Pause

So, when I began some real vacation (involving travel for non-work related purposes) a little while back, I inadvertantly abandonded my blog. It cries for attention in the back of my artistic consciousness - so I am here to apologize for neglect. Vacation is almost over, and I am starting to feel the itch to get back to work. I promise to return shortly. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for pressing pause without telling anyone.

Photo taken from the web

It's a bird, it's a plane...

Yesterday evening, Jeremy and I went to see Superman Returns. I had to drag him kicking and screaming, and there was a moment of dramatic indecision involving a choice between the man in blue tights and Ricky Bobby. In the end, the Man of Steel won out, as he should have.

The movie is an impressive feat. To make a sequel to a set of movies made so many years ago about a man (a cultural archetype, at this point) who flies around in a red cape with a big S emblazoned on his chest and to still make a movie that provokes thought and moves an audience is pretty remarkable.

As a kid and teenager (and, yes, as an adult), I was (am) a fan of comic books, although I never really got into the whole Superman thing. I was obsessed with the X-men. The whole idea of a team of people saving the world was more appealing to me than the story of the lone hero – perhaps because I was looking for a refuge from the isolation of being a closeted, gay 13 year old. Plus, why limit yourself to one hot, superpowered man in tights when you can have lots of hot, superpowered men in tights and lots of superpowered women with great hair?

Watching Superman save the world last night and nearly meet his end, only to be saved by Lois Lane and her unconventional family, I found myself wondering what it meant to be a superhero in the world of today. The question is raised early on in the movie, does the world need a Superman? I found myself whispering to Jeremy in the darkness of the theater, that yes, we do, indeed, need a Superman. It was a wishful sentiment, as I sat there with images of bombed out cities in the Middle East in the forefront of my mind. But as the movie wore on, I wondered, why is it so natural for people to want someone else to come and fix their problems? And would a “Superman” – a person sent to our planet to help us realize our greater potential and to save the day – be a solution or a band-aid?

Earlier in the day, I was driving through DC and listening to public radio, when the BBC program, World Have Your Say, came on. The show was moderating a discussion about whether one’s religion or one’s nation provide one with security. I emphatically think that neither ultimately provide us with security. What they both provide us with are “us” and “them”. Until people realize that there are only “us” and the self and that “them” does not – cannot – truly exist, we will not find security. Without security and peace, how could we ever realize our full potential? Would any one individual – even a Superman – be able to help us find peace and a way to become more evolved beings? Regardless, we don’t seem to be doing so well on our own right now, so perhaps we could use a Superman in the meantime – even just a symbol of hope.

Two Poems

The Divine Image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every dime
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

-William Blake (1757 - 1827), Songs of Innocence

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

-William Blake (1757 - 1827), Songs of Experience

I came across these while learning some music yesterday, and they made me pause for thought. We hold so much potential for greatness as humans. We also seem to have the potential to achieve amazing acts of atrocity, violence, hate, and ugliness. It seems that the choice is up to us, no? I found both tremendous responsibility and freedom in this little reminder that we create our own reality.

Restless

I am taking a break. I have been looking forward to this break for a long time. In order to work, I need to be away from home. Being away from Jeremy is really hard – it is insanely difficult to maintain and nourish a relationship through the phone. Yes, we have a home together, but I am almost never there. Plus, I think that if I had taken the work offered to me this summer, Jeremy might have castrated me.

When I first arrived in Frankfurt in late May, I was so frustrated by the lack of convenience. Things closed early, I couldn’t easily pick up a wireless connection in my apartment, I had to use internet cafés to check my email for the first two weeks, stores aren’t open on Sundays and holidays, cell phones are insanely expensive, you have to sort your trash, they charge you for bags at the grocery store, toilets barely have any water in the bowl. I missed American convenience – shopping for everything and anything at Walgreens, grocery stores open 24 hours, the seemingly ubiquitous internet connection, being able to call Jeremy at any hour of the day for free on my cell phone, air conditioning, free paper bags at Whole Foods.

Now, I find that I miss Europe. I loved my routine there. It felt so independent and relaxed. I loved getting up in the morning, writing my morning pages, eating some breakfast, and then leaving my apartment and walking through the city. My schedule was structured so that we rehearsed mostly according to the follow schedule: morning rehearsal, 4 or 5 hour break, evening rehearsal. At first, the break in the day really bothered me, but eventually I grew to treasure it. It allowed me to go outside during the day, run errands, eat a leisurely lunch, perhaps take a nap, read, and arrive refreshed for the second working session of the day. I read voraciously there, I started this blog, I threw myself into rehearsal everyday, I started taking pictures. I felt my creativity surge.

Back in the states, I find it really hard to focus again. Things feel fuzzy. I am taking a much needed break now, firstly to have some time with Jeremy as well as to regroup and get ready for all of the upcoming new projects I have coming up for next season. I actually have a lot of time on my hands now, but I find it is really difficult to get moving. I feel my creativity and energy are stuck.

We are staying with a host named Bill here in the Washington, DC area while Jeremy is working at Wolf Trap this summer. Bill is a nice, 70 year old widower whose passions include bicycling, learning biblical Greek, and seeing opera. He has a nice home in suburban Bethesda that we are staying in. My days mostly consist of waking up, morning pages, taking Jeremy to work, driving into DC, checking my email on my laptop at a café, reading the news online about how the world is blowing itself up, studying Hungarian for a bit, translating a bit of L’incoronazione di Poppea, going to the gym, eating a quick lunch, driving back to Bethesda, practicing, then picking up Jeremy at work. This routine is killing me and my creativity slowly. The sheer amount of time I spend alone in the car (not to mention the gas that I guzzle – therefore doing my part to perpetuate our American unquenchable thirst for oil) is draining my soul. I have tried to do this without the car – and it is massively inconvenient. There is no public transportation between Bill’s house and the nearest Metro Station between the hours of 9:03 am and 3:23 pm during the week. It is simply so hard to get anywhere that is a public place, my energy is sucked into simply getting around.

In a nutshell, I am growing restless. Nothing feels right – I am easily irritated. All I want to do is go to bed. I feel like I am wandering much of the time. About restlessness, Julia Cameron writes:

“…a bout with restlessness is best met with curiosity – not with the conclusion that your true cranky character is surging to the fore. Irritability is the flag waved by restlessness. Restlessness means you are on the march creatively. The problem is, you may not know where.” - Julia Cameron, Walking in this World

She is right – I am irritable, and I am certainly on the march creatively. And I also don’t know where I am going. Or do I? In some ways I do. My life is scheduled for the most part until the spring of 2008. I have a list of upcoming projects that are satisfying and interesting that need attending to. So why am I so fussy? Is it because I actually do know where I am going? Or am I just suffering from reverse cultural shock? Or is it that I am a workaholic and simply don’t know how to relax?

Le calendrier

Since people have been asking where I’ll be in the coming months, I’ve decided to post my calendar of performance dates here so everyone can see it and use it for future (future, meaning now until June, 2007) reference. Obviously, this is subject to change. I hope to have a real, grown-up website soon, where I can post this information in a more adult and professional way along with pretty pictures of me that I will ideally have taken in the near future, pending a good haircut. In the meantime, this will hopefully do.

Atlanta Opera

Pagliacci & Carmina Burana - October 5, 7, 8, 2006

Los Angeles Opera

L’incoronazione di Poppea - November 26 & 30, December 3, 7, 10, 13, 16, 2006

The Helicon Foundation (NYC)

Chamber music recital - February 11, 2007

Chicago Opera Theater

Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria - March 28 & 30, April 1, 5, 7, 2007

Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra

Cantata Profana - April 12 & 13, 2007

New York Festival of Song - May 9 & 10, 2007

Oper Frankfurt

Ariodante - May 25 & 28, June 3 & 7, 2007

Dona nobis pacem

Descend, kind pity, heav'nly guest,
Descend, and fill each human breast
With sympathizing woe.
That liberty, and peace of mind,
May sweetly harmonize mankind,
And bless the world below.

-Septimius, Theodora (G.F. Handel/Thomas Morell)

Subway

I ride a lot of public transportation. I love it, actually. I find it provides some pretty choice people watching time.

I grab a seat on the Metro from Vienna, VA into Washington, DC. It is the weekend. A fat, slovenly, pasty-white woman sits across from me. He husband tends to her needs and makes sure she is comfortable. She lounges in the subway seat, sprawling one of her legs across it, seemingly unable to get enough space. She coughs, grabs an unopened bottle of frozen water from her husband and sips it. A girl behind them sucks on some beef jerky, proud that she has managed to extrapolate the meat-substance from it'’s casing. Another white, blond couple that looks to be around 24 years old get on the train, a 3 year old daughter in tow. I look around me on the train, and notice that roughly 85% of the people around me have white skin, are fair haired, and at least slightly overweight. All seem to be tourists to visit their nation'’s capitol. The weekend Metro-crowd is clearly different from the young, slim, ethnically diverse professionals that flood the subway clad in Banana Republic and Ann Taylor during the weekday rush hour.

It occurs to me that these are people who are rarely in shared, public space. The only time that they might be in shared space with people that they don't know is in line at Wal-mart. These are the people who piss you off in the airport security line, because they don't know to remove their shoes before you get to the metal detectors and slow down the line as a result. I imagine that they spend most of their days in their cars, at work, or at home - a lonely and monochromatic existence. I wonder if the conservative base of America fears the corruption of our family values because it is the only human contact that they can truly cling to. If their families leave them or drift away, what else do they have? No wonder they fear what is different - their lives aren't structured in a way that doesn'’t allow for diversity. Isn't fear the root of hate?

Blur

The green forests of the east coast blur by my window as I ride back to Washington, DC on the train from New York City. My mind drifts back to the train rides in Germany and the passing views of the German countryside flying by my window there. My laptop sits open as I try to finish a blog entry I started yesterday, but my mind is much like the view from my window – fast-moving, fuzzy, and unable to focus on any one thing. I feel restless, anxious to arrive into Union Station. I’ve been on the move a lot since I left Germany – back to my American pace. One day in Houston, a concert and rehearsals in Bethesda, my good friends Markus and Laquita visiting for a weekend, a voice lesson in New York, a dinner concert in Nashville this weekend. The pace makes it hard to concentrate. Perhaps in order for me to think clearly, I need to press pause, and find a place to just be for a little bit.

I promise to have something interesting sometime soon.

Loss of a hero

I have a passion for Handel. He is my favorite composer, and I listen to his music incessantly, which many people poke fun at me for. My first year in Houston was a busy one, and I happened to have a night off for the first time in weeks. I had recently purchased a video of Peter Sellars’ production of Handel’s Theodora from Glyndebourne, so I decided that this night off was going to be a night to relax, turn off my cell phone, sit on my couch, crochet, and watch a video of Handel. About twenty minutes into the piece, I stopped mid-stitch, transfixed by the singing that I heard. I looked up and saw Lorraine Hunt Lieberson kneeling on the floor, singing passionately one of the most beautiful arias in Handel’s canon. It was my first time to ever hear or see her perform. I’ve never been the same musician since – it was a type of commitment to a performance that I will always strive to emulate. Never had I seen someone so devoted to making music with all of her being.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died on Monday at the young age of 52. She was taken from us too quickly, and it saddens me to think of our musical world without her.

Happy Independence Day

I arrived back into the states late yesterday, just in time for our nation’s birthday. My journey home took me from Frankfurt through Cincinnati to Houston. It was a long, exhausting trip, and it was interesting to be surrounded by so many Americans for the first time in six weeks. Now I am on a flight to Washington, DC, to begin my time as housewife to my beloved Jeremy – a prospect I am looking forward to after so much time away this year. I know this means that I am on my third plane in two days, but I am used to this pace of travel.

My friends Michael and Cody picked me up at the airport last night, and we sped to downtown Houston for dinner. The highways were fairly empty, although I marveled at the sheer size of American cars – they are tanks compared to the cars in Europe.

Whenever I am away from the States, my tradition is to eat a burger the first chance I get. Burgers are the one type of food I crave while I am away, and I refuse to eat them while I am abroad. Sure, I’m afraid of mad-cow disease and all that, but more importantly they simply don’t taste anywhere near as good. As we sat in Barnaby’s, eating our burgers, Michael and Cody asked me about the details of my trip. I told them about the wonderful time I had, how the show went well, how good Jeremy was with the language when he came to visit, about my good times with Nadine, and about the great food I had. When the subject of dining abroad came up, Michael mentioned that he thought the culture in Europe allowed people to enjoy their time more. Six weeks vacation, no waiter bothering you with the bill at dinner until you ask for it, stores closing at 7:00pm, almost nothing open on Sundays – he has a point. In the first three weeks of rehearsal for Finta there were three random holidays in which we didn’t rehearse at all. When I work in the States, it’s debatable if I’ll have Easter or Christmas off.

When Jeremy came to visit for the premiere of Finta, he and I got into a heated debate about how he felt about being American. He was a little apprehensive before his arrival, because he was embarrassed about his nationality. When I mentioned this to Nadine, she shared his feeling. Yes, I understand we are not the perfect nation – by far. We are propagating an empire through globalization, are at war for reasons that get more and more vague as time goes by, think we are above international law – I understand all of these things. These were many of the points that both Jeremy and Nadine pointed out to me during this debate, as well as how Americans don’t know how to enjoy food, are constantly in a rush, are insanely wasteful people, and are incapable of learning a foreign language. I see these points, but I also see things that are positive. There is so much that is wonderful about our country – we are a polite people, we are an intelligent people. We are a diverse people – whether we like it or not. It is part of the beauty of the principles that we seem to think our nation was founded on. America is not just one thing. It is a country full of widely disparate ideologies, religions, cultures, and people – isn’t that the point of being a free country, where you are free to be who you are and think what you think? Why is it that people see us and only think of the religious right, George W. Bush, and obesity? Yes, we may disagree on many things – but the point is that we can. I don’t think that this is a privilege to be taken lightly.

Yes, I miss Europe, it’s food, it’s diverse people, languages and cultures. But the feeling of relief that sank into my heart as I got off the plane in Houston yesterday was the reassuring, happy, contented feeling of coming home.

Homeward Bound

Time to go – almost. I have one final performance of La finta semplice tonight. My apartment is in a chaotic state. Dishes finally clean sit piled on the drying area next to my tiny, two-burner stove. There are bags overflowing with paper to be recycled next to the trash bin, which is waiting to be filled with the foodstuffs I have not been able to consume this week. My clothes are clean, but have yet to be folded, and are covering the bed. Mysteriously, my suitcases are still in the closet – empty. I could be filling them with all of my belongings right now, trying to pack evenly, so as not to make them too heavy (I don’t want to pay the extra fee). I’m not doing that yet.

I went to Cologne to say goodbye to Nadine on Tuesday. We met at the train station, helped her run a couple of errands she had to attend to before leaving for Spain the next day, and then had lunch at the old fire-station in Cologne that is now a great restaurant. We took a bunch of pictures, bummed around the city some more, and then headed back to the train station to say goodbye. When we got the platform to wait for my train, there was a weight in my chest, and a lump formed in my throat. I suddenly realized how attached I had grown to seeing her so regularly for the first time since college. We looked at each other and were surprised by our sadness. Saying goodbye to her, I realized what a special time I have had here these past six weeks.

Cologne, Nadine tells me, was a Roman city that used to be surrounded by walls. Eventually, as time went by and the city grew, the citizens of Cologne decided to tear down the walls in order to make it a bit easier to get around the city. All that remains of those walls are the gates that used to allow people into the city. Now they stand alone, doors with no walls that one can simply walk around. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve built my own walls to protect myself, like we all do. As time has gone by, I have fortified them more and more with each hurt life has inevitably dealt me, and it gets harder and harder for people to get through – and for me to get out. Seeing Nadine so much has allowed me to let the walls down for a bit. I hadn’t noticed how nice it felt to be open and relaxed and free with someone on a regular basis. At the train station on Tuesday, I suddenly realized how much I was going to miss that with Nadine.

My time here, while scary at first, has really been a great time. I’m not as alone as I first thought. I’ve really come to love it here. I can’t wait to come back.

View

The view from my window in Frankfurt...

The Great Escape or Fiber

“I wish I had a river I could skate away on.” – Joni Mitchell

Those words have been ringing in my ipod lately, as I have been riding the U-Bahn to rehearsals. I also just finished reading Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. One of the main themes in Kavalier & Clay was the idea of escape – the main comic book character that Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay create and become famous for is called the Escapist, one of the main characters is actually a trained escape artist, the first chunk of the book is devoted to the telling of an escape from Nazi occupied Prague, Houdini is mentioned dozens of times, another main character is gay and marries a woman in order to set his life “straight” (so to speak), to name a few examples. Between the book and Joni, I have been noticing how prominent the idea of escape is in our lives. I hadn’t noticed its universal presence, our communal desire for it before.

One thing that I’ve noticed is how I get to escape reality daily as part of my job. Everyday that I go to work, I am required to take off my clothes, put on a rehearsal costume, and pretend to be someone else for six hours. There are some days where I marvel that I get to make a living doing this. I am paid to step out of my life and into someone else’s on a daily basis.

Even more than this, I never work at home, so I have to travel around the world (escape) in order to be employed. It is a different way of life, and I find that I have to explain it at great length to most people I know who live “normal” lives. They never seem to understand why I am away so much and never really at home. They have this look in their eye that says, “I wonder if he’ll ever settle down.”

While this all seems very exciting, jet-setting, and yes, “unsettled”, the fact is that my life is in actuality a rather banal existence the majority of the time. There is a short film that you can download on itunes called Our Time is Up. The film begins with a shot of a Sony alarm clock buzzing at 7:00 (that white, boxy one with the black face and glowing, alien-green numbers that almost everyone you know owns). A person swings his feet over the side of the bed, puts on the slippers waiting there for his feet. Then there is a shot of him reaching for a starched white shirt that is hanging on a rack of other starched white shirts. Then a shot of him reaching for a red tie on a rack of other red ties. Every shot has a sterility, rhythm and order about it. My life is rather like that, for the most part. I try to get up at the same time every day, write my morning pages, work out, eat the same thing for breakfast everyday (one whole egg and two egg whites – scrambled, a piece of some grainy toast, fruit), check email, read the news online, shower, and then do the same 15 minutes of vocal exercises to warm up, and head to rehearsal. I do this everyday that I have to work (normally six days a week), and I follow this routine religiously. Without this routine, this rhythm, I stress and am quite unfocused and irritable. My mind feels like peach fuzz, and I am prone to snap at anyone who stands in my way.

In order to achieve the “escape” my profession requires of me properly, I have to submit to the predictability of routine – an odd paradox. Shouldn’t escape be full of adventure, the unpredictable, the unexpected, variety? On the other hand, the fact that “escape” is required of me so regularly makes it not a vacation, but a vocation. If that’s the case, I imagine a little regularity is a good thing in order to provide me with some grounding, stability, and a little bit of the predictable. It helps keep life in good flow. Sort of like making sure I eat enough fiber daily.

Imago

For Jeremy – this reminds me of that magical time when we first met.

The Self Banished (an excerpt)

It is not that I love you less
Than when before your feet I lay,
But to prevent the sad increase
Of hopeless love, I keep away.

In vain (alas!) for everything
Which I have known belong to you,
Your form does to my fancy bring,
And makes my old wounds bleed anew.

-Edmund Waller (1606 – 1687)

Photo by Nadine Balbeisi

Comforting thought

"We followed his weakness. His incompleteness. Failure'’s open. Look at water, Esi. It finds weak places in the rock, the openings, the hollows, the absences. Following water we come where we belong."

-Old Music and the Slave Women, Ursula K. Le Guin

An interesting thought, no? It gives a new dimension to the phrase, "“Go with the flow". I found it really quite comforting to read today.

Memories in my ipod

The area around the Dom in Frankfurt is one of the few parts of city that is not modern in its design. It is a part of town where everything is architecturally historical and where people come and sit in the plaza by the fountain, drink coffee, and eat cake. I decided to come here today to read and finish the book I am working on now (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon---I am devouring literature here as fast as humanly possible). The cleaning person had buzzed my door this morning and woke me up before I wanted to be moving and conscious. So, in order to give her space, I thought I should get out of the house and go somewhere I could read.

It was a pleasant scene in the plaza today: children ran around playing tag, tourists wandered around aimlessly, a man was playing his trumpet next to the fountain, there were many more flags than usual flapping in the wind today (most of them having to do with World Cup), the sun was out, and there was good music on my ipod as it shuffled through it's collection – my ipod is my best friend when I am on the road. I often like to let her wander through her library at random, following whatever musical journey she takes me on.

They say that smell is the strongest trigger of memory. While this may be true, oftentimes, music is also a strong trigger for my memory. I often will become obsessed with some album that I have fallen in love with, and - like a teenager who would loop a song over and over again on a cassette - I will listen to a new CD ad nauseum and then permanently associate it with some period in my life.

Sarah McLachlan started to sing in my ipod this morning, and I was immediately distracted from Joe Kavalier's dilemma about what to do with his million dollars by a surge that I realized was my body being physically overwhelmed with emotions from a long time ago. It was as if I had been transported emotionally back in time. It felt strangely like a tingling, exciting rush and a heaviness descending upon me at the same time.

Back in 1999, I was driving on my way to the Aspen Music Festival for the first time. I had decided to ride out with my friend Kindra, another singer from the University of Michigan who was going to study in Aspen, as well. We drove Kindra's white, whale-sized SUV out to Colorado that summer - our belongings, a cooler full of snacks, and tons of water stuffed in the back, and our bikes mounted on the rack in the back of the vehicle. It was a fun trip that took about three and half days. We stopped at my aunt's house for one evening in South Bend on our way out, and then we trekked to Lincoln, Nebraska, where I had my first experience staying in a hostel. Then, we drove to Denver, where I dropped Kindra off at the Denver Airport so she could fly out to Alaska to see her sister run a marathon. I drove the last bit from Denver to Aspen alone, getting lost as I tried to find Independence Pass (I didn't find it on that trip). In the last stretch going into Aspen, there was an accident that stopped traffic for two hours in a canyon. So people stopped their cars, were walking their dogs, and having picnics on the side of the highway as they waited for traffic to get moving again. The sun was setting, day was turning to dusk, the breeze blew pleasantly, there was a rushing, little creek to the left of the road, and the air smelled clean. At this point, driving Kindra’s white tank by myself, stranded in the middle of a canyon in the Rockies, I discovered Sarah McLachlan.

The nine months leading up to that road trip to Aspen were a very hard stretch for me. I had been dumped by my first love, and it took me a good portion of the year to move on. I came out to my parents, which was a terrifying and hurtful experience. By the time that summer had rolled around, things were quite rocky. I really needed to escape from Ann Arbor and to be alone. I needed time to figure things out. I was numb with pain. I felt so alone, so abandoned, so confused, and so lost (both figuratively and literally). I felt such relief when I dropped off Kindra at the airport that day and was finally by myself, away from everything I knew, and about to start anew (for a summer) in an unfamiliar, but beautiful place. It was the beginning of a vacation from my unhappy and seemingly dismal reality.

I'm not sure why the memory sticks with me so much - I don't even listen to her much, but when Sarah popped into my ipod this morning, I was taken immediately back to that trip and my adventure - my first traveling adventure alone - in the mountains of Colorado.

Sitting there and looking up at the Dom with my cheap, white headphones in my ears, I was lucky enough to have a moment of reflection. My ipod had unwittingly jerked me out of drowning in the present and allowed me to get my head above water to have a little perspective. So much has changed in the last seven years – perhaps more in my head and my heart than anywhere else in my life. I count a lot of blessings in my life, including my parents, my boyfriend, my friends, my job, my opportunities among them. It was nice to look up into the sun, smile as I felt its warmth on my face, and have an adventure with my ipod today.

Mastery

“The morning arrived with applause and they made toast”

That sentence is sheer brilliance, I think. It’s from the book that I am reading right now---a collection of short stories called How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers---the man who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius a few years back. His use of language is virtuosic. They way he uses adjectives at times almost redefines them. It’s mind-blowing. His perspectives on the situations he describes, on his characters, on their surroundings, and even on the words themselves are so incredibly original, surprising, creative, and fresh! I feel like I am writing an advertisement for Glade or a Massengill douche here, but it really is a fresh way of looking at the world. And what is truly amazing is that he seems to do it with almost no effort at all. He is truly a master of the English language. There are so few people who truly master anything ever in a lifetime---I admire those people who manage to do it.

I think about mastery a lot, actually. I often stress about whether or not I will ever achieve it myself, although I am, it seems at the very least, undaunted in my efforts to do so. My daily (almost) devotion to practicing making strange noises with my voice are, I guess, a testament of sorts to my own effort to achieve mastery in my own medium.

Believe it or not, it really is little things like that sentence above that get me through the day at times. A little inspiration, if you will. Without little things like that, our world becomes so mundane---why do we take all that is around us so much for granted?

Nadine

The lush, vibrant, green German countryside flies by my window at lightning fast speeds, and the electric hum of the train is ubiquitous around me as a tenor sings a Handel aria in my ipod. I’ve been lonely in Frankfurt---I am not sure how to go out and meet new people in a foreign country. I guess I could try my luck at one of the bars in town, and grab a drink by myself and hope that someone talks to me---I’ve never had much luck with that before, though. That whole fear of people that I have kind of gets in the way.

I am on my way to visit my friend Nadine. Nadine moved here five years ago to continue her studies after we graduated from college. She started at the musikhochschule in Cologne, and took her time as she got situated in the community here. She is a small woman of wild, passionate, impulsive, upbeat energy, with an incredibly inquisitive and sharp mind full of strong opinions. Her hair is very curly and brown and has a mind of its own, much like Nadine herself. She speaks excellent German. She laughs loudly. She is one of my favorite people.

This last March was the first time I had seen Nadine in two years. I hadn’t seen her since I was in Berlin to study German a couple summers ago. She was singing with an opera company up in Rheinsberg, a small town 2 hours away from Berlin for the summer, and I went to visit her. We had a fun time, despite some crazy, insecure people who tried to ruin our fun with gossip and intrigue. I was there only 48 hours…I’m not sure how or about what they managed to find something to create gossip about, but they did. I don’t get to see Nadine much, because she lives so far away, but whenever I see Nadine, it’s guaranteed to be a good time.

It’s hard to be away from people I know well. Perhaps one of the blessings of being on the road so much is that I get to visit some of those people once in a while, even though we are scattered across the planet. Maybe, in the end, I am not as alone as I have been feeling recently.

As the train pulls into the station in Cologne, I see Nadine waiting for me on the track, wrapped in a shawl and hugging herself to keep warm in the chilly, wet spring weather. Nina Simone begins to croon through my ipod that the sun is coming, and that it’s all right. Thanks, Nina.

Fear of people

Today marks my first week in Frankfurt. Frankfurt is a strange city, full of large, monolithic, almost brutish, grey and silver modernist buildings and lots of businessmen, although I am discovering that it has its charm. The feeling of being surprised like this by a city gives me an eerie sense of deja-vu---I had the same feeling when I moved to Houston four years ago. I’ll never forget my first trip to Houston four years ago. The most memorable moment was in a van with five other singers on our way to downtown Houston from George Bush Intercontinental Airport. As we drove through what seemed like an endless ocean of strip malls, used car dealerships and porn stores, my dear friend Laquita turned to me and proclaimed, “This city is busted. There is no way I am coming down to this dump.” Before we knew it, we had packed our lives into my cherry red 1997 Pontiac Grand Am, Laquita was in the passenger seat, and we were making the move down from Manhattan to the sprawling mass that is Houston. Four years later, I still live there.

While my first impression was not quite so strongly negative here, it seems that Frankfurt is having a similar effect on me---Frankfurt was the least exciting stop on my first European audition tour. But where am I making my European debut? Frankfurt. Actually, I will have spent exactly one sixth of the year here by the time 2006 is all said and done, with a scheduled return for another month next spring. So, I am off and running to find charm and personality so that I really can enjoy my time here.

Well, that sentence about me “running” to find this city’s charm is actually a bit of a lie. Every time I arrive in a new place, I suddenly become a totally agoraphobic person. This magical effect new places have on me is obviously exacerbated in Europe, where I have foreign languages and culture shock to deal with.

When I tell people what it is that I do for a living and then proceed to whine about how I am more often traveling than I am at home, they almost inevitably say, “Oh, how wonderful!” For instance, when I told people that I was going to spend a six week stint in Frankfurt this spring, they would (without fail) say things like “How exciting!” and “Lucky, you!” or “Oh, you’ll love it over there!”, jealous of all the time I was going to get to spend in Europe.

What people don’t understand about me is that I am deathly afraid of people. I know that I come across as an affable, friendly, somewhat outgoing person, but the thought of having to make contact with strangers in a foreign country gives me diarrhea. When I envision myself in Europe and try to think of the positive aspects of the fact that the majority of my life is spent on the road, I dream of myself as being a jet-setting, trendy, fearless adventurer. I envision myself walking confidently amidst the beautiful architecture, history, art, and landscapes of Europe; or sipping tea in decadent cafes while I read amazing works of literature that enlighten me by the second; or meeting fascinating new people from other cultures and building lasting friendships around the world---it’s all a very grand image of myself and my adventures in my brain, I assure you. The reality is that the thought of even asking someone where the restroom is gives me an anxiety attack. I mean, it took me a week to work up the courage to walk into the grocery store and buy groceries here. It takes me hours every day to work up the courage to go into a restaurant to eat a meal or even go into a café and order a glass of tea.

As to what I am afraid of? Well, that people will hate me, of course. Or think me stupid. But the ultimate reason is I am afraid that people will despise me and that I will be friendless during my time here. It’s a paralyzing phobia, and I can totally acknowledge that it is a completely ridiculous worry of mine. Or is it?

Deep down, I know it relates on some level to the fact that I was once a twelve year old who was ostracized from my society of fellow middle schoolers. I know this sounds dramatic, but what isn’t dramatic at the age of twelve?

When I was in elementary school, I had the privilege of attending a small Montessori school out in the woods surrounding Ann Arbor. The school only had about 30 students in it total, from the 1^st grade to the 5^th grade. Being a school in the middle of the woods, and having a relatively small student body comprised mostly of the children of crunchy, liberal parents, we all got along and did fun things like run into the woods to build forts, play hide and seek, and hit trees with sticks when we weren’t learning our addition tables and such. When it came time for me to go to the sixth grade, I chose to go to another private school, although this one was much bigger and full of kids who had previously gone to bigger public schools. For the first time since the first grade, it was a completely new environment for me. I knew nobody and had never been in a school environment that involved a homeroom, a lunch room, homework, and popular people. I didn’t know how to go about meeting all of these new people, and I was terrified the whole time that people would realize that I was gay, that I was a dork who liked books, that I once liked New Kids on the Block, or any variety of things. Basically, I was afraid someone might get to know me. Why was that such a terrifying thought? Well, what if they got to know me and all of my faults and then discovered that they hated me and then told everyone else not to like me?

Can you see the parallels between that jarring, terrifying experience and this one? Here I am in a foreign country, where there are cultural and linguistic differences (I mean in the States, Walgreens is open twenty-four hours, while practically nothing is open here on a Sunday---and I have yet to meet a German person who goes to church), and to top it all off, everyone I meet is a new person. It’s like I am once again that little 12 year-old sixth grader in a new place, with new people, petrified that everyone will hate me and I will be left all alone again.

Perhaps what I should try to make conscious in my brain is that I am not 12 years old anymore, and that I am a person who has much to offer and who people like, love, and care about. Perhaps, what I should try to do, to put it more bluntly, is to grow up. Why are we so ashamed of who we are? I envy those few people who never seem to have to question themselves and never put stock in other people’s thoughts about them. Maybe I can be like them when I grow up someday. In the meantime, I should at the very least try to conquer my inner twelve year old, work up some courage, and fly out into the wonders of Frankfurt and discover its charm and its people.

An introduction of sorts

Hello all.

Here I am about to enter the world of blogging. I must admit that I am not that familiar with blogging and its culture, assuming that it has one. I only have recently read a few blogs, and infrequently at that. Regardless, I have always fantasized about writing and sharing my writing with the world-at-large. I used to dream of writing novels when I was younger, and I wrote many a short story that my mother said she liked. I wanted to be a writer and a journalist for a large chunk of my childhood. Part of the reason I felt this was because I felt like I needed to have an answer when adults asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and that sounded better to me than saying I wanted to be a fireman. It was also partly because I read voraciously---the Ann Arbor Public Library and the original Borders (when Borders was simply a small bookstore on State Street) were my favorite places to be as a child. Of course, I followed these childhood dreams and grew up to become an opera singer.

My boyfriend, Jeremy, has on many an occasion told me that to write, one must be brave enough to get a first draft down on the page, even if it’s full of shit content, poor grammar usage, spelling errors and is completely unintelligible. I guess all journeys have to start somewhere. So, hier bin ich.

Thank you for tuning in. I am not sure why it is that I feel compelled to record some of my thoughts and experiences and share them with the public. Maybe it is because I come from a generation of people obsessed with things like Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, and we struggle and strive to find meaning in our lives. Maybe it is because I am attention starved because of the emotional scarring of my friendless, outcast pre-teen experience, and I am still desperately searching for someone to care about my life. Maybe I am desperately searching for meaning in my life, and the way that I’ll know my life has meaning is when I perceive that other people care about it. Maybe I am just trying to fill the vast amounts of time I spend alone traveling. Maybe I’m just following my dreams. I have no idea---I’ll be sure to ask my therapist at our next session, though.

In the last English class I took at the University of Michigan, we explored children’s literature from the end of the 19^th century (works like Alice and Wonderland and The Light Princess) and how it influenced/related to the Modernist movement in English Literature around the beginning of the 20^th century. It was one of two of the best and most fascinating classes that I took at that institution (the other being a 4 person seminar on Handel’s London operas…don’t judge). We read amazing Modernist works of literature like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, To the Lighthouse, The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as Post-Modernist works like Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties. Our professor---a small, bookish woman who wore wire-rimmed glasses and refused to take calls during West Wing---described the Modernists as people who felt that life was bewildering---writers who felt like there was a “Truth” or meaning missing from their experience. Their art was an effort to dig for that “Truth”, that missing meaning. She described Post-Modernists as artists who had ultimately decided that missing “Truth” didn’t exist at all, but just kept digging anyway. Then she asserted that there really was no difference between Modernists and Post-Modernists, which stumped the classroom full of 21-year-old students stressed and confused about how to get good grade in her class. As I sit here and ponder my compelling urge to write and share it with you all, and I wonder which camp I fall into---Modernist or Post-Modernist? In the end, does it even matter? Is there a difference? Again, I have no idea. I, myself, was one of those stumped 21-year-olds desperate for a good grade. Maybe I’ll discover something profound on this journey. I probably will, only to have a great epiphany and then come to understand that it is not the great realization it was, because I have found a more profound, greater “Truth”. Then that epiphany will be undermined, too. It’s a vicious circle---all very Stephen Dedalus.

I have no idea how often I will update this, although I hope that I will do it with some sort of regularity. I just want to have subject matter that is meaningful to me and that I really care to write about. I don’t want to just update this with trite and pseudo-witty observations on life for the sake of having an entry. That would be boring and contrived. I’m not boring and contrived, am I?

Again, thanks for reading this, if you’ve made it this far down the page. Assuming I get over my fear that people will think me stupid, boring, trite, contrived, ineloquent, clumsy, inarticulate, offensive, poorly educated, narcissistic, and vapid, I’ll have something else (perhaps meaningful) to share in the near future.

Until then, peace be with you.