October 10, 2014

The moon woke me two nights ago peeping through the west windows. It woke me this morning, though it was itself invisible, by igniting the mists of the world so everything was clearly, ghostly visible hours before dawn.

Macbeth at HART. Enjoying my fellow actors. Got through the act flawlessly off book, so the rest is a glide.

Rehearsal of Medea with my game and merry students. They shout suggestions about production from all corners, hard to filter, but indicative of unusual, and dear, engagement.  I have one student who is clearly insane in a gentle and confused sort of way. Surely I can’t be the only one who noticed. . .  so I’ll just let it float. He seems happy enough when you talk him through the anxieties.

Drive to Marshall for rehearsal of Christmas music (not as ghastly as I feared) at the Presbyterian church. Felt privileged in my usual artistic life as I watched K, the able, musical, skillful, and superhumanly patient director, drag his little company through those simple songs. He wanted me to “bolster” the bass section, which is me and this galoot who claims he can’t sing above a G on the bass staff, and who doesn’t sing at all (that I could hear) except that when there’s a long note he has time to find, he can sing it an octave too low. I suppose that does add a certain richness. There were evidently many absentees. The whole thing must be torment to someone clearly as trained and sensitive as K. One wants to say “Well, they’re trying their best,” but I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been singing in “professional” choirs so long I forget the volunteerism that propels the music program in most churches. A remarkable amount of time is spent apologizing for colds and sore throats and deferring to one’s neighbor as the better singer. Like hens in a barnyard confirming a pecking order. One soprano brought two kids who played around her feet during rehearsal. The aged altos (THAT’s not their fault, I understand) spent most of their time rattling the pages of their music, missing cues and then saying, “We don’t see where you are.” They didn’t see that because they were nattering when the announcement was made. ANYWAY, a thought-provoking experience. Amazingly, it seems not to conflict at all with All Souls, and my heart goes out to K– who, incidentally, looks like he should be a personal trainer at the gym rather than a choirmaster.

Pinkish purple through the upstairs window. And so it begins.