Blown Away

It's really windy tonight. The trees are casting strange moving shadows on the wall in my room and the sound is sometimes overwhelming, reminding me somewhat of a tidal ocean crashing against the side of the house. I feel sturdy in here but with every gusty crash I feel nerves creep in. I don't particularly like extreme weather but am somehow a magnet for it wherever I go.

The picture is Chai, of course, my new best friend. He has taken to lounging lackadaisically on my bed while I'm working. Last night he chased constantly after my papers wherever I set them. He is as perverse and anti-work as any cat I've ever met.

I went to dinner and a movie tonight with people from the opera. We saw "History Boys," the Alan Bennett play-cum-movie about British prep-school boys in the eighties and the long debate over teaching for test scores or teaching how to think. I thought the film was beautiful and raw and sexually/emotionally/ideally edgy in a way Americans can very rarely perform. It makes me wish I'd seen the stage play as I've read in several places that the play runs rings around the film. It's exactly the same cast, so I'm curious how the production transferred (and how it could fall - in some people's eyes - so completely short in the film incarnation).


Rehearsals are going very well. We will finish the architecture of the piece tomorrow or the next day, which is fast work. The arias still need loads of work and the recits are pure hell in their length and specificity, but we are getting there and having a few big laughs along the way. The pic to the left is a constant in most opera rehearsal rooms: cough drops and antibacterial gel. It's unbelieveable how much of this stuff we go through. All performers fear illness in the course of a show, but singers are by far the most paranoid. I think because, while dancers and most actors can perform while they've got a cold, singers really cannot. If a voice is compromised by intense congestion or (heaven forbid) throat pain, the performance is lost. What a precarious place to be. For some, even the suggestion of a throat tickle leads to a hypochondriac fit.

I am feeling homesick right now and hoping this will pass. It's bad to start with that feeling so early in the process. I don't particularly care for pining and wish my heart could go along with my head in its understanding of the makeup of my life. This is what I do - this travel for my work thing. It means that home is tangible but distant and I must find comfort in the little bits of life I carry with me: my sheets, my pictures, my Eyeore mug, my pillow. John and I talk every night (and sometimes day) and the internet is always there.

It's hard to be an emotional person with a job that is so mutable. This life requires hardness and cynicism.

I put up a brilliant cyncial front but I'm really rather soft inside.