It's go time

It's 10:45am in London.  I have to leave the house in six hours for the theatre.  Makeup starts at 6:15pm, the dresser comes at 7:20pm to lace me into my corset, and the overture begins right around 7:35pm.  The excessively polite voice will come over the PA and ask patrons to take their seats, the admins walking around backstage will give us one last wave of good luck and good show and make their way out to the house that seats over 2000 people and take their places to watch this time-tested production of Magic Flute go up.  The trap will work, the snake will be slain, the birds will fly, and I will be backstage, humming and knitting and sipping my licorice tea (new performance ritual) and trying not to get stuck going through doors.  When your costume is four times as wide as you are and your wig makes you nearly 7 feet tall, this is a feat.  

It's go time.  I've been waiting for this day, wishing it would hurry up and get here, wishing it would still be another two weeks off because I'm not ready I'm not ready of course I'm ready.

I'm ready for this.  A week ago I was on Liz's sofa coughing and feeling wretched and on the verge of tears and now, my nose is a little dry, but I slept with my eye mask on so the morning light wouldn't wake me at 7am and I am well-rested.  I am prepared.  I'm going to cook a good breakfast, make myself my morning cup of tea, and watch the series finale of West Wing season 7.  I'm going to do some stretching, take a long shower and inhale all that beautiful steam and warm up slowly.  The dress rehearsal was at 1030am, the worst possible time they could have picked for this kind of singing, and it went well.  That means that an opera starting at 730pm will be just fine.  Better than fine.  

Because it's go time.  I'm here, I'm ready, I'm singing a role I know I can sing and acting a character I know I can play.  And it's time to bring it hard.  

London Coliseum.  7:30pm.  Game on.

Fit to print

I just had a weird role reversal on the phone with my mother.  She was telling me about some crazy beotch from her work who tore her head off when my mother suggested that she might stop looking at wedding gowns online and finish up her work at the end of the day.  Because doing your job is optional, apparently.  So she tears into Miss Jean and Miss Jean, being who she is, writes this girl an email apologizing for her 'lack of tact' (read: telling the truth).  And I don't know why, but this huge surge of protectiveness welled up inside of me and I basically lectured my mother for ten minutes on the importance of keeping that kind of discourse in person and OUT of email, lest someone try to use her well-intentioned email against her.  

When I write emails to faculty about the DMA, I usually CC it to about four people - advisers, administrators, department heads, etc. because I know that information needs to be seen by multiple people and they all need to see the same text.  I also do this to cover my own ass, lest someone say, "but that's not what you said to so-and-so."  Especially useful when negotiating things, the e-paper trail has become a way of life.  And my poor sweet mother is just the type of person to put her do-gooder self in jeopardy by apologizing to some accounting tartlet who really doesn't care about her job, nor does she care about her relationship with Miss Jean.  

I kept telling her I just don't want her to get hurt.  I don't want someone to manipulate her words.  This is the danger with email: there is no context, there is no tone, no inflection.  

I think I hurt her feelings.  I know I hurt her feelings.  And after it was all said and done, I found myself apologizing if I came across as harsh.  For all of her smarts, Miss Jean genuinely believes in the good in people.  This unfortunate gene was also passed on to me, and my sweet husband frequently tells me to stop doing those things I do like talking to strangers, trying to build bridges with difficult colleagues.  Things that I do instinctively, but don't really have anything to do with my work.  

How do open-hearted people survive in this world?  I'm at this great opera company with wonderful colleagues right now and I'm almost dreading going anywhere else, lest the colleagues be not as nice, the staff not as helpful or solicitous.  I'm now spoiled for other companies, and I don't want to go.  And my poor mother, now probably sniffling quietly because I yelled at her for being too nice, is surrounded by these young sharks who are just interested in their own lives, their own careers, and I don't want her to get hurt.  

I don't want to get hurt either.

Sigh.

O say can you see

Inauguration Day 2009.  

Twelve years ago I was standing in the bitter January cold watching President Clinton get sworn in for the second time and thinking about how amazing it is to be an American citizen.  Well this year it's going to be me in my jammies watching the inauguration on youtube or some other streaming video, thinking about how amazing guaifenesin syrup is and how it's almost completely gotten rid of the crud on my cords in the last four days.  Four days of no singing, tea and honey and lemon and water, and a lot A LOT of television.  It's not in my nature to take illness lying down.  I'm usually the first person to beat feet to the doctor's office.  But this time, that role was taken up by my sweet husband who was all over me like a duck on a june bug to get my ass to the doctor.  But here's what I've learned about being a singer.  No matter what's going on in your throat, unless it's bacterial, there ain't shit a doctor can do for you.  They will offer you antibiotics that won't work, they will offer you a steroid injection to make a short-term difference that could enable long-term damage, and they will tell you what your mother always told you: go home, get some rest, drink lots of fluids and eat soup.  Well this time, I'm listening.  I almost spent more time running to the loo than I did on Liz's sofa, thanks to the double-fisted cocktail of tea and water, coupled with the magical G sauce.  Pity I couldn't find mucinex over here - it doesn't taste nearly as nasty as that syrup.  Yeech.  Bleh.  Gak.

My old friend Molly got me thinking about optimism.  A lot of people are waiting for Barack Obama to be the saviour of the nation, and a lot of people are waiting for him to fall on his face and renege on the promises made during his campaign.  The mantra of 'change' has affected everyone I know, cynic and optimist alike, prompting them to wonder what form this 'change' will take.  Molly put forth the idea that even changing the way people think about optimism, about hope, is a move in the right direction, and I'm gonna get behind her on this one.  I can be hopeful that things will be better.  I can hope that this new president will have the intelligence and the tenacity to jump in and get his hands dirty, to look at things with fresh eyes (nearly wrote French eyes there - guess who hasn't had caffeine in days??) and try to steer things closer to a course that's right for most of the people, not right for most of the right.  And I can hope that four years from now, we'll still have the faith in him that we do now, and we'll elect him all over again.  Because I want my kids to grow up with hope and faith in their nation.  

So what's the moral for the day?  Vote and take your vitamins.  

Gratitude:

1.  four years of hope, coming this way

2.  modern medicine in the form of mucinex

3.  licorice tea and manuka honey - tastes better than cough drops

4.  the opportunity to sing on a world stage - pray hard that the voice is ready.  Shit, pray hard that I'm ready.

5.  my incredible friends and husband, drawing near from all over the world to bear witness to this huge event in my career.  

T minus four days till opening night.