveying the peasantry of my Sicillian village.

That whole line about how theater allows the audience to live out dangerous sides of themselves in a safe way... imagine how we feel! Who knows where this girl came from...

In the mean time.

Funny that singing thing. We want it all, we want it now. I wanna sing every role in my rep at every house and whenever I hear of anyone else doing same, though I may respect her immensely as an artist and know and love her as a person, a tiny part of me goes, "Humph."

Hilarious, huh? I was in the middle of tragically musing "Oh, I'm in this tough transition right now where no one's helping me." and generally whining to the Please Hire Me Gods when I realized I have thirty minutes to get to the subway to go to the first stage rehearsal of a great role in a fantastic opera with an A house that I respect, among colleagues who sound amazing.

That old underdog sense dies hard.

Fleisher on the team...

Mr. Fleisher describes the performer as three people in one: “Person A hears before they play. They have to have this ideal in their inner ear of what they’re going to try and realize. Person B actually puts the keys down, plays and tries to manifest what Person A hears. Person C sits a little bit apart and listens. And if what C hears is not what A intended, C tells B to adjust to get closer to what A wanted. And this goes on with every note you play, no matter how fast you’re playing. It’s a simultaneous process that advances horizontally. When it works, when it all meshes, it’s a state of ecstasy.”

My person C is always on ritalin.