On transitions, shaky ground, and hope.
NPR and RESILIENCE
Our transition to New York continues to be an up-and-down kind of adventure - is this true of all new starts? - the #EpicShutdown was no fun, but we finally have gas (no more #hotplate!). I don’t know if it’s nerves or nostalgia but I continue to feel myself to be on shaky ground; memories from back in the day surface unbidden and my sense of self has shifted majorly. Connecting with old friends is joyful but also a reminder of the time passed and the inevitable changes that come with distance. So I continue to zig and zag across the city streets, searching for somewhere to focus my energy now that I am without my students and without my comfort zone. I’m figuring out, essentially, how to live.
Sunday mornings in our house are for drinking copious amounts of coffee and listening to NPR - Krista Tippett’s “On Being” - her show pursues “deep thinking, social courage, moral imagination and joy” and is, I find, a thoughtful way to begin the day and sets the tone for the week. Tippett was speaking with Maria Popova, author and blogger whose site Brain Pickings — her “one-woman labor of love” - holds her musings on life and literature. I was struck by something she said:
“Hope inspires the good to reveal itself.”
That’s attributed, possibly wrongly, to Emily Dickinson (#fave!!); Popova’s further thoughts on the subject of resilience through hope were really what got me thinking - I'm forever telling my students that "no" is just "yes, later" in disguise and that doubts (per Shakespeare) “are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” Exactly. So I hope.
Well, I'll Be Dashed!
And indeed, hope springs eternal. In fact no one's more astonished than I that I am, once again, spending time with Eliza Doolittle. Thanks to my old friend Curt Olds whom I zig-zagged into on the street and some lovely new friends I met at the subsequent audition that said old friend sent me to (follow?), I will be singing My Fair Lady with the Utah Symphony opposite Peter Scolari. You know, Newhart? Tom Hanks' bosom buddy in, yes, Bosom Buddies? I loved that show and lost my legs a bit to learn I'd be working with Henry/Hildegarde.
Rushing to rehearsal and hoping the train comes on time.
It's a different kind of nerves now as I prepare - lessons and coaching are subsumed with re-learning this marvelous role, and my practice has new focus and life. I’m laughing at myself as I re-read a post I’d written for my high school and college students; while it’s good advice (if a little condescending - consistent practice in the younger set is an elusive goal), I have to say: physician, heal thyself. And so it's twice-weekly lessons with my marvelous teacher and friend Dan Thaler (the best part so far). What fun to revisit my singing with someone who knows me soo well - he is all tough talk about my tongue and forcing every moment, but also all encouragement and excitement. Marlowe the #CityDog has had it with “Just You Wait” - he thinks I’m mad at him. But at least I am focused.
And I have such hope.
