The Red Queen's Race

There's a part in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass that I think sums up the life of a performer--or, let's be real, grownupitude in general--pretty well. Alice has just met the Red Queen (not to be confused with the Queen of Hearts, who, while still pretty great, is from a different book entirely), who explains to her that the geography of Wonderland is set up like a giant chess-board and that the way to advance one's position is to advance to the other end of the board. Alice begins as a White Pawn and wishes to become a queen. And then this exchange happens:

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

 For the last couple of years, I've been doing a lot of running, and it's easy to feel like I haven't gotten much of anywhere. Audition season is often like this, but the past year felt particularly demoralizing. Coming off the high of my first 5K and singing the most musically difficult role of my life (oh, Turn of the Screw, you gorgeous sadist), I spent a couple of weeks in New York City, got new headshots, recorded new pre-screening audios, and reformatted my CV. I was on this.

And then the invitations for a live audition just . . . didn't come from most places I applied to. The few auditions I did get didn't lead to gigs. And, as a singer, someone whose instrument is literally a part of her body, it was easy to internalize this rejection as a reflection on my worth as a person and/or artist, rather than just an indication that maybe the roles that were available weren't a close fit for my voice or personality. This impulse to beat myself down was a rookie mistake, and I'm not proud of it. So, my first truly miserable audition season in the books, I'm preparing for the start of a new round this fall.

That's the thing with a lot of life--unless you were born with an insane level of talent, plus a great work ethic and understanding of your field, PLUS some stunning family connections, you're going to get rejected a lot, and it's going to suck, and you're going to have to either keep trying or find something else to do. Audition season is absolutely the Red Queen's Race. For three to five months at a time, we sprint from room to room to room across Los Angeles or Manhattan or wherever, and we get a breathless four-to-eight minutes to prove that we are the answer to whatever question the casting director is asking himself at the moment. Some of those rooms are too small or too hot or have terrible acoustics, but we do it because the only way to even have a chance at progressing to the status of Queen (or, like, convincing somebody to pay us for singing high notes, amirite?) is to keep moving. The second we stop, we may as well be moving backwards.

All of this is to say, it's been a really long time and I missed writing for the two or three of you who actually read this shit (hi, Mom!). Here's a reaction gif to illustrate how I feel about being back:

So. Now that that long-winded and heavy-handed metaphor is out of the way, here's some stuff that happened over the last, like, two years:

1.  My hair was short, and then long, and then short again. It grows fast, so we're pretty much back to status quo now. Yes, I know you give a shit about this, and you're welcome for the update.
2. I visited New York, like, five times, and Los Angeles three or four. I have developed a grudging appreciation for both of these places (and a very enthusiastic appreciation for my amazing friends who live there), but it's cheaper to live in Chicago, so I'm gonna stay here a while.
3. Last summer, I spent a month in Hawaii and somehow came back paler than when I had left the Mainland. This may be due to the fact that I even wear a cardigan to the beach.
4. After my beloved Camry was destroyed in a car accident right before Christmas 2012, I bought a Toyota Corolla, whose name is Napoleon, who is now paid for in full. I feel good about this.
5. I saw the following shows during various audition trips to New York City: Matilda (twice!), Pippin (circus-y!), Cabaret (Alan Cumming!), On the Town (?!?!?!!!!), and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (patter songs!).  There's still a list of things I'd like to see despite being THE POOREST, but discount ticket vendors are the actual best thing ever.
6. In September 2014, I left the mostly-full-time job I had held for nearly 3 years and decided to see if I could support myself on substitute teaching and tutoring alone which is mostly working so far? Ten months later, I have just taken on a fourth part-time job, still live and die by Google Calendar, and am no longer suffering from at-least-weekly migraines.
7. And finally, this jerk still lives in my apartment. We play fetch, and sometimes she gets to come on road-trips.

So there we have it. I've been a bum, and I'll be around more now that the obligatory "I'm sorry for my protracted absence" post has been written. I love you all.

My life goes on in endless song; or, BS takes a moment to breathe

Tonight, on the way back from rehearsal, I stopped by CVS to pick up a soda for my roommate, who is exhausted by unpacking and was craving. I grabbed one for myself, and only noticed when I took a sip a half hour later that it was Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. 

Then, I went to make a salad (my one meal today was consumed at the family-owned Italian restaurant down the street as I sat with the staff, watching the Euro 2012 Final and exclaiming rude things in Italian at the screen). As I cut into the avocado I had bought earlier today, I noticed that its flesh had gone brown.

The fact that these are the two biggest disappointments  I faced today may be a sign that, for the moment, my mood is in an upswing. 

That's not to say that life is not completely overwhelming. Having finally found a roommate to share the (relatively inexpensive, but still inconvenient when paid out of one's minimal income) rent and bills, I cleaned the apartment to allow her some space to move her things in. Moving is always messy, and one always seems to have so many more belongings than one needs until they are removed from their cardboard boxes and put away. Movers are also very messy--the amount of dirt tracked in as they unloaded box after box after box actually rendered one floor-runner basically unusable (bought at Goodwill and easily replaceable but still, gentlemen, wipe your damn feet) and left me itching to vacuum the floor. My knee-jerk reaction was panic. However, after 24 hours or so had elapsed, it became clear to me that my new roommate is potentially the most organized person I have ever met, in addition to having more energy for unpacking and sorting than I had ever imagined possible, and is getting on admirably in a situation that would have reduced me to a useless puddle of anxious tears within half an hour. I expect that my previously-spartan little apartment will look considerably more lived-in (in a good way, a way that says "people actually live here and have real-people lives" rather than messy) by week's end. Even in my room I have managed to set up a small workspace that doubles as a sewing table and home office. 

And, oh, am I sewing. A shop in my hometown, owned by a high school friend, has agreed to sell some of the purses I make, so I have very suddenly found myself needing to treat sewing as a Real (very-part-time) Job. As things are still being unpacked however, there is no place at present to set up an ironing board. Tomorrow I ship out my first two bags, with plans to make as many more as possible during our five-day break from Don Giovanni rehearsals and send them home with Mom when she visits.

Don Giovanni is also taking up significant brain-space at the moment. I blame the combination of Mozart writing obnoxiously catchy melodies and having to repeat those melodies so frequently in rehearsal. I've always had an affinity for this opera over all of the others Mozart wrote, mostly because it gives me so many Feelings--I've got a whole other blog entry locked away in my brain concerning the characters and how the trap with Giovanni is to fall back on convention when it comes to characterization rather than letting the characters sort of develop themselves--and, to be honest, I would say that characters like Leporello or Elvira or Zerlina or even Giovanni do a fair job of asserting their own personalities, desires, motivations, quirks, &c., and the best thing to do when portraying one of those roles is not to try and impose your own limitations on them. There are so many angles from which to consider Don Giovanni, and even twelve years after the first time I watched it, I am still fascinated by the intricate ways in which the characters interact (but mostly Elvira and Leporello, who put up with more of Giovanni's shit than anyone else in the show), and I still start shuddering when the statue begins speaking. Every. Single. Time. Because a damn statue comes to life. And that statue is vindictive as hell (uh, literally). And that is terrifying.

"So why then, Bee," you may be asking, "when your life is hectic and full of crazy, did you take an interview for a part-time barista position?" 

The answer: masochism. Obviously.

But--and this is the strangest thing--I know that I am busy. Intellectually, I am able to look at my GoogleCalendar (the fact that I rely on GoogleCalendar to remind me that I must, twice a day, eat something, Bee, you are not capable of photosynthesis, is probably a good indication of just how busy I am) and say to myself, "Damn, there's not a lot of free time there." But, as I experience everyday life, it is the busiest days and weeks when I feel the most free and easygoing. I suppose this can be chalked up to momentum, to the fact that when I have so much to do my thought process speeds up and it is as if the events of my day go by in slow-motion. With that in mind, knowing that I feel the most centered and comfortable when I have a set of goals to achieve in a specified amount of time, why the hell not try to find a second job, one that can keep me from having too much time to think (which inevitably leads to overanalyzing, which often leads to panicking about Who am I and what am I going to do with my life?!) after this show wraps?

And, of course, all this positive thinking could go to hell tomorrow. This is another thing I know intellectually. But right now my cat is ridiculous (especially when she tries to intimidate my roommate's cat by hissing, which is more adorable than menacing), there is someone to talk to, my monthly financial burden has just been slashed in half, Dave Eggers just released a new book, and it is thunderstorm season in Chicago. Yes, life could definitely be worse.

Back on the bean; or, BS still substitutes coffee for sleep

Had a bit of a crisis late last night; major life changes are never easy or fun, and the next five or so weeks of my life are no exception. Consequently, I got about four hours of sleep and am planning on staying awake until midnight or so tonight, so this bout of insomnia will probably work itself out. Or not? Either way, anxiety disorder, let's do this thing.

It's strange, living in these in-between places (finished with graduate school, still not working in my chosen field, sort-of-but-not-really employed, working hard on jobs whose only compensation is in experience), and I feel as if I should be making a home in this one, just to have something to call my constant. I won't, though--there's too much to do right now, between rehearsal and learning music and making photocopies and packing up the apartment and trying to sell the furniture I don't want to drive back across the country. The grief over Opa has, for the most part, worked its course through my body, but the empty space it leaves behind has left a vacuum into which all my other concerns and anxieties are rushing. I need a job. I need a job. This is my primary worry right now, finding a way to pay bills in Chicago, and this worry just barely edges out the terror resulting from the possibility of becoming isolated and antisocial once I move.

My coping mechanism is escape fantasies. Lately, I've been missing Florence, even though I know that it's obscenely hot there right now, and humid, that I'd think I was dying and be covered head-to-toe in Florentine mosquito bites. It certainly isn't the weather that I miss, or the crowd of tourists pushing through every single too-narrow street and gawking at cafe signs filled with unfamiliar words ("What's a pera? Does anybody know what a pera is?" "It's a pear."). My connection to Florence was, I think, the fact that I had the most basic of cell-phone service and limited access to the internet, and that forced me to leave the apartment in the morning and find real-life adventures in a city that felt like a painting. When I think of Florence, I think of blistered, black-with-dirt feet and prosecco in the middle of the day, flowing skirts and scarves and fruit stands and orange sunlight. It was easy there for me to be on my own, and to be left alone. The tourists, after all, were more concerned with the sensory overload caused by their surroundings, and the locals had their own lives to concern themselves with, rather than mine. I wrote a handful of blog entries while I was living there last summer, located here, and maybe the next time I travel for an extended period of time I'll revisit that blog--but then again, maybe I won't. I'm more comfortable on the Blogger platform, I think. Not that anyone cares.

(I'm still exhausted, but this is probably due less to continued grief than to the fact that I barely slept last night.)

Saturday afternoon, for the first time, I visited a locally-owned Van Gogh-themed coffeehouse in Wedgewood. Sunday morning, I went back. If I lived in Wedgewood instead of the next neighborhood over, this would become a problem (not unlike the three-times-in-three-days San Crispino stunt Stefanie and I pulled in Rome last summer), because I might be in love. The interior is decorated in colors I associate with Tuscany and Provence (for obvious reasons, I'm sure), and the walls are lined with reproductions of Van Gogh's paintings. The coffee is incredible; initially, I was skeptical of drinking something called a "Mayan Mocha" at a coffeehouse whose theme was a Dutch painter who lived in France, but, really, it was delicious, even iced--I drink iced drinks now, by the way. Iced drinks are cool. Sunday Nicole and I had sandwiches (my forgetfulness, which resulted in my leaving a gallon of milk at the house where she and Steve are dog-sitting, necessitated the second visit, of course), and the Van Gogh Coffeehouse's tuna melt is, as it turns out, pretty fantastic, as well.


The caffeine I've had this morning isn't working too well, just now, though. When I get a moment to breathe--if I do, as I really don't anticipate that happening anytime soon--I'll have to do a one-week detox or something, just so it has something vaguely resembling an impact on my body and brain again, because right now, it's about as effective as drinking orange juice--maybe less. Right now, though, I'm overwhelmed by all the things I have to do, which is ridiculous: it's summer! I should be having fun and sleeping all the time! But between work, rehearsal, and trying to organize my life for the upcoming move, my brain is full. Absurd.

Pile of Good Things; or, Trusting the Doctor

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Hey. (hugs Amy) The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice-versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant. -Doctor Who, 5x10: "Vincent and the Doctor"

The strangest thing: I realized recently that, for the first time ever, I am happy where I am employed. Reason number a-whole-lot for this: my supervisor, who smiles almost constantly, takes pictures of beautiful things with her iPhone to share with other people, and who today, upon coming back from lunch, set a two-headed dandelion on the circulation desk and inquired whether I was at all religious, and, if so, whether I thought there was a philosophical reason for unusual and wonderful things like that dandelion or if I believed, like her, that things are sometimes "good for no reason."

And maybe they are, you know? Maybe, in the same way that good things can happen for no reason, sometimes the bad things that happen aren't the result of some misdeed or sin of our own, but truly random. It has been my opinion for some time now that whatever higher intelligence exists, it is more of an architect than an author: the pieces have been put in place and the experiment has been set into motion, but our actions are our own, and our future is based on the consequences (good or bad) of our decisions, not on some predetermined path set before us at birth by some old bearded man living in the sky.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Pile of Good Things, and trying to focus on that. Yesterday, I turned 25 years old, I am preparing to move across the country--again--and the uncertainty of not having a place to live or a job in my new home is terrifying. But there are so many good things in the world! These things are as small as getting to sleep in on Monday and Wednesday mornings or getting to walk past cherry blossoms on the Quad on my way to class, or as profound as listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or reading the letters Van Gogh sent to his brother and thinking, someone, somewhere, who I have never met, got it. The final few weeks of my Masters Degree are going to be hectic and packed full, and it's remembering small, happy things that keep me motivated when I'm absolutely exhausted.