SassyBlonde

So we bagged quintet rehearsal because we were all so wiped. As Lucienne was walking in I was growling "I love my husband, I love my husband, I love my husband..." (who had forgotten to take out all of the soda cans in our recycle bins, which consequently spilled all over the kitchen floor right before we were supposed to start rehearsal)

Lucienne took one look at me and grunted, "I hate my life."

We were extremely amused when KJ walked in and muttered, "I need a drink."

And when Lanae arrived, her only comment was "Why me?"

Therefore we bagged rehearsal and went to Franklin's for lunch and beer. Best damn rehearsal I've ever had.

I don't know why, but I'm mortally afraid of Beethoven's 6th Symphony. It makes no sense.

Oh, well maybe a little. (For you non-clarinettists out there) Beethoven 6 is kind of the Holy Grail of the clarinet world. If you can play it well, everyone respects you.

Tonight I, on the other hand, made the mistake of trying out a new mouthpiece in rehearsal. Let's just say I wasn't the only one giggling at my antics tonight. Apparently my face should have been in pictures after I goofed up one of the solos. teehee!

Well, tonight's the deadline for the talks between Broadway producers and the AFM... everybody cross your fingers...

Broadway goes dark: Actors back striking musicians

WHEW-- glad that's done. The photo shoot for the quintet is done. We had a lot of fun, but it was LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. Four and a half hours to be exact. Hope the pics come out good!! I'll post some as soon as they're in. The website will be redone as well, so I'll keep y'all posted.

I am, right now, feeling a hell of a lot like the prodigal son. I'm a professional musician and music teacher by trade. That notwithstanding, it's been a hell of a couple of years.

I haven't effectively practiced my instrument in over three years. Yet I still maintain a viable career and an active teaching studio. Practice what I preach? Not a whit.

Until tonight.

Things are looking good for the Mantovani Orchestra's 2003 holiday tour. I got called today by the conductor, who told me that I was on! Can't wait to see a couple of my friends from last time!

For those of you not familiar with Mantovani. check out this page to get the story.

22 days until the tour!

Pet Peeves When It Comes To Musicians As Co-Workers:

1. Obey the call time. It doesn't pay to piss off your colleagues because you had to stop at Taco Bell.

2. If you're sitting in the G-D chair, that means someone had faith enough in you to hire you. There is no need, repeat, NO NEED to try and justify you existence to the rest of us by playing every scale you've ever learned on all five instruments you use for the book in the ten minutes before the downbeat. Your time would be much better spent attending to No. 1, above.

3. If you're going to feel the need to bitch about the quality of the gig while getting paid to do so, help us all out-- STAY HOME.

4. If you can't do the gig, don't take it.

5. If you take the gig and can't do it, find a worthwhile sub. No one wants to have to cover his sorry ass if he doesn't show or can't play the part.

6. If you're playing in a pit orchestra, please keep in mind that you're there to make the cats on stage look fantastic. I assure you that no one really gives a shit how loud you can blow the rock solo while she's working her ass off onstage trying to outsing you. Besides, she'll be relieving you of your jewels later-- is it really worth it?

And finally...

7. Tune it. Or die.

I'm so tired of being poor.

When you go to school to be a musician, it seems rebellious and romantic. You firmly believe that you will never bow to the material whims of the capitalist world, that you will live on bread and water, sustained by your art. And your also-idealistic-friends buoy you up in the student lounge with converstaions of the artistic merit of post-modern jazz theory.

Then you graduate.

And you are forced to coddle, wheedle, and connive the children of Lexus-driving, silicone-and-collagen-ridden, nanny-hounding bottle-blonde trophy wives, who see you as nothing more than a glorified baby-sitter who can enhance their childrens' "natural talents" (or more likely total lack thereof) with a nice resume item like "plays the clarinet". Not to mention it keeps the little rugrats out of their parents' hair, because they can't stand to have to deal with their own progeny for more than the fifteen minutes it takes to drive them anywhere.

All because you really need those checks for the rent, and somewhere along the way, you have become the the bitch of the Almighty Dollar.

Oy, I need a beer. If I could afford one.

Let me explain something. I have no problem teaching kids-- it's just that every time I drive over to Bethesda to teach (which, thankfully, I now officially never have to do again) the hatred literally starts to boil up inside me. (Tums, anyone?)

Who are these people that can afford $800,000 homes on one salary? Where the hell are they all coming from? How in the hell can anyone afford to buy a house in the D.C. area on a reasonable salary with freaks like this around?

Not to mention the fact that the parents of the kids I teach over there are largely way more than one step removed from reality. And they treat me like the maid most of the time.

AND NEVER ASK THEIR CHILDREN TO GET UP OFF THEIR FAT ASSES FOR LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE MY INDIGESTION WORTHWHILE!

I am so glad I'm going back to school. Feh.

Off to work I go. This show's not as bad as most by far-- lots of breaks and another woodwind player to chat with during down-time. Hopefully my favorite drummer will be on tonight-- no attitude, this guy, and full of really zippy one-liners. He totally cracks me up.

Also, the bass player is known for bringing baked goods to the shows for the orchestra, and let me tell you, this man can throw down in the kitchen. Last week it was chocolate chip cookies and banana-nut bread with chocolate chips. There's been a rumor of cinnamon rolls this week... Mmmmmm...

I recently joined a really great New Music group, about which I had also recently been bitching because of the quantity of rehearsal time. We had a really great concert the other night, and for the first time in a long while I had a really great time playing serious music. The players all have "day jobs" (which many "pro" musicians look down upon, even though they were there at some point too) and yet they played with more sensitivity, vitality, and nuance than anyone I've played with in years, and that's saying something.

However, I was so caught up in the time commitment that I forgot to consider the caliber of players I was dealing with, not to mention their passion for the subject.

Until the following night.

For a long time I had forgotten how good it was. The give and take, push and pull, intimate communication between two musicians practicing their art to the fullest. Like good sex? No, better.

I just got back from dress rehearsal for my all-time favorite musical. I swear, when this show is good, it's bar-none the best experience I've ever had as a musician. The writing is excellent, the orchestration inspired, and if the casting is right, it's a completely transcendent thing to be a part of.

I realize I'm only a musician in the orchestra pit, but musicals have proven to be one of the best genres I've ever experienced for artistic fulfillment. They are, when done well, a perfect melding of the arts: visual, theatrical, and musical. Even though some aspects are never seen onstage by the audience, when each piece of the puzzle lines up with everyone else's, even for only a few seconds of the show, it's a more intimate fulfillment than any aspiring artist dreams of, no matter what part they play.

And I have eight more weeks to enjoy this.

I love my job.

Where else, on the walk from you car to your personal space, can you see:

1. A guy wholeheartedly and loudly practicing his bullwhip technique.
2. Naked women vocalizing
3. Naked guys putting on wigs
4. Medieval dresses
5. Assortments of fake food trays so real that you reach for an apple
6. A guy sitting and reading the New Yorker intently and unconcernedly while immediately next to him someone strips a girl naked, then pops her into a corset
7. Four guys standing around relating the Orioles game to a Bach cantata
8. A church choirmaster singing Fat Bottom Girls at the top of his lungs while the rest of the band plays along

Super fun.

Today started out so well. True, the weather was pretty crappy, but I was up early and got my housecleaning done, and was all set to run out the door early to my matinee gig when---

CRAP. WHERE ARE MY KEYS?

Except this time, it wasn't one of those blonde moment where-did-I-lay-them-down-when-I-ran-in-the-door-and-had-to-pee occasions. I have looked everywhere. Where does that entail, you ask?

It's amazing how stealthily our old demons can creep up and sink their talons into us when we're not looking.

I was reading an email from an industry group when I came across a name from my college days. This girl was at once one of my best friends and worst enemies. She embodied in human form all of my hopes, fears, and doubts about myself during one of the darkest mental periods I've ever experinced: a true dark mirror. I saw reflected in her opinions of me everything that terrified and drove me. She was older than me, but still my competition. We hit it off immediately, but the competition was always there. Finally, it came down to crushing words flung at me at the very moment when I looked for her approval the most, and the friendship died under contempt, suspicion, and angry hurt.

Without warning, all of the old feelings from back then came rushing back into me-- my heart dropped and constricted as if it was in a vise, my shoulders tensed like too-stretched elastic bands, and I held my breath. I wondered what she would think if she saw what I was up to now: How would she respond to my email? Would she be amazed/snide/condescending/angry about the progress of my career? Was what I'm accomplishing more/less/as worthwhile as what she was doing?

It's incredible how much we base our view of ourselves on the perceptions and reactions of other people. Even though I love my life as it is now, and see myself as a happy, fulfilled person who is making the right choices for herself and living out what I dreamed for myself back then, when I think about her gaze landing on me I still become the tired, humiliated, and crazy hurting little girl I used to be.

How do we escape our pasts and exorcise those demons? How do we move on to enjoy the people who we've come to be and leave those tortured realities behind? I don't know, but I have an email to write and demons to conjure.

So, while I've been out of evidence here at SB, life has been truckin' along here at Chez Sassy. Between three concurrent shows, new flooring, building a bench, and configuring the new toy, life's been a little off-kilter. Now here I sit with a moment to spare at the laundromat (who knew the laundry had Wi-Fi?) and thought I'd give y'all an update.

All seems to be fairly right with the world at the moment here-- hubby is at school molding the affluent next generation, I'm preparing for students and scrubbing stains, and the cats are curled up on the couch pretending not to have a care in the world (although when the feather toy comes out, that's a different story).

Unfortunately I'm also repairing my favorite new clarinet toy, which popped a huge crack right in the middle of my show last night. Feh. I suppose I could get a new one, but this one is just so nice-- like good sex for a clarinettist. Buttery sound, smooth response, and let's face it, they're the Greta Garbos of the clarinet world. So pretty. So off I go with Super Glue and alcohol and hope for the best. More interesting things to come, as I have a lot of posts zinging around in my head, but for today I'm just a washerwoman/clarinet dork with a bit of room to breathe.

After the week I just survived, I've decided that it's time to share some ground rules with my fellow musicians out there. I came damn near to killing some people this past week over some pretty simple breaches of etiquette that everyone should know in the world of a working musician, but unfortunately these are things you have to learn in the real world, which apparently has been in the shitter as an educational enterprise lately.

When you graduate college or make your first foray out as a musician, just like other professions, you usually enter the world professionally naked and alone, and you'll get your ass kicked if you don't mind your P's and Q's. There are things you never learn in college that you need to learn to survive-- here are a few that everyone who aspires to work as a musician needs to know, after the jump.

So, as many of you know, I'm leaving in the wee hours tomorrow for my orchestra tour of China. Two days of rehearsal in Orlando, then off we go. Nineteen hours on a plane with some of the craziest people I've ever met. (These guys make Wedding Crashers look like a bunch of choirboys-- they're on the make fro the moment they get to the rehearsal hall.)

That being said, I have my iPod and laptop in hand, chock-full of Battlestar Galactica and gems from Audible.com, and I'm also looking forward to seeing some friends on the tour who I've missed since the last foray. And let's be clear, I'm getting paid to spend two weeks in China.

I'll try (try, mind you) to do some posts and pictures when I get a minute, but in case I don't, enjoy the auto-posts that will be popping up until I get back.

After getting up at the crack of dawn (well, for me anyway) to get on board my flight to Orlando, I was able to get to through security in a breeze and had time to sit in the terminal and contemplate CNN over breakfast. This really wasn't as relaxing as I thought it would be, because right after the stock ticker they returned to the main story: the "Killer Tornado" that just hit Florida north of (you guessed it) Orlando in the wee hours. Juggling baggage and yogurt and coffee, I managed to dial my friend who was picking me up and determine that he was fine, in fact, he didn't have a clue what had happened. I arrived safe and sound and was picked up by our wonderful Stage Manager, went to lunch with him at Dennys (OY), and grabbed a few other orchestra members from the airport on our way to the hotel. Gab, gab gab, all the way there. I haven't seen some of these people in almost four years!

We went out for a drink at a restaurant around the corner and were a little held up by the building being surrounded by fire trucks. We got back to the hotel to find that not only had our friend the Stage Manager gotten us tickets for the Orlando Magic game tonight, vs. the Nets, he had gotten us BOX SEATS (he has people). Fun times were had by all, even though we had too much to drink and didn't get back in time to practice before tomorrow.

Even better, my roommate is not a freak, but one of my favorite people from my last tour!! More tomorrow after rehearsal...

Ah, the first day of rehearsal. And unfortunately for us today, the only day. Tomorrow we leave for China bright and early in the A.M., and have to get up and out of the hotal at 4:45. F*ck.

Rehearsal actually went pretty well today, all things considered-- we had to cram all of the usual things into half the time. When a touring group comes together, there are quite a few stages of a sort of meet and greet that goes on, not on a social basis, but playing with one another. First you have to suss out the lay of the musical landscape: who plays well, who needs some work, whose style is matching up, whose isn’t, what the limits are of what you can and can’t do, say, and play with each other. Then over the course of the rehearsal you start to blend and match and coalesce into a single force. For us, that usually takes most of the first day, along with the reading of the music that we’ll be playing. It’s like building a scaffold inside which a cathedral arch is built.

We managed to cram that into the first three-hour rehearsal and sort of started to string it all together by the end of rehearsal today. It’s just an odd dynamic—new concertmaster, new orchestra members, and for me new equipment. (Ick and f*ck.) And our conductor was in fine and rare form—like most conductors, the less time he has, the stricter and tighter he becomes, and he was on fire today, man. Caustic, but with purpose and intent, so it didn’t really seem to bother anyone. He has a good feel for the people under his baton, and everybody responded pretty well.

I LOVE the woodwind section. Playing with these guys is GREAT. I’ve known the oboist for a long time, and the new bassoonist is not only a fabulous player but also a super fun chick also. The flutist is meeting up with us tomorrow (can’t wait!!) in Chicago, so we had a sub today who did a great job navigating some of the weirdness in the music we play. I don’t envy them their parts for a second—thy have more notes and crazier parts than anyone else in the group except the first violins. Ick—no way I’d be able to play that shit.

Today was also the day that we met up for the first time all together in terms of social interaction, too, meaning that if I hadn’t already sought someone out to say hello, I didn’t really particularly want to, but who has a choice, right? Nineteen hours on the plane together tomorrow. OY VEY. Of course, The Mullet was there and The Mouth, as well as the Troll. I’ll explain these little nicknames at some later point, because I’m sure they’ll all steal the limelight at some point in the next two weeks.

They laid us out a buffet dinner, but the real highlight of the night was the hot tub afterwards—the bassoonist and oboist and I got in and got all pruney for about forty-five minutes. ROCK. The only downside was that whatever they used to clean the hot tub made the ends of my hair all crispy—kind of like soap residue. Gack. Ah well, off to bed for a few hours—I’m sure I won’t be so perky when I have to get up tomorrow.

Oy. FUCK. Trans-Pacific flights are a bitch.

We got up this morning at the crack of dawn-- actually earlier-- to make the trek to the airport and get on going to Beijing via O'Hare. All went pretty well until we got to the airport: true to fashion for this group, we were given limited information and got yelled at when we did what we were told, not what they had in mind. We made it through, though, and everything worked out peachy. I even got to sit next to my new friend Guitarman on the plane to Chicago.

Got a hot dog for lunch at O'Hare-- did you know that in Chicago a hot dog with "everything" comes with mustard, onions, a dill pickle spear, hot peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers, all ON the dog?? Crazy shit, that.

The Klatch worked it out so our seats were all together on the Beijing flight, which was easy because the flight was nowhere near full. That even got me moved up to Economy Plus, which has more legroom!! I got to sit with Pixie B, our bassoonist, and we had all three seats to ourselves. The Muse will be exceptionally proud of the movies I got to watch-- The Queen, All The King's Men, and Man of the Year. Pixie B taught me a great new card game from Japan that I'll talk about more later.

Everything went pretty well until the intermission between films two and three, where all the hip chicks were gathered around our group of seats and giggling. We were catching up after two to four years of being apart in some cases-- gossip had to be shared and jokes made. It was dark out, and this part of the flight functions as sleep-time, so the steward comes up and makes a snarky comment about how we need to keep it down because this is an overnight flight and people have paid "thousands of dollars" for this flight. Now, I've seen our e-tickets for our itinerary, and I know the flight from O'Hare to Beijing is killer expensive, but honestly people. We were served ramen noodles for the next meal, and it's not as if we could sleep-- they came by every forty-five minutes to wake us up to ask if we wanted water. Endless amounts of giggling ensued for a minute, but then we sat down to watch the next movie.

Arrival in Beijing was pretty easy and we got to the hotel all right-- the Plaza Royal Hotel Beijing, the only Five-Star Platinum HoJo I've ever heard of. The hotel staff here is fantastic-- they know we speak little to no Mandarin, and most of them speak at least a little English. (Honestly, I hate being that person who expects everyone to speak English in another country, but I could barely remember the words, much less the inflections to give them the right meaning... I've got Hello, Thank You, and I Don't Want Any pretty much down and I think that may be the extent of it for the time being.)

We get breakfast and dinner on travel days and concert days we get all three meals, and the hotel restaurant has a great dinner service. It's pretty much split between Chinese cuisine (the real kind) and improvised American food. Good stuff. They even give you filtered water with meals (water here is basically non-potable for Americans-- you could do it but you'd have the trots for a good while, and maybe worse) and their coffee is amazing. All righty-- sleepy time here-- I'm about dead and I get to sleep until 8(!!) tomorrow before we go downtown to to a little sight-seeing. Lata!

The Great Hall of the People is indeed a hall, but is not in fact "Great".

This morning we awoke to the sound of my roomie’s alarm clock and I popped up out of bed like a jack in the box. WTF? I am SO not a morning person normally, and I popped up like it was my job. Maybe it was the fact that I had thirteen hours of sleep last night? After dinner we were all so exhausted that we went straight to bed and passed out totally. Our schedules are still a little off, but I managed to sleep for about four hours at a time even though I did get up around 4 AM and have to force myself back to sleep.

The hotel where we’re staying is really nice, and it has the biggest towels I’ve ever seen. You could wrap two of me in those suckers, and that’s saying something. Hotel rooms in China have a couple of very interesting features—when you walk in the door, there’s a card slot on the wall where you slide in and leave your room key to activate the power for the room. If you take out the key, the power goes out, as I found out when I was leaving to go down to breakfast and took the key, leaving my roommate in the dark on the toilet.

Speaking of toilets, here in China there are two types—the regular seated kind, which are rare and usually only found as handicapped toilets or in places where you’ll find a lot of foreigners, and the infamous “squatter”. Basically this type is a urinal turned horizontal and installed on the floor. You have to squat to go, and it’s been interesting learning to balance and aim. Fortunately for us the hotel has the familiar kind, although the venues will probably force us to expand our repertoire a little.

We decided to go down to see the Forbidden City this morning, and we piled into two taxis to get there. It’s about 9 km from our hotel, and walking would have been a long haul, not to mention we’d have to dodge traffic. We get directions from the concierge and took our hotel cards with us so we could get back. (There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find anyone that speaks English in the city, so the hotel provides you with cards that list the name and address for the hotel in Chinese so the driver can understand where you need to get to—the Chinese names bear no resemblance to the English translation most of the time.) The cab ride was interesting and we bumped through traffic for about thirty minutes to the North Gate. When we arrived, of course there were lots of guys waiting to sell us tchatchkes, fake watches, and fake Olympic gear, but we had our fearless leader Cello Chick, who promptly sent them packing.

CC has been to China before, and is full of advice about what to eat, what not to eat, and all sorts of protocol and custom. The tap water isn’t drinkable in China, so everything you drink and eat has to be made with filtered water. That means of course, no drinking water from the tap, but also no brushing your teeth, no fresh produce that you can’t peel, and no salads (they’re washed with water). Of course, this problem isn’t necessarily China-specific—when I was in school I had a really wicked case of the trots for about three weeks after I moved to Phoenix. That shit ain’t right, so bottled water it is.

Anyway, the Forbidden City was really incredible—we hired a guide and hand a good hour and a half to tour the site. Our guide’s name was Linda and she was really great—funny, knowledgeable, and her English was excellent. (Pictures here)

We had to leave early for our concert venue, the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square. This building is also the venue for the Chinese congress, and seats about nine thousand people. When arrived there, we were ushered through security to the hall and shown a roundabout route to the dressing rooms, which were moldy and a little waterlogged from a leaky toilet. (This later overflowed, and the whole bottom floor smelled like a herd of yak.) The audience section of the hall itself was gorgeous, even though the wood floor of the stage hadn’t been properly cared for and was splintered and broken across its whole expanse. It was a pretty surreal setup—colored lights and these shiny balls hanging from the ceiling that reflected different colors. They had to mic everyone because of the acoustics of the hall, and we found out in spades in our rehearsal that we couldn’t hear ANYTHING.

This was probably a good thing in the case of the cello section in particular. The official story so far is that they couldn’t bring their own instruments over due to flight restrictions (we think it’s more like the promoter didn’t want to pay for the extra seats needed to fly them in—cellos and oversized string instruments are normally given their own seat on an airline so they won’t be crushed in the cargo hold.) So thus far they’ve been borrowing instruments wherever we go. In Orlando, this wasn’t a problem because some of the section was from there and had a couple of extra instruments.

When they received their loaner cellos at the Great Hall, the looks of horror were intense—these were basically the cheapest and worst student instruments any of us had ever seen, and not only were they bad instruments, they were in terrible repair as well. There was a frenzy of fixing and tuning and adjusting, accompanied by the *pop* of strings breaking. They consigned the worst instrument to use for parts and cannibalized it thoroughly. They made it though all right, but CC and the Licker (he’s a cellist, obviously) looked like they needed either a beer or a shotgun by the time it was all over.

For our part, the woodwinds had a decent night, even though we really couldn’t hear anyone else. I started getting really sleepy during the last couple of numbers, but made it through all right in the end. It’s kind of like pulling an all-nighter and then playing a jury when you’re in school—more than a little foggy, but as long as everyone gets out alive you count it a success.

One more concert in this venue tomorrow night, then we’re on to Wuhan. Feh. It can’t come soon enough.

The Great Wall of China is a motherfucker. It makes grown men cry.

This morning after a nice breakfast in the hotel restaurant, we headed off to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs for a little touristy goodness. You can set up a tour through the hotel in Beijing and they’ll fix you up with a guide and a bus for an outrageous sum, but at least you won’t have to find your own way there and back. First we stopped at the Ming Tombs (pictures here) and then moved on to the Wall by way of a tourist trap jade factory. It was interesting, but clearly there’s a racket going on there—the guides must be paid to bring in tourists to the store where they can buy all sorts of cheap tchotchkes. The jade carvings were beautiful, if extremely overpriced for the market. I walked out with a couple of small things for family members and left it at that.

The Great Wall was incredible. As we started climbing, we noticed other people stopping and resting every couple of stairs. Pansies, eh? Right. I only made it up to the first turret up the hill, but that was quite far enough thank you. As I was climbing I passed a man sitting on the stairs crying with his friend consoling him. I’m right there with you, buddy. You don’t really think about it when you see it in pictures, but the stairs on the Wall are HUGE. Most of them on the steep uphill sections are as high as at least two normal stairs, and they’re uneven and pitted, so it takes constant foot readjustment and attention. Several of the really fit little girls in our group hauled ass up to the top of the mountain, and we watched, awestruck, from where we stopped.

Shel helped me down the stairs because my knees were knocking together from so much exertion—what a great guy. He’s one of the few guys on this tour that you can absolutely count on for a helping hand and not be suspicious of his ulterior motives 90% of the time. (He’s the stage manager I told you about who picked us up from the airport, and our bass trombonist. That being said, though, the other 10 percent of the time he can be skeevy.)

We ended up eating lunch at a little tourist trap on the way home—the tour guide, I suppose, gets kickbacks for bringing his fares to these places. It was all overpriced and cheap goods, with no bargaining allowed. That’s no good in China, eh?

Tonight we were back at the Great Hall of the People, and we took a little time to go outside to Tiananmen Square and take some pictures (see them here). It amazes me unceasingly that the Chinese people find us so interesting to look at: we went over to the square to take some pictures before the concert, and happened to walk up during a guard changing or flag lowering ceremony. There were lots of people there to see the ceremony, but as we walked up, little by little they turned from watching the uniformed soldiers in front of them to point and stare and take our pictures instead. Rock stars, all of us. (Especially me, who left my coat at the hotel like an idiot and turned into a popsicle before I got back to the hall. My shirt had an insane boobie quotient going for it. OY.)

Beijing is a study in contrasts—old junked out buildings next to new flashy construction. This includes the new Olympic stadium and complex, which is amazing (pictures). Dust and dirt covers everything, from the museum exhibits to the concert piano (a baby grand in a 9,000 seat hall? Give me a break. That’s bullshit.) It seems to be a part of the ambient attitude-- what's important to clean and what's not. A result of Communism? Who knows, could be.

The hall tonight was a horrific experience. During the first couple of numbers we started to smell a really pungent odor—some sort of solvent like acetone or paint thinner, and it only got worse throughout the concert. By the time we got to the encore I thought I was going to throw up on my shoes. I couldn’t be happier that we’re out of here after tonight. It’s been a trying experience. If it wasn’t for the Wall, today would have been a real trial.

We are not in Kansas anymore Toto.

One thing about this tour that's beginning to get on my nerves is the lack of information. our promoter here seems to think that any travel info is on a need-to-know basis. In other words, we have no idea where we're going or how or when we're getting there until it's happening. That would be perfectly fine if we were in the States, but we're here in China where none of us speaks the language or knows our way around. Fuck.

We got up at the crack of dawn this morning to set out for Wuhan. The whole airport experience was a huge clusterfuck-- we had no idea of where to go or what to do and were running the whole time to get it all done. Passports and tickets werre flying back and forth. We made it onto the plane by the skin of our teeth and settled in for the short flight to the city of Wuhan, which provided much-needed time for a short nap.

Now, Beijing was a pretty dirty city, but it was pristine in comparison with Wuhan. In Beijng the dust and dirt seems to have more to do with age, but in Wuhan it seems to just be dirt. We arrived at our tiny hotel on a dark side street, the Swiss-Belhotel International, and promptly took advantage of a couple of hours of nap time. My roommate popped in her earplugs and was soon snoozing away while I grabbed the opportunity to send some email and catch up on a little blog reading.

We took off super early to the venue, the Royal Opera House, and got there with about three hours to spare. This seems to be a trend here-- after our first day, where we were an hour late due to traffic, the powers that be have decided that we should be there insanely early just in case. This, of course, gives the percussionist time to set up and the cellos time to make the best of a bad situation and the rest of us time for pictures and walking around outside the venue, which is exactly the course we decided to take.

We stopped at a corner shop for some water and then headed around the corner to find... a music shop! Even though the proprietress spoke no English, we got along and tried out a bunch of fabulous traditional Chinese instruments that I still don't know the name for. Each of us bought a couple for a song and scurried back over to the dressing rooms to try them out thoroughly. Sassy Jo and Pixie B found some double-reeded instruments like shawms that even came with tiny double reeds!! Of course, they set about adjusting them immediately and hilarity ensued. We were all laughing hysterically at the honks and squacks the horns made. I bought one instrument that looks like a big bulb of garlic attached to three pipes. It sounds kind of like a single harmonica and it a total hoot to play. The other thing I bought looks like a flute, but has a single metal reed which makes it sound like a little Foghorn.

The hall was not bad in terms of sound, but there were other problems: the risers we were sitting on weren't at all safe-- walking on and offstage we were sure one of us was going to put a foot through them or fall over becasue they shifted. And the poor cellos-- their instruments were even worse here than in Beijing. Cello Chick's was so bad she was almost in tears-- it had a really wicked wolf which made it do this insane reverb thing. Icky.

At any rate, the day was fairly trying but was redeemed by the instrument purchases... who knew? On to Guangzhou tomorrow, in the sunny South.

After Wuhan, Guangzhou seems like a tropical paradise.

This morning we took off for Guangzhou. Hopping on and off of planes is already getting a little old, but at least we're sort of used to the process now. The mantra of this tour has turned out to have more to do with releasing our control tendencies than anything else. Things run differently over here, and we've just had to learn to trust that we'll all survive and everything will turn out okay, even if we have no information until just before things are supposed to happen.

This trip is really starting to take a toll on some of the orchestra members-- our poor accordionist had to carry her accordion onto the plane out of its case and then do battle with the flight attendants to get to sit with it on the flight. The cellos haven't gotten any better and I think the cellists are past frustrated and close to insane at this point.

On the drive from the airport to the hotel, we were amazed to see the amount of green in Guangzhou-- this place is a tropical paradise compared to the places we've been. Everywhere around us on the highway we could see rooftop gardens on the top of high-rise apartment buildings, and even the highways have planter boxes lining the overpasses.

The only downside of a lush landscape like this one is the fact that everything grows, including the mold on the walls of our hotel room. In Cellco Chick and Pixie B's room it was really bad, so CC is sleeping in our room and Pixie's staying with Sassy Jo and TinyFlutist, since the hotel was completely full up and there were no more rooms available to switch them into.

Speaking of the rooms, they all have peek-a-boo showers. Seriously. There's a glass window that can be covered with a shower curtain, and no curtain on the pathroom side of the shower (not necessary because there's no water pressure to speak of).

The BlueSky hotel is not precisely a hole, but we were all also extremely amused that the room rate board lists the rates as follows: Single Standard, Double Standard, Single Deluxe, Double Deluxe, Suite and HOURLY. Huh? Really? Not surprising I guess, considering that the third floor of the hotel is a BROTHEL. The Mouth got out on the third floor to try and ask a few questions (of course, it was more miming and less communcation), but one thing was unmistakable: the smell of SEX. As soon as the elevator doors closed we dissolved into laughter and choruses of "Happy ending!!!!" Yecch.

There are two redeeming things I've experienced here, though: the Huanghuagang Park across the street and Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. We passed the gardens when we went out walking and decided to go inside on a whim-- it turned out to be a fantastic idea. The gardens were quiet and peaceful, and we walked around them for an hour or so peering at the plants and monuments and observing groups of little old men and women playing cards or chess. It was better than any nap, and by the time we got back we were ready to headoff to the venue.

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall is gorgeous, inside and out. The building is eighty years old and has all the grandeur inside of the U.S.'s famous movie palaces. The outside matches the glory of the inside with bright colors and intricate architecture, and is surrounded by beautiful gardens. the rose beds in front of the hall held flowers of such a vibrant red taht my camera had a hard time capturing them without distortion, and my eyes watered from looking at them in the setting sun.

The concert tonight was pretty good, with the exception of the percussion instruments. Not too bad, except that the only gong they gave us was one of the tiny New Year's gongs used by the drummers that accompany dragon dancers. Its sound was so entirely inappropriate that the woodwind section completely lost their shit in the middle of the first piece in the second half-- an Asian flavored arrangement of Love Is A Many Splendored Thing with solemnly timed gong soundings meant to be played on a large and resonant instrument. As it was, it sounded like someone was dropping a wash basin down a staircase, and we laughed until tears ran down our faces every time it happened. Just when we though we had it pulled together it would start up again, and it took us a good five minutes to get ourselves under control after the piece was over.

Dinner was interesting tonight-- served family style. We had a lot of really phenomenal dishes, but the highlight was when they brought out the chicken, served with the head fried up as an ornament for the plate. People were having shit-fits. Really, when you think about it it's not surprising for a place that had vats full of snakes in the hallway. (No kidding-- see the picture here.)

Tomorrow, for a change, we're taking a bus to the next city, Shenzhen. Goodnight until later!

Another day, another venue, another hotel.

Shenzhen wasn't really remarkable today for anything except a reasonable venue and a nice hotel room. We drove here from Guangzhou by bus on a highway that wound through fields of banana palms and sugarcane. It only took about two hours to get there and the hotel was a welcome sight.

The hotel was downtown and around the corner from a supermarket, so we stocked up on crackers and chocolate and oranges, and of course bottled water. You can get half-liter bottles of water for about 2 RMB there, as opposed to 20-50 RMB in the hotel. Nice markup, right?

The hall was pretty nice and the concert well-handled, so we had a fairly good time. the only thing on most of our minds, though, was the fact that tomorrow we have a day off from playing, even though we have to schlepp back to Wuhan by plane for a corporate buy-out concert at the Opera House.

In light of our day off tomorrow, the Klatch decided to hang out in the bar over a couple of bottles of wine. Who knew-- the Chinese have their own wine industry, and the red wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The white was worse.

And now that I have a head full of wine and a head cold, I'm off to bed to snore until tomorrow.

The airport ate my day off God dammit.

We had a nice half-day this morning to futz around, and I slept late and took naps while the rest of the klatch got massages. Not the happy-ending kind, either, for a miracle. They all raved about it, but I wasn't in the mood, and I think it'll be my one regret this trip that I didn't indulge in one myself.

Schlepp to the airport, wait wait wait. Our flight was delayed two hours, so we walked around the terminal looking for food and lo and belhold, found a 7-11. WTF? All I cared about was that they had DIET COKE!!!!!! (Or rather, Coke Light. Same thing.) And yogurt and pistachios and Kinder Bueno chocolate bars. They also had KFC and McDonalds, but I'm still not that desperate yet.

Bass Boy taught us a new version of Uno while we waited-- my attention span was way too short for that but I had a blast watching everyone else have at it. It's kind of like Speed combined with Uno, and I won't explain it here but it makes regular Uno look like a kindergartener's game.

After we finally got on the plane and to Wuhan, we schlepped back to the Swiss-Belhotel, where the hotel manager, Sergio, had dinner waiting for us. At midnight!!!! I understand that he was not contractually obligated to provide us dinner at all tonight, but he did anyway. I swear, the service we've had at these hotels in extraordinary, especially at this one. It might not be the poshest one we've stayed at, but he and his staff made it my favorite.

All righty-- off to bed so I can enjoy my day in Wuhan tomorrow before the concert.

Wuhan again.

I've managed to stay mostly well this tour until today, but it caught up with me a little after yesterday's G.I. escapade. At lunch yesterday I ate something that didn't agree with me, or maybe it was just the cold starting, I don't know. At any rate, blood sugar was all over th map today so I stayed in while everyone went shopping and did a few things. Had some lovely alone time and surfed the web and uploaded pictures up through the Forbidden City trip. (I know, I know, I'm behind, but I'd rather be out doing and getting more pictures than uploading the ones I have.)

Concert again tonight at the Opera House. Not a bad venue, but Cello Chick was in tears over her cello. Poor cellists. I hope our manager has learned something from this little (*ahem*) problem. If someone's too cheap to buy plane tickets for the instruments next time he needs to kick their asses into submission.

We went back over to the music store to get a couple more things-- all out of Suzuki Books, but I got a nice xiao and another hulusi. (Oh yeah, I found out what all of those things were that we bought-- Melody of China has a nice instrument encyclopedia on their site.)

Decent concert tonight, even though we almost fell through tthe risers when the Mouth vaulted back to talk to the percussionist. We also got really snazzy red silk scarves from the company sponsoring the concert to wear during the second half, and we get to keep them!

On to Shanghai tomorrow, where the real shopping begins!

My husband is the man.

We hopped the plane to Shanghai from Wuhan and arrived early in the afternoon. When we walked in the door the concierge handed me a big bundle of roses from my husband. Everyone oohed and ahed and I grinned until my face hurt. It's a day early for Valentine's, but that's a good thing. He better be taking off on Monday-- I'm gonna lock him in the bedroom for this one.

I've always made fun of people who go to foreign countries and run right to McDonalds, but I have to admit when I saw that Starbucks it was downright ridiculous how happy it made me. We all trooped in and got our expensive American coffees and then sat on the patio in a state of bliss. I'm not saying we're giving up on the food here, but it was soooooo nice to have a familiar cappuccino that it instantly made us feel better.

After that we were refreshed enough to walk down to the Bund from our hotel and take pictures of the lights that were popping on on the opposite bank. The Pearl Tower is an amazing structure, and the lights around it across the river were really cool.

We hoofed back to meet everyone for dinner at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel. Family-style, as usual, and pretty good food. One thing I've been missing this whole trip is diet soda-- at dinner they only usually have regular soda (Coke and Sprite) and beer. Needless to say I've been drinking a lot of beer-- Tsingtao, Snow Beer, Carlsburg (that one surprised me a little). More like water than beer, but still better than the alternative. At least if I'm going to get the calories, I should get something out of it, right?

Already you can hear firecrackers going off. The Lunar New Year begins on Sunday and we're going to be here to see it!

I swear I've lost five pounds walking around this country.

I called hubby via Skype (holy crap I love that service) to say Happy V-Day, even though he's a day behind back there. It was really nice to hear his voice, and I miss him tons.

This morning we got up early to walk around the city. We took the subway over to the Pearl Tower and ascended to the observation decks to look around. The city of Shanghai is vast-- it extends out seemingly endlessly from the tower in every direction.

After the tower he hiked from the subway down to the Yuyuan Gardens, which are reached by working your way through a maze of tourist shops. It's unreal how aggressive the shopkeepers are in attracting peoples' attention. They will ahout anything to get you to come over and look, from "Hey lady, you beautiful," to my favorite "Lookee lookee, very cheap!". Sassy Jo even heard one woman shout out "Hey shopping lady, come and smell my wood!"

We went into the gardens for a look around and took some fantastic pictures, pausing to adjust cameras and take comic shots of each other. We had to be back for an early departure for the hall, so we scooted out of there after about and hour and a half and took a taxi back to the hotel.

The Shanghai Oriental Arts Center was our venue tonight and will be tomorrow too. It's an absoulutely beautiful venue, a veritable palace for the arts. Viewed from overhead it looks like a phaelenopsis orchid, with each petal a different performance hall or space. I would have loved to see the aerial view during our concert, as the roof is fitted out with lights tuned to change with the sounds produced inside.

The facilities inside were wonderful-- beautiful dressing rooms and a sparkling concert hall. Since Shanghai has much more English speaking residents, our manager was able to make our dedications in English, and the crowd was very responsive.

Only one more concert to go at this point, then we have a couple of days to play round in Shanghai before going home!

Getting up early is becoming a real trial.

Rock Star Roomie and I decided to bag the group trip and go to the market by ourselves later this morning. It was great-- we stopped in to look at whatever we wanted without waiting for everyone all the time. Going with a big group is fun, but alone and small-group time has been really lacking and it was nice. And boy, did we shop. Pillow covers, chops, dresses, scarves, masks, you name it. By the time we came back we had perfected our bargaining skills and come home with a huge pile of loot. RSR got another suitcase to carry all of her loot home in, so we hopped a cab back to the hotel for a little nap.

Getting a cab in Shanghai can be dicey sometimes-- you show them your card and either they won't go or they try to take you out of your way to increase the fare. Fortunately we haven't had a problem with this so far, nor have we really been hassled, unlike a lot of members of our group. Maybe it's the fact that I told RSR to walk like she had five ton brass balls-- who knows.

Back at the Arts Center tonight. and it was a great concert. Good thing, too, because it was taped for Chinese TV-- seven cameras. Maestro has promised me a DVD when he gets one, so I'll let you know how it turns out.

Tonight is the beginning of the end of the trip-- our last concert. Thank goodness, too, because this cold is ramping up and my sinuses are going crazy. At least I don't have any more playing until next Wednesday.

Only a few more days until the Lunar New Year celebration, which TinyFlutist is already making plans for. Apparently we're going to boogaloo until the next morning-- rock on. Work's over-- now it's time for play!

Sometimes you just need to groove.

Ah, a day off at last. I decided to sleep late and go late to the Shanghai Museum. It was SO NICE to be able to sleep in a little. I goofed around until lunch time and then RSR and I decided to go down to our provided lunch. Total strike-out, that one. Yet another family style Chinese meal consisting of things which we couldn't identify with people who may not necessarily be our favorite people to deal with. Don't get me wrong-- as I've said before, I'm all for trying new things and participating and experiencing new cultures, but after a while your taste buds get a little tired of the shock of these things and we all know I get really sick of socializing after a while. Alone time has been at a premium this trip and these guys don't help sometimes.

RSR had gotten to the market to exchange her dress and we headed down to meet up with the crew for the museum. This was one of those bizarre occurrences where one after another we just started picking up people for the walk over-- it morphed from a two person stroll to a nine-person tour trip, with me in the lead. How the f*ck did that happen?

The museum was amazing, and we ran into the rest of the klatch there and decided to hook up later for a trip to a local dumpling restaurant that was supposed to be fabulous. I had benGi feeling a little vague all day so I took a time out in the museum's tea house for some jasmine tea and a cream puff with strawberries (the best shit you will ever eat-- if you're in Shanghai, run, do not walk). Finally, Bass Boy and I moseyed on back toward the hotel by way of the underground shopping mall under the park. He found some seriously fabulous shirts while I hung about vaguely and then we ambled back to our respective rooms to gear up for dinner. Still no shoes and I have no hope of finding clothes here. Apparently Asian women don't come in my size. Fuck.

The dumpling place? UN. FUCKING. BELIEVABLE. Seriously, I think I may never be able to eat dumplings anywhere else again-- these were just too good, and I think I'm ruined for life.

After dinner we popped into the Paulaner brew house next door and Cello Chick and Groovemaster D promptly dove into liter-mugs of beer. Holy fucking balls, Batman, that's a lot of beer. I stuck to a wheat brew and was happy to do so. One beer turned into two, and then three, by which time my sugar was crazy and I was falling asleep on the table and getting more than a little snarky. I chugged a coffee, which was great but functioned more like high-octane rocket fuel, at which point everyone decided to go home and go to bed. Fuck. I was not pleased-- it took two sleeping pills to get me off to dreamland after I walked in and woke up RSR, who was nursing a serious sore throat. (I felt so terrible about that-- not only was she feeling bad, my snoring was loud enough to penetrate her earplugs the night before... I could have crawled in a hole over that one.)

The moral of this story is don't stay out late unless you're willing to take a cab home by yourself, and don't drink coffee before going to bed. Last off day before going home tomorrow, which is also the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Hooray!

I need to take a moment here to talk about someone I loved dearly who passed away this week-- Dr. Gerald Loren Welker. He was the Director of the University of Alabama School of Music and the conductor of the Wind Ensemble and Contemporary Ensemble when I was in school there, and inhabits most of my most vivid memories of that time.

If it wasn't for this man, I wouldn't be a musician, pure and simple. He was one of the most flamboyant and inspiring musicians I've ever known, and his charismatic presence and conducting style inspired everyone around him, particularly an impressionable and idealistic thirteen-year-old from suburban Birmingham. His inspiration and guidance is one of the main reasons I persevered in music when I could have easily taken another path, and his demand for musical excellence made me strive to excel far harder than I could have on my own. I grew up with his children in the Alabama music system, children who have gone on to have wonderful musical careers of their own. He introduced me to composers like Messaien and Birtwistle, and taught me to love the ideas they and other new music composers championed, which planted the seed for some of the projects I'm involved in today.

"Write yourself a note," he would say. " 'Dear Me, don't be a goober, Love, Me." in his deep and resonant voice. He had the tall, lanky and fluid swagger of Jack the Pumpkin King, with a face like a devil and wild hair. He always smelled of pipe tobacco, a smell that I can't experience today without being flooded with memories of him. His good humor let you make a mistake without taking it personally while making a point to improve on it. His smile was infectious.

Dear Me, I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me.

Though I hadn't seen him in a few years, he always held a very special place in my heart. He was one of my favorite teachers and his musical touch still resonates through the playing that I do every day. He will be sorely missed, but always fondly remembered.

Home.

This morning we were awakened by the drums of the lion dancers, and Rock Star Roomie and I rushed outside to take pictures and watch the festivities. We were in such a hurry we simply thew on pants and coats over our pajamas and hurried through the pedestrian underpass and into the square on Nanjing Road.

The dancers were magical-- long bright dragons controlled by bamboo poles bobbed and swayed and weaved around us, moving to the beat of the drummers. The drummers were fantastic to watch-- circled around the dancers, they beat out a deafening cadence.

After breakfast, we packed up our stuff for the last time and hauled everything down to the waiting bus. Schlepp, schlepp to the airport, where we waited patiently for check-in and boarding. We have lots of time to wait, we thought. We'll say goodbye when we get to O'Hare.

Twelve more hours on a plane with RSR (lucky break, that one) and everyone was more than ready to get off and headed in their respective directions. Hurried goodbyes were followed by one more short hop home-- we spread out from O'Hare like a web. Los Angeles, Orlando, Omaha, Vancouver, New York, Charleston, San Antonio.

And waiting at our locations, loved ones smiling and kissing and hugging. Hubby was waiting at the baggage claim along with the Maestro's wife, Guitarman's girlfriend and Groovemaster D's brother. After hurried goodbyes we scurried to our car covered in ice and salt and drove home over frozen streets.

There are not words enough to describe my delight at a warm feather bed inhabited by the two of us and our two furry friends. A long cozy snuggle awaits me, so I'll talk to y'all tomorrow.

Here I stand facing the looking glass-- one more fantastic journey completed and now it's time to go back to work, life and reality. It always seems like such a sudden stop when I get to this point-- the experience is still vivid and personal, too close and too dear to let go, and yet there is nothing left to do but move on.

But before I close this chapter, I feel like I need to say something to all of you who shared this wonderful experience with me these past two weeks: if you're from the tour and reading this, know that you're one of the people whose acquaintance and friendship I treasure. You all made this tour a time I will hold dear all of my life and look back on as a truly life-changing experience in some ways.

Thank you for the dancing, the drinking (!), the laughter. Thank you for your professionalism, your artistry, and your flexibility. Thank you for your grace under pressure. Thank you all for your time, your confidence, your good humor, and your patience.

I hope to see you all again soon. Zai jian and xie xie.

One of the beauties of going on tour with a bunch of friends is the amount of verbal gems you come away with by the end of the trip. Here, for your enjoyment, are some of ours (and if you don't know, I'm not explaining). Yes, there are over thirty, but who can choose? Those of you wonderful people frm the group who are reading this-- if I've left any out, click here and leave them in the Comment section. Rock out.

“THOSE are not hers.”

“People paid thousands of dollars for these tickets…”
“Big daddy”
“Rock star!”
“I am local people. You come have tea with me?"
“Where’s Danny?”
“What is that smell?”
“Get them ALL out of here! Her too! I am TRYING to run a rehearsal!”
“I have a bowing change,”
“Dun-didda-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-didda-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun…”
“Please!”
"Why the hell am I so hungry all the time? It seems like half and hour after I eat I... oh. Right. It's Chinese food."
“When are we leaving again?”
“And yet… he’s hot-- I’d do him.”
(To the tune of Come On Over)"I itch, I scratch, 'cause I just shaved my snatch..."
“I have fabulous hair.”
“I love that there are so many mirrors in this elevator.” ”Yeah—so you can look at your hair.”
“Happy ending?”
“Travel buddy!”
“Fuck these people. Fuck ‘em.”
"And... scene."
“Seems like one of you married girls could help a single brother out.”
“I just want to know what it is I’m putting in my mouth in the first place.”
“I’d say a third of my shoes never leave the bedroom.”
“Does it have snake in it?”
"And... scene."
“Lookee lookee!”
“Hello shopping lady, come smell my wood!”
“You beautiful. Yes?"
“GucciPradaBagWatchArtComeLookeeVeryGoodPriceHello?”
“You’re from Birmingham and you’re talking to me?”
“With love and cellos,”
“So what’s the groove for today?”
“What exactly IS the use of a man’s room attendant? I mean, has any guy ever REALLY looked over at this guy and said ‘Excuse me, could you hold this for me for a minute?“
“And… diminuendo.”
“Look honey, I am not your girlfriend, I am not your bitch, and I am not your mother-- I don’t want to sit with you and I definitely don’t want to hear about your hemorrhoids.”
“One more beer-- fist in mouth.”
“Holy thong, Batman!”
“Dances with curves”
“There is just an ambient layer of schmutz on this whole country.”
"After all, all it really takes to make her happy when I get home is a fat check, a silk dress, and a woody."
"Bu yao motherfucker."

It's official. This tour has beat my ass like a drum. I gave up on trying to be stoic about the jet lag yesterday and slept from 2 PM to 8 AM this morning via sleeping pill.

Later today I'm getting my ass to the MD to kick this sinus infection (I've put up with is since Beijing and I'm done. Stick a fork in me.)

I have not yet begun to unpack and the house is a wreck. (Partially my fault from all the crap I dragged home and partially the fact that hubby has been running like a crazy man since I left)

Much love to you peeps, but I have to get my ass to the gym. I managed to somehow lose ten pounds in the course of this jaunt (Walking? Food with heads? No one will ever know) and I'd like to keep that pattern moving.

If I can just stay awake.

Spent the better part of today playing for hubby's school musical with all of his students. Jesus fuck I'm tired.

His kids aren't bad, per se, but pit orchestras are notoriously like a bull in a china shop and my ears and brain are just fatigued to hell. Not to mention I ate too much mango at dinner and now you could tap me for maple syrup. Feh.

I promise to be more interesting tomorrow-- there's a lot I want to talk about, but I'm to tired to spell check at the moment, and my typing skills are shot, so I'll hook up with you peeps after a little snooze. 'Night!

So, today the great cosmic forces were looking out for me. Apparently all that time sitting in the ER waiting room built up at least a little good karma.

I thought I had a matinee show today, so after leaving early this morning to pick up The Muse's mom at the airport, I schlepped up to the theater for the show.

Only when I got there, there were only three cars in the parking lot. "Whaaa???" I thought, getting a little peeved. I had the forethought to toss my horns in the backseat when I left this morning so I could go straight to work from dropping off MuseMom, so I was all prepared to play a little Yankee Doodle Dandy. I have to admit though, I was pretty happy at the cancellation and proceeded directly to Nordstrom for some moisturizer after hopping inside the theater to get my paycheck.

Good thing there was no show. My horns, as I realized when I walked in the door of my house from the mall, were still sitting on their stands. IN MY STUDIO. AT HOME.

Sometimes I get brutal reminders of the blonde in SassyBlonde, no?

I complain about my job a lot. If you've spent any amount of time around me, it's a dead certainty that you've heard me rant about it at some point. It's not that I don't like it-- in fact, exactly the opposite is true. I may not like working with them sometimes, but I love the people I work with (people from the South know that ever so subtle distinction we make in not liking someone but loving them anyway). I love my boss-- she's brassy and talented and a generally fabulous bird. And most of the time I love the music and the shows.

However, sometimes the place has the capacity to drive me completely bat-shit. There's drama of course (no, not just that kind... I know, it's a theater... of course there's that kind of drama-- I mean the high school who-did-what-to-whom variety), but that's not new. That's been going on the whole time I've been there.

The newest issue, over the course of the last year or so, has been the never-ending parade of new conductors. Now, for most musicians this isn't a new or overly troubling phenomenon. We're used to having to cater to and insta-learn all the foibles and idiosyncracies of whatever person happens to be sitting in the driver's seat. There's always something about each conductor you deal with-- strange beat patterns, weird cues, odd grooming habits, and the ever-present God complex. All that, we can handle, provided the musical experience is largely intact. Usually that means we can just laugh off the other stuff.

Lately though, we seem to have had a crop of some of the biggest misfits I've ever worked with parading through the pit. We still laugh at them, but some of the edge has come off of the fun.

Titty, the first of the true freaks to show up, was a case in screwball comedy. He afforded us some of the biggest laughs while also inspiring the loudest howls of indignation. His first show, the performance almost crashed and burned eighteen times from his sheer incompetence. Fifty people demanded their money back. I thought the cast was going to have a full-out mutiny. Even with that, we had a lot of memorable laughs at his expense. His cues looked, according to hubby, exactly like when the monkeys at the zoo hurl turds at the people outside their cages. He was so utterly uncoordinated that one night he was cuing us so hard in the colla voce sections that his head snapped forward and hit his stand light (*crack!*-- think Elaine from Seinfled, and no that's not an exaggeration). I thought our trumpet player that night, Zinger, was going to shit himself laughing.

The next clown to troop in was His Honor. He's not super old, but he doesn't hear so well. This creates problems for the cast in that he can't follow them, so shit goes South real quick when it goes. For us it's a bit of a different problem-- his amp kind of generally increased in volume until some point at which a sounds effect occurred or it got so loud that it would scare the shit out of the drummer, and there would be stuff flying all over the place. One night it scared him so bad that he knocked the gong off its hook and it rolled down the stairs. You can imagine.

The Head Bobber was next. Her cuing was ambiguous at best and she bobbed her head when she played. Now, normally we would just make a Stevie Wonder comment and move on, but the problem with the head bobbing was that it had absolutely nothing to do with the beat of the music or cuing. This becomes even more important because in our pit, conductors do so from the piano, playing while directing the orchestra. You get the idea. Thoroughly Modern Millie all of the sudden started becoming Post-Modern Serial Millie. The Bobber is a little nervy, so it wasn't hard for her to have moments just like His Honor gave the drummer, so she'd get lost and have to catch up with us. Every time she'd jump either Jesus (another trumpeter) or Zinger would completely break out and lose his shit laughing.

Now we have a lady I'll affectionately call OCD Chick. (Not just her condition, but her call sign.) This woman micromanages more than any human being I have EVER. MET. She's constantly reminding us of everys single little thing in all the books. With little yellow post-it notes. Written in red pen. Hubby has started calling his part "Franken-book". Unfortunately there's nothing funny about this one. She's like a mother robot dictating to her little automatons. The only problem is that's not what we are. We're to be quiet through the entire show, no talking, no laughing, no monkeyshines-- after all we're five years old. Apparently we have no artistic integrity or we're suffering from a severe and dyslexic version of STiML, because we can't be trusted to remember anything. But she's very nice. Nice like taht old Southern lady that lives down the street who never really says anything bad about anyone, but you can hear it in every word she says. The worst part about OCDC is the way the show suffers under her care. It's dead. It's boring. It's engineered, and it never works.

That was never more evident than tonight when our old conductor and our supervisor came in to play. It's funny how when great skill is right in front of you it's often so hard to notice-- why? Because Cool D makes it so easy. All of the sudden the songs came alive the way we've never heard in this show. No complainingafter he started... it became something we could reconcile ourselves to, if not fall in love with. All of us had been moaning about how much we HATE this music, but tonight for once we finally could relax into the music and follow its flow.

Flow. It's an organic word, and rightly so. Truly good conductors understand innately the concept of flow. It's not something that can be forced or created-- it springs into existence from the delicate weave of all the strands of musical and theatrical creation coming together in exactly the right way. Like a cat's cradle, if you pull it the wrong way or too strongly, it collapses. It's about nuance, not necessarily about structure. Cool D knows just when to finesse something here, change a keyboard patch there, and all of the sudden the music becomes a living thing that draws all of us out of our shells and makes us do more than we otherwise would. After one particular number, we all exhaled audibly in sighs and the trombone player laughed, "I could get used to this,"

I never realized how much I missed it until I didn't have it. We used to have a cast of conductors that were all like that. How spoiled and blessed we were, how immersed in our happy toodling and oblivious to the luck we had. Even after he and the other guys basically left, we really didn't get it. Then he came back tonight, and I found tears welling up in my eyes after the best number.

I miss it. The flow. I want it back, but right now there's no chance. Hope springs eternal though, and if I get nights like tonight as a reprieve I think I can survive until that happens.

I really can understand why some creatures eat their young. Honestly.

I've spent the better part of this week recording and editing one of my students' recital projects for a class at school. I can honestly tell you after this long slog that no one should ever have their high school music prowess recorded for posterity.

First of all, it's a veritable certainty that the freak-out factor is going to make you sound like at least a fraction of an ass. Apparently when the mic goes on we revert to some caveman-like state of being where a large portion of whatever refinement we've been striving for goes right out the window. Zip, boom, bonjour.

Second, seriously-- is anyone ever going to seriously listen to this shit? Good Lord, I hope not. I recently dug up a few recordings of me playing back then (you have to remember, I'm twelve years removed from this at this point) and I REALLY needed a beer after hearing all of that. I think it may be something better left alone.

Sure, I know it's necessary, it's for a grade or an audition spot or whatever, but for the love, who needs that kind of mental and emotional flagellation?

Now I know the horrors that my music teacher went through trying to listen to all of us while recording our audition tapes. I know how far this or that kid has come since starting with me, but the judges of this tape have nothing to compare her to except Jeanne Baxstresser. So I sit there wanting to tear my hair out when she loses her composure and craps all over her performance. Again. Take 37 please. This time, count. Don't sneeze in the rests. Stop sighing when you miss something. It's F-sharp, not F-natural. Breathe. It'll be okay.

Praise the Lord and pass the beer, it's over for now. I just hope she gets an A. I don't get paid enough for this.

I always love watching artists who are totally and utterly committed to the voice of the piece they're playing for an audience.

Tonight I went to hear a performace by a friend of mine. It was the last in a series of recitals she's using to prepare for the Gaudeamus Interpreters competition, for which she leaves this week. This competition brings together people from across the globe who are deeply committed and passionate about new music (yes, that burp-fart stuff that so many of you, and I, detest about modern classical). From a field of about 120 they whittle away until only the best and brightest remain, and the winners takes home a tidy but substantial nest egg to keep their passion going.

A small disclaimer before I continue to sing her praises-- I don't usually choose to listen to this type of music. Ever. Most of the time I entertain humorous thoughts of composers with way too much time on their hands when I listen to or play this sort of thing, so when I find someone who can jar those thoughts out of my head for the duration of a performace I sit up and take notice.

I'd like to announce a new arrival at our house-- I'm now the proud owner of a beautiful new (old) flute!!!! It came to me in an auction yesterday and I'm so excited I just had to share! It's a gorgeous J.C. Haynes Boehm system wood flute, and it plays like a dream, or at least it will once I get a few pads replaced. For a flute probably made in 1894, it's pretty well-kept, eh? Lovely, lovely, happy birthday to me!

I have a lot to say on this subject, but I wanted to post a heads-up about the upcoming project the creators of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra have put in motion to "perform" all nine Beethoven Symphonies, as well as point y'all toward the Wall Street Journal's May 5th article on the subject (you have to be a subscriber to access it).

Like I said, I have a LOT to say on this subject, but not enough time to say it at tthe moment, so I'll try to get back later tonight and let fly. In the meantime, investigate for yourselves.

Finally, I have some real relief. I've been preparing for the concert I did tonight for months, and it's finally over.

It's not often that I get completely bound up about a performance, but this one was a little different for a few reasons. the main one is that I rarely have a chance to perform a solo or chamber piece with the composer sitting right there in front of me in the audience, and this is someone whose work I really respect for a lot of reasons. Another reason is that her daughter is a colleague of mine in the group giving the concert. How awkward would that be if I totally stunk it up, right?

There are many things I love about being a musician, but one of them is not the nervous anxiety before a big concert. I swear, sometimes I think I'm giving myself an ulcer. Sleep becomes a figment of my imagination, and when it does occur the dreams I have are vivid and really frightening. Not to mention what it does to my blood sugar numbers. By about two days before the performance my mind is desperately wishing for the moment after it's over.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy with the performance we gave, and I got soooooooo many compliments on my playing (and my shoes). I always know when I've really given it 100% because I have this heady "no-regrets" feeling afterward, which I'm enjoying at the moment. I think the stress was just about worth it this time.

So my Manolos and I are going to head out for a little beer, then a lot of sleep and a bit of a vacation in which I'll be playing in the dirt for a few days. Without my Manolos. Be back soon.

So I've been out of pocket this week, but for a very good reason. Last night I got to perform in the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater and I've been in rehearsals all week. Fabulous!! The best part of this gig was that this concert was almost entirely flute... and that conductor that drove me nuts in the fall can bite me, because I was fabulous.

To celebrate I'm going shoe shopping tomorrow... maybe those fabulous Bibas will be on sale.

It's amazing how volunteer jobs can snowball into full-time work if you're not careful. When I started working with this group, it was dribs and drabs here and there to help with print media and website maintenance, but it's grown into a full-time job managing their press and media relations. Not that I mind on most levels, but it's starting to feel a little constricting. Now I've actually had to postpone some vacation time to deal with some seriously flapping loose ends, and I'm wondering when this is going to pay off in terms of a little compensation, not to mention I feel like I'm one of the world's most boring people-- I spent half the night last night bitching to Red about this stuff.

Being a musician, as I've said before, is a study in compromises. When most of us get into this business, you hear things like "I could never stand to sit behind a desk." The reality to this statement is that as a musician, you are your own manager, accountant, secretary, and press agent, never mind daily things like keeping the house clean. You spend as much time at a desk as everyone else does in some fashion-- it's just that after that morning meeting you return to your office to practice instead of reworking last year's sales figures. I'll admit, I love the perks of being able to sleep until 10:30 like I did today and go shoe shopping when I want, but lately I've been spending more and more time staying up until 2 am plugging holes in the dam as well. I guess that's to be expected, since as any group grows its unseen workings become more complicated, but I just wish that maybe it could operate with a little more efficiency. Yeah, I know-- that's like asking a canary to deep-dive for fish.

At any rate, my vacation is coming to me today... there's homemade lemon ice cream in the freezer and I'll be making rum punch this afternoon per Jen's recommendation. And there's always wifi access from the hammock...

Sometimes all a girl needs is a little hot sax.

I've had a monster case of the blahs for the last couple of days, and it's amazing how much better I feel after a little groovin' on the tenor sax. (I'm sitting here at work tonight and surfing in between numbers: hooray for WiFi at the adjoining hotel.)

The tenor is the brooding leading man of the sax section-- all quiet harmonies and dulcet tones until it's time to throw down, and then he rocks your world. There's just something about the sound and vibrations of a good tenor sax lick that sort of cleanses the soul-- it can be raw and screaming and visceral and cathartic or sultry and sweet and ensnare your heart with sound. And playing it is sort of an all or nothing proposition-- there's no nancying around the horn: either you really blow it or it just doesn't work. It's like a good run: after a little while the endorphins kick in and you can't imagine stopping.

Mr. Sassy came back from his jazz workshop today, where he spent the week polishing his improv skills, and he was so excited he was bouncing around the room, full of stories. (On the flight back home he sat next to one of the original members of Three Dog Night, and got autograph goodness as well as an hour of great conversation.) I'm so proud of him for going to that workshop, because that's one of the things about sax playing, or playing anything I guess, that quite simply terrifies me down to my shoes. Improv solos are supposed to be fun when you get the hang of it, but something in my mind just gets all tangled up in the details and I get too caught up in sounding like a complete moron, thus the terror. Hopefully D will have some good ideas on how to help me out now that he's gotten schooled this past week, because learning how to overcome that terror is definitely right at the top of my to-do list.

Because I loves me some good sax.

At the very moment I was typing that last post, D came in to deliver the sad news that Milt Stevens, trombonist with the National Symphony and Washington Symphonic Brass, passed away this past weekend unexpectedly.

I have to admit, I didn't have many chances to work with him myself, but I can claim one notable exception:

Milt hosted his famous "Tune It Or Die" workshop every year at the National Orchestral Institute, and I attended when I was there. Talk about a crash course in excellence-- this guy really knew how to being home the idea of personal artistic integrity and responsibility with humor and elan.

Funny, brilliant, classy and just a generally nice guy, and I know he'll be missed. If I wasn't already sad tonight, now I really am.

I know I've been talking about art a lot here lately, but it seems like I've been stumbling across amazing things all over the place. For instance, take a look at the picture on the left: the art in that bottle is painted entirely in sand. The artist is Andrew Clemens, who created these art bottles at the end of the nineteenth century from sand he collected from the river bluffs near his home in McGregor, Iowa. Every single grain of sand you see in the picture was meticulously placed using homemade tools, and there's no glue, paint, or anything other than sand in the bottles.

The complexity of thought and concentration required to create art of this microscopic magnitude is so inspiring to me-- it gives me momentum to go and pick apart the minute details of my own art. After all, if a man can sit day by day and exactly place single grains of sand to paint pictures, sometimes every day for an entire year, can't I have the intestinal fortitude to sit my ass down and practice for a couple of hours a day? You'd think.

No musician likes practicing. Not like you'd think of liking going shopping, or to the movies, or reading a good book. I remember thinking I must be crazy in music school-- all of these people surrounding me talking about how much they loved to practice-- six, seven hours a day. They'd rather practice than eat. I began to think I was surrounded by the equivalent of Opus Dei mortificationists until I began to see the chinks in their armor. I really think that adoration of practicing is one of the many cardinal lies of the music world. Enjoy playing, yes. Jamming, yes. Rehearsing, maybe, but actual honest-to-God practicing? Never.

Let me explain what I mean by practicing, by the way. I'm not talking about sitting down to play through music you enjoy. That may be part of it, and maybe the end result, but real practicing is a lot more brutal than that. When a good musician sits down to practice, it becomes an exercise in masochism. You subject yourself to a razor-edged mirror every time you begin, examining with microscopic detail every single flaw in your execution and slowly, methodically, you rid yourself of them with surgical precision. It sounds poetic, but like I said, it's brutal at heart. At best, it becomes a thrilling exercise when you finally get the passage or piece right, giving you a rush like any extreme sport. At worst, however, it's slow mental torture: every time you make a mistake, you suffer a little death at your own imperfection.

I have a feeling that this is what separates the brilliant musicians from the average ones. Musicians are supposed to be free spirits in the eyes of everyone else, bowing to the whims of their muse. What everyone else doesn't realize is that Euterpe may be the giver of pleasure, but she's a dominatrix at heart, ready to use the whips and chains more readily than a kind word. You have to be a clock-disassembler at heart to be a truly brilliant musician-- genius and meticulous attention to detail akin to that of a gifted neurosurgeon as well as discipline and strength of character to hone that skill to razor precision.

It's that self-discipline that makes the difference in the end: not every musician has the will to sit down every day and bend their will to the grinding monotony and punishment of hard work. The good ones do, the mediocre ones do sporadically, and the bad ones just don't or can't. There are actually lots and lots of people with more than enough raw musical talent to be great. It's really common, actually. What's rare is the combination of talent and self-discipline: the talent means exactly nothing without the discipline to train it. And that discipline is useless without the strength of will to look into that razor-edged mirror, which in combination with the former is as rare as hens' teeth.

I kind of feel like a monk every time I sit down to practice: it's a meditation, a prayer to whatever deity gave me that rare combination in the small mediocre measure that I own. At the same time, it terrifies me-- it has a life of its own, this cycle. Miss practicing and the guilt turns into anxiety, which feeds the heaviness of soul that leads to missing the next practice session, in turn increasing the guilt and anxiety. Is it any wonder that I was a basket case by the time I graduated music school (and believe me, I was way more sane than most people I knew)? I keep swearing to myself that this time will be different-- that I won't let it swallow me up and spit me out after the performance is over, but who knows? Anyway, less procrastinating and more practicing. I have penance to do.

Sometimes there are a lot of things about my job that just make me sad.

Opening a new show is always a dicey proposition: the actors have to know their lines, their steps, their songs; sets and lighting have to be aligned, perfected, and tested; costumes have to be fitted, prepared, and set. Musicians have the easiest job in a lot of ways-- we get the music in the mail and then show up at the eleventh hour to pull it all together, then just show up and play it down from opening night on. There are always things that go wrong in any production, slowing things down and moving rehearsal speed down to a snail's pace, but usually it doesn't happen the night before opening-- not in a professional theater, anyway.

The theater where I spend a lot of time is no exception-- usually things run fairly smoothly, but tonight was an unmitigated disaster on a lot of levels. Rehearsal started late, the parts weren't finished (meaning none of us saw the music before the downbeat), and everybody was overtired and frustrated.

It all kind of came crashing down on us when one of our fellow musicians simply bailed in the middle of rehearsal: he was tired, he'd been at his other job for fourteen hours today, and he put it simply-- "I feel like I'm letting you guys down, but my day job is kicking my ass and I'm only sitting here because I love you guys. This is the last place I need or want to be right now, and I need to go home, so I'm going." This guy is normally the backbone of our morale around there and it literally landed on us like a ton of bricks. Another of the musicians and I talked about it when we walked to our cars afterwards and of course the conversation veered off to the root cause. Was it the nature of the business? Was it just the nature of the DC area? Who knows, but he brought up some good points which have been dancing around in my head, too for the past couple of months.

He made the assertion that there's no way he would want to raise his kids in the D.C. area, simply because of the attitude present in this city, and I have to be honest, I agree. I've found in the past couple of years I have to get the hell outta here every few months for a while, if only to renew my faith that everyone in the world is not a self-centered asshole with the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old boy. It can begin to wear on you after a while, this competitive insanity, and it starts to color your whole perception of life if you're not careful.

He also talked about the way that this area weighs and works on you as a musician. This town can be very closed to new young talent in terms of getting work, too-- it's like they expect you to just wait around until you're 40 to get work no matter how good you are. It can become downright depressing, and we both agreed that neither of us used to be this cynical about life in general and definitely about work.

I hate being depressed, especially about my job, because otherwise I have no right to complain. I'm able to support myself doing what a lot of people only wish they could do, I have a great husband who's behind me in doing it because he does it himself, and most of the time I love it. Let's face it, I'm not always sunshine and light, after all, but I'm a generally happy person (even though there's been a more-than-usual amount of bitching here lately.) I just hate watching life chew someone up and spit them out the way it has these two guys lately, and it's kind of depressing to think I can't do anything about it.

*Above cartoon by Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid.com.

As of today, I have exactly 31 days until D-day.

Every so often, I get the chance to do a seriously personally gratifying performance of one of those pieces every musician dreams about-- one of those works on my personal goal list that I feel would be a major accomplishment to get to perform in public. Well, exactly 31 days from today I'll get to check another one of those works off the list: John Adams's clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons.

This is one of those pieces that I've dreamed about playing for years, ever since I heard it in my third year of college:

Adams' most personal and cathartic work, Gnarly Buttons is a memorial tribute to his father, using the clarinet, his father's instrument, to trace and salute his father's pervasive influence upon his own life and career. It opens with the scales his father taught him to practice, and then alludes to Benny Goodman (whom his father revered), the marching bands and community orchestra in which they played together, and the emergence and development from such roots of Adams' own eclectic musical style. It ends with the confusion, pain and vulnerability of his father's final dementia (during which he became obsessed that someone was trying to steal his instruments) and a brief, peaceful elegy. A curious mélange when heard in the abstract, Gnarly Buttons becomes acutely poignant in context. --ClassicalNotes.net

Every day the date gets closer, and I get a little more nervous. Will I remember R-L-R-SK? Will I forget to take a breath at a crucial point? Will my feet be okay in my crazy shoes? Will my dress fit? Will I keel over with a heart attack before I cross that finish line cutoff? Who knows.

At this point I've made more progress than I thought I possibly could in two weeks: that's right, the downbeat is now nineteen days away. Since the last time I posted about preparing for the concert I've had bad days and good days, and lots of stress. Always the stress. A while back I posted about the vagaries and consequences of real practicing, and the past couple of days have been no exception. In fact, the heartburn has nearly killed me from the anxiety. (I'm so glad I bought that massive pack of Pepto last week at Costco-- sometimes serendipity comes in small events in life, right?)

See, I come from a long line of anxious people, and though that's what makes me tick sometimes, it's also what stops me in my tracks. Sometimes I get so overwrought with thinking about my To-Do list that it literally causes my brain to go into overload and so I sit on the couch and stress out instead of actually doing things. Seriously. (And by the way, no there is nothing I can do about it but slog through. Please no advice. I promise I've tried it all before. Really.) And fuhgeddaboudit when it comes to practicing. My brain can overload on the small details I have to perfect to the point where I just want to stay in bed all day.

So to that end, I have sheafs of to-do lists in my life: housework, business, practicing. I even have a practice journal to list everything I have to perfect and accomplish on any given piece at any given point. The entry for today, for instance, looks like that picture over there on the left. All neatly arrayed, this chaos in my head, on a sheet of graph paper. What I'm still goofing up, what I'm getting right, reduced down to a sentence. This, I have to admit, is due to the requirements of my first college clarinet teacher. (I know, those of you who have known me that long are shocked, right? I actually did take something away from that period of insanity.) And I have to be honest, he actually left me with a lot more artistic direction than either of us thought at the time.

For instance, he used to have on his office wall a list of things to strive for when practicing a piece, the first of which (I think) was "Commitment to the qualities of the music." or something like that. What he meant by that handwritten bit of wisdom as that as a musician you should always strive to communicate the essence of what the composer, or orchestrator, or lyricist, or whatever, was trying to say. The soul of the piece. Maybe I didn't want to be at the time, but a part of me was listening, and I hear his voice reading that line every time I sit down to start really learning a new work or return to an old one. It doesn't matter what kind. Clarinet concerto? Let it speak through you. Showtune? Find its voice. Rock and roll cover? Commit to play each one in its own proper way and style, and you'll be speaking without words.

What's on that page up there is tempos and tangible goals, but like any good recipe, it's about the subtleties as well as the salt. One of my favorite teachers used to say that the arc of a piece's momentum was like the curve of a rainbow. The tension you create when you weave a thread of sound is like that: it builds and climbs, up and over and through, and if you manage to sustain it all the way back to earth again you've created something incredible. It's like lightning in a bottle, and it doesn't happen that often.

The more time I spend with the concerto the more I feels its essence coming out of my horn in fits and starts. Will I be able to hold up the rainbow? I dunno. I have nineteen days to learn the sky. Here's hoping it's enough.

I know I should be Remembering like everyone else. I really do, but sometimes there's just too much life going on to remember a national tragedy. I actually forgot what today was when I woke up this morning. That's how stressed out I am right now.

I'm not going to spend time talking about the significance of the date and how I should be having some great epiphany about how everyone else's suffering is so much worse than mine and I should be thankful. Frankly I'm too tired and stressed out to care. And let's face it, no amount of epiphanies from me will change a damn thing anyone else has decided about what we should or shouldn't do about the consequences and effects of that day, so I'm going to skip it. I have too many fires to put out here at home and I'm already sad enough.

UPDATE: (9/15/2007) Well, here's one reason to raise a glass today: it's The Bear's birthday. Trust The Muse to remind me.

First, an explanation: you've probably seen posts in the "Lyric of the Day" category here from time to time. In case you're wondering where these come from, they're whatever bits of my job are stuck in my head that day. And I usually mean all day, by God.

One of the things I love about my job, that being a free-as-a-bird and poor-as-a-church-mouse freelance musician, is that I get to play lots of different kinds of things for lots of different kinds of performances. One night I might be playing Beethoven at the Kennedy Center, the next I'm crammed in a scary little orchestra pit playing beautiful transcendent tunes for a show. It's a whimsical sort of existence, juggling all of those different styles and all of the different instruments I use to play them: flutes, clarinets, saxophones, recorders, whistles and sometimes the odd percussion instrument (I mean, I have two hands and the poor percussionist can't always do everything.)

One of the sometimes maddening things about my job is that I tend to take my work home with me in little snippets that patter around in my brain all day and night. For instance, when I start a new musical, I almost always have bits and pieces and even entire songs from the show running through my head 24/7 for the first few weeks. Usually my shows run anywhere for three to ten weeks, so you can see how that could get really annoying.

My solution is to get a recording of the show and just simply learn the entire thing. Sing it, play along with it, read about it, sing it some more, and just listen to it everywhere I go. Not that it chases the little snippets away, but at least I can put them in context and sing the whole song if I want to.

A while back my husband had the bright idea of creating a "Lyric of the Day" posting here, just to show one more window into what's running around my brain and maybe exorcise some of those random snippets. And I thought you might enjoy hearing some of those bitty snippets to go with the words, too, so above each new one will be a little audio bit too, if I can manage it. And maybe a little blurb about why I like it (or don't) so much. Hopefully it won't be one of those "Stars and Stripes" things... maybe stuck in your head just because I showed it to you. But if so, maybe you'll find some new cool thing to listen to, right?

So without further ado:

Click here to hear The Proposal

I'll be comin' back to you Darlene
Back to your dark eyes,
And hair
Marry me when I return Darlene
And until that day my love,
Take care

Be thee well
May the Lord watches all watch over thee
May God's heaven be your blanket as you softly sleep
Marry me
When you're finally in my arms you'll plainly see
This devoted sailor's heart and soul are yours to keep

So lately, I haven't been the only one gearing up for a turn as a soloist. The famous Frankenberry takes his first turn this month tomorrow, and I thought a little shout-out love would be entirely appropriate!! Break a leg, brotha, just don't break your groove. You'll need that in two weeks.

Just so we're clear: this is what's going down in two weeks:



Just thought I'd let y'all in on that, in the interest of full disclosure and all.

Ahhh. It's good to be comfortable.

Today is the two-week mark before the Adams concerto, and it's probably the first time in my life I've ever been this comfortable this early in the game. I started my repetitive run-throughs today with an easy couple of cruises through the piece, the ran it a couple of times with the recording I have, and I have to say, I was totally startled at how well it went. Now, that's not to say I'm going to sit on my ass for the next two weeks-- there are still a lot of things to perfect and build on. It just means I can dampen down the anxiety a bit, thank goodness. I really thought I was going to have a heart attack last Tuesday.

In other news, I now have a dress for the performance. To be clear, I had a dress before, but I wasn't really feeling it for this concert and I wanted something a little more sassy. Well, as usual, Filene's Basement to the rescue. It never fails: every once in a while I just have this feeling that I need to go and check out what's on the racks there, and every time I have that feeling they seem to provide exactly what I need for something or another I have coming up. Well, this time I found a gorgeous Calvin Klein dress all in silk and lace, and now I just have to accessorize. Yay!! I'm still trying to decide what to do about my jacked up toe and my shoes, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it next week.

That's one of those nutty things you have to do when you're female and performing in front of an orchestra or some other group: you do rehearsals in your shoes so you're not flying blind on performance night. The last thing you want to do is become runway roadkill on the way out on stage, and you certainly don't want to fall off your shoes while you're playing, so even your shoes get a rehearsal. And picking out shoes is no easy task for a solo performance: not only do they have to match your dress and the occasion, they have to be stabile on the floor. No Manolos here, folks, because those kicks have to be as well-grounded as your bare feet, especially if you move around while you play or sing like I tend to. The Bibas fit the bill, because even though the heels are bodacious, they're wide, and they'll help keep me from busting my ass on stage. (Frankenberry would tell you that nothing is foolproof though, since he watched me almost take a dive in my fairly safe "big girl shoes" in Maggiano's today.)

Speaking of nothing being predictable, I'm getting my clarinet back Monday from the repair shop-- that's right, the good luck just keeps on coming. I managed to break a connector pin in one of my lever keys (for those of you who don't play the clarinet, the posts are what connect those long keys to the cups they open, uncovering the holes) and my lovely repair guy managed a three-hour turnaround on the horn once he got to it, complete with an up-to-par adjustment to make sure it's working just-so. He's good, man. (Haha-- I actually just typed "He's god", and that's still right.) The unfortunate thing is that I can't get over to get it until Monday, so it's the backup horn all the way until then. Oh well. It's still good, just not stellar.

Off to bed for me now, since in the course of writing this post Alabama has squeaked by Arkansas to win the game, and I was still up when David got up this morning.

People, sometimes my own asshattery has consequences even I couldn't have seen coming.

When I sprained my poor pinky toe a couple of weekends ago, I hoped maybe it would cooperate by next week. (That's right, it's not broken. The X-ray says no, but that's not exactly a good thing. Sprains hurt more and heal slower I'm told.) After practicing in my shoes yesterday for a couple of hours, I can clearly see that it will not. People, it was the size of a sausage link when I pulled it out of said lovely shoes. I'm going to try taping it today an see if that helps matters, but I'm not holding out much hope.

What's a girl to do? I have a week and a half until the concert, the perfect dress, and no shoes to wear. Crap, crap, crap.

Anybody have any suggestions?

So much of our lives as musicians is spent waiting. Waiting to graduate, waiting for the audition results, waiting to buy that new horn until the dough comes through, waiting for rehearsals to start.

Well, for me the waiting is over finally. Tonight was our first rehearsal for the Adams. And it was pretty good, all things considered. All things being:

1. At the start of my piece, we were immediately joined by a lovely pea-green katydid. (Seriously. It was a sign, the concertmaster and I decided. I love how the universe sends you tiny gifts every once in a while in unexpected packages.)
2. When the katydid came in, so did an enormous cicada killer wasp, which then flew around the room scaring the bejeezus out of me and everybody else. Luckily the percussionist came to my rescue and chased it around the room until it judiciously decided to vacate the premises through the window by which it entered. So much for rehearsal decorum.
3. One of the keyboard players completely showed her ass today, admitting she hadn't even looked at the part yet. She didn't even realize that she was supposed to be playing keyboard instead of piano, complete with patch changes and controller adjustments. WTF? Fired, I tell you.
4. My face gave out about five minutes before we were supposed to be done. Honestly, I have no idea what I was thinking, agreeing to play a show of Dreamgirls this afternoon before rehearsal. Note to self, "Dear Me: Don't Be A Goober. Love, Me."

It's not often that I succumb to gibbering bouts of hero worship, but I got to meet my favorite composer tonight. Squee!!!! And he said good luck on Saturday! Double squee!!

And just to prove me right about clarinet players, the first question he asked me after he found out I was another clarinet player?

"What kind of horn do you play on?"

Teehee.

About two hours from now, it'll be go time.

Months of preparation and hours of rehearsal come down to one shot. I'm trying really really hard not to freak out, and I think I'll be okay as long as I remember to breathe and don't concentrate too hard on how my feet hurt while I'm up there. And remember that there's a really bitchin' cake for the party afterwards. Mmmmm... chocolate truffle cake.

Here's to ya' if I'm going to see you there, and if not, you're missing out but I'll have a recording up later this week I guess. Y'all enjoy your Saturday nights in whatever way you have planned. Me? I'm gonna go make some serious music.

Well, here I am, folks, on the flip side.

The concert last night was great. (Geez, I look squat in that picture. And you can't see my shoes. Maybe someone will send me a better one. Eh, what can you do?) The Elvis piece was rockin', the other soloists played beautifully, and when the time came for the Adams the conductor and I shook hands and took the stage with a vengeance. There were some goofs, some heart-stoppers both good and bad, and when all was said and done, some transcendent moments. And now it's over.

I admit, I'm feeling a little bit lost tonight. The moment on stage always comes and goes so abruptly that it kind of leaves you reeling in its wake for a while. I've been concentrating on this for so long that I've kind of forgotten how it feels not to have anything to do, and I'm sort of overwhelmed with options at the moment and a little sad.

D and I sat around today after our weekly Sunday matinee and sort of wondered at the possibilities. I can take time to knit without guilt, go dig in the garden without obsessing over runs and patterns, go to the mall without an objective. and oh yeah... I probably won't be forgetting to eat any time soon. :)

So tomorrow I'm going to be wandering aimlessly to clear my head. I may go to one of my favorite places to do a little ritual for letting go and clearing out the mental and spiritual cobwebs, or I may just go wander the land hedonistically and enjoy the spinning of my personal compass. Who knows. On the horizon are more things, but at the moment they're far and fuzzy and entirely unimportant, so the now is the thing, and it's my perogative.


*P.S. I promise I'll post pictures as I can get them... and maybe a recording if it came out as well as I remember. kthxbye

So now that I've had a few days to recoup and process, I figured you'd like a rundown of what went down on Saturday.

The concert went really well, especially considering all of the rehearsal mishaps that occurred in the weeks leading up to it. We started out with the Elvis piece, and the King was in force and rockin'. (Wanna see a picture? Go here.) I then sat out for the innards of the concert to change clothes and warm up a bit. Waiting. More waiting. And finally, when we heard the applause for the last piece before the Adams, my heart jumped up a bit into my throat and after a couple of deeps breaths, I was off to the stage.

The applause was great, and after a few silent moments off we went.

It began well-- a beautiful hush in the hall before the first notes and then a breath into sound. The recital hall there has a beautiful clear liquid quality that works really well for clarinet-- you can really make the rafters ring. Things hung together kind of loosely in the first two movements, and it was a little scary to realize that the conductor was nervous and I couldn't tell which beat he was giving. (One? Three? Four? The only way I knew two was because he was almost whacking me with it.) So we plowed on and just kept going. Good moments, scary moments, off moments, beautiful moments. Just make it through to three, I thought. It's the reason you're up here.

And just like that, there I was, listening to the start of my favorite movement of Gnarly Buttons, the third. I was able to take a deep breath and get ready to go. But then my throat started tickling. Oh Jesus, I thought. There's nowhere to cough in this one. Hold it in, hold it in! Which I managed to do, mainly, but there's a hiccup and a brief squawk as a testament to my body's little quirk in the recording, just as I remembered it. Ah well-- nothing's perfect I guess, but other than that it was really beautiful. The unfortunate thing is that the mic was just far enough away from me that I got lost in the sound of the orchestra a bit on the recording, but it's still nice. At any rate, it went over just like I wanted it to by the end-- the silence in the hall was deafening after the last notes, for seconds and seconds. And then the applause, and I was done. Exhausted and elated and done and a little sad it was over. Then we partied until two in the morning. The cake was amazing, as was the company and the wine, and as I said to my friend Frankenberry, I went home and slept the Sleep of the Just, knowing I had done all I could to make it go right.

I will say, as an aside, that I don't recommend that anyone ever be in charge of the administrative part of a concert when you're the soloist as well. Having to do the PR, the print media, and the artist wrangling is a bit much when you're staring down the barrel of a 28-minute playing nightmare too. It's too much stress, and I hope I never have to do it again.

So for all of you lovely people who were so unfortunate as to miss the shindig on Saturday night and the performance at the end of months of hard practice, I give you the third movement:

GB Movement 3

I would just like to thank Sir Frankenberry for completely making my night a couple of minutes ago-- I may have to put up with double the usual amount of asshole at tonight's rehearsal, but that will be offset by having him at the other end of the row making me laugh when I'm not making a total ass of myself on my own. (And that's without the happy drugs I was on last week... I'm surprised the maestro didn't fire me or send me home, because I spent the entire night giggling with my friends on either side of me and not doing much of anything else.) Hooray!!

Well folks, it's been almost a month since my life got turned upside down, and I really feel like I owe you an explanation. Over here at Chez Sassy we're all in one piece, albeit a little worse for the wear and with a few more gray hairs. Thanks for your prayers and thoughts and good wishes from that last post and keep them coming. We may yet need them. I've got so much to say that I've been keeping close to the vest for so long, so I guess I should start at the beginning.

About a month ago, for reasons that I still can't really talk about here, D abruptly lost his job. Don't worry, no one's dying or dead or in jail, and no one did anything illegal or crazy or life-threatening. It simply was a decision whose time had come and had to be made quickly and unfortunately very very abruptly for the sake of everyone involved.

I know to a lot of you, this won't sound as catastrophic as I made it seem in that post, but there are a couple of factors you have to consider here:

1. Musicians don't come by steady jobs that easily, especially not ones with decent salaries.
2. Moreover, jobs with benefits are few and far-between, musician or not.
3. A cessation of said job means the cessation of both of the above perks.

It's a terrible thing to be held hostage.

There are lots of things I love about being a musician. The hours suit me just fine, the company is usually good, and the job itself is great. Unfortunately the pay is what's killing me.

I knew when I started out to be a musician it was a dicey proposition as far as income was concerned. I slogged all of the way through college and came out, thanks to my parents and my full scholarship, with no debt to speak of aside from an accursed credit card. (This was before the era of rampant student loans-- before the era of tuition so high you couldn't pay it off each semester by holding down a minimum wage or Jane Job*. They paid my room & board, and I taught about a dozen students a week to pay for other stuff.)

We got married right after I graduated and have managed to stay afloat on musician's wages for eight years(!) barring a few crazy mishaps where we had to get a little help from D's parents or mine, and that's no small accomplishment. Except when we first moved here, we've never had to hold down desk jobs to get by- it was all music all the time, even with D's job for the past few years. That's something to be proud of, in an area where a two bedroom house sells for half a million dollars.

However, wiggle room there was, and now is, not. D's job afforded us some comfort if not ease, but we still had to mind our P's and Q's most of the time. What's scary is that when you look at our income even now, we're actually middle class. Yikes. We're actually not living in a cardboard box as musicians, like everybody warned us we would be when we were in school. I've said for a long time that it's untrue that musicians don't make any money-- we just have some astronomically expensive things to buy in order to work, and never has it been more true for me than now.

Since D lost his job there's been a lot of discussion around here about what our next step should be. Should he find a desk job? Could we just try and take more students to fill the gap? Should one or both of us be taking auditions to try and win a gig? Eventually we came down on the side of letting me go for the auditions, which I haven't been able to do for a while since it meant that anything out of the area would be a conflict with his D.C.-only job situation. For weeks now I've been plotting and planning and practicing, trying to get a handle on the process and back into the saddle, and this week I've finally hit a wall.

There are two auditions I can't take simply because my instruments aren't up to it. That may not sound like a big deal, but when you consider that it will take about ten thousand dollars to rectify the situation, you get where I'm coming from. I know I have the ability and work ethic, but my equipment will fail me in the process. I got a whiplash reality check of it at last month's opera performance-- my bass clarinet wouldn't play the equivalent of Come To Jesus in whole notes, but when I played my friend's instrument suddenly everything fell into place. Somewhere deep down I knew that that was the hand I'd been dealt, but it had never really been a tangible reality until that moment. It's really heartbreaking and frightening-- the results of hours and hours of work now rely solely on the ability of my pocketbook to back it up. The crappy thing is that for this kind of purchase, you can't really get a bank loan, either-- especially not if you're a musician. We rent, we're self employed, and the bank could care less if our income is the same as the neighbors' because we don't really get pay stubs.

So here I sit, trying to put the pennies together to make this happen. Damned if I do, because it means more debt, and damned if I don't because I can't get a job.

Any of you bright and brilliant folks have any suggestions? (Only legal ones, now.)

*In case you've never heard of a Jane Job, it's one of those jobs you have to pay your bills until you can get the job you really want, like being a receptionist, waitress, assistant-- the kind of job that most any competent faceless Jane can fill, where you don't really need a specific skill set other than basic computer literacy or typing or math. You get the idea.

It's always a shock to get sideswiped by an aural mirror.

I finally got my hands on the recording of a concert I did at the Kennedy Center last year, and boy I was not at all prepared for the hot mess I heard. This was one of those concerts where I had to play clarinet, flute, and sax, and there was a wide range of insanity going on there. It's amazing how far apart my abilities on flute and clarinet are. The clarinet numbers? Great. (So good, in fact, that I can probably be persuaded to share a bit with you here, but I'll get around to that later.) The flute numbers, though? Ugh. That's about all I can say. It kind of sounds like I let a high school kid steal my thunder and use my name. Yikes. It can be depressing to look your inabilities full in the face, or rather, the ear.

The laundry list of things I have to practice on and improve seems endless sometimes. I feel like I could practice every day for sixteen hours for the rest of my life and never get to the point I need to reach. And more to the point, I feel like I'll never be able to find those sixteen hours in the course of a week, much less a day, because I have to pick up all of my various and sundry axes and go earn some money while further endangering my bottom line by appearing in public sounding the way I sometimes do. There's a lot of things I need to just take a few weeks and start over at-- clean slate, from the bottom up, and without interruptions, but I just don't have the time, or the access to the time.

And never mind keeping the house clean.

Sometimes the only thing for it is a beer and a great big brownie for comfort. Yeah. That sounds like a solution I can get with for the moment. (Because at 11:30 at night, my neighbors would be justified for storming my office to stop me from practicing piccolo. I'm just saying.)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

People, today has been one of the most swing-of-the-pendulum days I've experienced in a long time (and that's saying something.) It started out with utter divorce from life, stress, and reality for a few hours, and then the world came crashing down on my head again.

This morning, I woke up early (!!!) and met a friend and we scuttled down to the Chesapeake Bay to go fossil hunting. During the drive down to the site we talked about life, the universe, and everything, and then tugged on our wading boots and sifted through millenia-old fragments of shells and coral in search of the shy and elusive fossil shark tooth. For three blissful hours I completely forgot about everything that's been going on in my life, absorbed in the freezing cold water and the waves and the sand and the multicolored chaos in my sand sifter. I laughed for no reason, forgot about being stressed out, and marveled at the wonder of holding a relic that no human being had ever touched, that had been quietly waiting in its dark cocoon of sand and soil for anywhere from five to twenty million years for me to come and find it. Even after I came home I still kind of floated in a sort of suspension of disbelief and stress release for a few hours, scrubbing my shells and taking a bubble bath.

And then the phone rang.

My boss, telling me that if we didn't find the necessary personnel for next week's concert by Friday, he was going to cancel it.

Why does everything with that group have to be so God damn hard? Apparently, because peoplehave been relying on our rather limited resources to find subs for them (which is not our job), now the whole group has to take a huge financial hit. It will cost us as much money to cancel the concert as it will to put it on at this point. Music rental, hall reservation, and all of the ad money. Gone.

I think I'm just going to move out to the Maryland shore and live in a lean-to. Life would be simpler. With all of the contemplation of the past today, I'm trying to be philosophical: this too shall pass, and one day my bones will be fossils in somebody's museum. No one will care if I end up looking like an ass for next week, they'll just look at my hip bones and say, "My, what a grand fat arse she must have had... I wonder what her life was like?" It's probably better that they'll have to wonder. So I'm not going to fret about it. It's not worth it. Life is too short to spend all your time freaking out about everything, as my friend pointed out today in a total pot-kettle moment.

I'm going to bed. I'll think about it tomorrow.

For ten years I have waited for today. For ten years, I have longed, prayed, schemed, dreamed, planned, and pined. For ten years I have sighed the sighs of an unrequited lover, certain that the day would never come when I would finally be able to be united with the object of my desire.

A couple of weeks ago, I lamented the turn of the screw that left the fate of my career dependent on the heftiness of my bank account, and thirty-one days later, some very wonderful people have helped me make my dream come true.

Today, I will be picking up my very own brand new bass clarinet.

Good Holy Lord, I'm still here.

Everyone lived through the concert last night, and it actually turned out to be a whole heck of a lot of fun. I just listened to the recording and it actually doesn't stink. In fact, it's pretty damn good. Almost good enough to make up for the amount of exhaustion I'm feeling at the moment..

Most of the time when musicians show up to play a gig, we have absolutely no idea how much work, thought, and coordination go into preparing for the downbeat. I've been getting a first-hand education in that type of process, and it's kicking my ass. Before I started working with this group, I had absolutely no idea how much work it is to put on a concert from idea to execution and it's amazing how different your perspective becomes when you're the gears and cogs making everything work.

In order to put on a program, there are more steps than I possibly could have imagined: decisions on repertoire, booking hall dates, hiring personnel, getting music, coordinating rehearsals, distributing information, lining up PR and advertising, selling tickets, wrangling conductors and other personnel, ensuring guest and solo artists are taken care of, managing wardrobe and concert protocols, formatting and printing programs, renting equipment, managing cash flow, setting up the hall, working the door, getting people on and off stage, coordinating the reception, cleaning up the house. It begins to look really sickeningly hard when you realize that each one of those steps has four, nine, fifteen sub-steps that have to be accomplished in order for it to be taken care of.

Because of the fact that I'm a little more practical-minded than other directors in the group and I'm the only one still actually living in D.C., I ended up with about 75% of the workload for yesterday. By the time yesterday rolled around, I was so exhausted that I was quite literally on the edge of tears up until the last note was played.

In a lot of ways it was a great wake-up call for me. Frankenberry knows how insane I've been with this whole process and he and others have been been wisely and steadfastly trying to impress on me that we really have to get some help with all of this in the form of more hands on the tiller-- dividing up my duties between more people, delegating duties, and never was that more evident than last night.

I was so tired that I couldn't even enjoy playing. I was so busy all week that I had no time to practice. It was the first time in a long time that I was basically the weakest link on stage, not because of lack of ability, but because of lack of time and energy. Boy did I hate that feeling. Then I realized today that in the past two weeks I haven't taken a look at my audition materials once. And I have to go compete for two different high-profile jobs inside of a month. That's not good and that has to change.

The good news is that the group is about to take a step up in profile and bankability, so I'll be able to do just when I need to-- use other people to do the work that I've been handling all myself so I can stay sane and stop looking so haggard and feeling so sloppy.

Now that I've bitched about that, it's time for the long-awaited update on my new boyfriend Gorgeous George. (Thanks to the Berrys for the name suggestion.) George is happy and well-adjusted (thanks to my repair tech) and living in my office until his next concert. And boy, is he pretty. (Wanna see more pictures? They're here.) I finaIly picked him up at the Berry household late last Monday night, much to the glee of everyone involved. (Love you guys!! You're awesome!!) We unpacked the box and headed downstairs for a test run. I was on the verge of hysterical giggles-- okay, I lie, I was totally given over to hysterical giggling-- and the two of them were grinning watching me. (Don't you love the smile people get on their faces when they watch their friends do something that makes them really, really happy? I do. And I love the particular smile on Frankenberry's face-- it's not often you get a full-on, down to the bone grin there, at least in my experience.) I tooted and giggled and they watched and then we stayed up way too late for our own collective good talking about all kinds of stuff. The best possible way to inaugurate a new relationship, no?

I couldn't be more happy with the new bass-- the concert was made extra-fabulous by the fact that I was able to completely relax when I was playing it and just let fly. It was especially gratifying to see the looks on the faces of some of my colleagues when I got it out and let fly. The cellist whirled around so fast I thought he'd fallen off his chair. And my icky conductor, who was at the concert, was flat-out shocked and it was written all over his face. (Kiss that, you nasty old bastard.) What kinda stinks is that it got a bit covered up in the recording, but hey, I know I kicked ass and I can't wait for the summer performances we have coming up where I get to spotlight it on a couple of really cool pieces. For the meantime, we're collaborating on a little special something that I'll let you guys hear later. He is so, so pretty.

And now that I'm done, Im going to go do a happy dance to a little Ursula 1000 and have a beer.

I've just spent the better part of my afternoon on what I think may be a colossal exercise in futility.

After I went to see Heidelah's show this afternoon, I came home and woodshedded for an hour or so, and then set about the terrifying and frustrating business of recording an audition CD for the preliminary round of one of my dream jobs. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Wrong.

D and I have been having a lot of conversations lately about growing up, growing old, and when to call a spade a spade. For every aspiring professional musician, there comes a time, a moment, when you have to take a hard look at the path you've chosen and either admit that you need to get off your ass or resign yourself to the fact that you will ever after that point be nothing more than mediocre. This is a choice that is only presented to a very few-- most musicians are decidedly mediocre from the get-go and this moment is simply one of realization and hopefully, acceptance that their path will never be the stellar, one-in-a-million career that they have hoped for since they were young: they will simply be a good serviceable member of the masses, making a good living but never famous outside their own bathrooms and probably only recognized by their immediate colleagues with whom they trudge to the never-ending lineup of faceless, nameless performances. There's no shame in being one of the latter, not at all. What becomes shameful is the forty-year-old who is still waiting for the big break that will make them a star with no clue that their trajectory will never take them that high.

I don't know if it should be called growing up, becoming mature, or simply getting older and wiser, but almost everybody comes to that point sooner or later. I think my life is rapidly approaching that exact decision, and I'm starting to realize that unless I do something drastic the choice will be made for me before I can make it myself, simply because I'm afraid to try and fail. I had a great conversation with Styxsdaughter tonight that made me feel better about the process, but at the same time I keep vacillating between stellar moments of confidence and bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and inadequacy. I go from being perfectly willing to dive in head-first to the process to wanting to sell my instruments and become a secretary. Usually this starts to occur when I look at the chat forums pertaining to the audition process and read the fan chatter about the respective candidates.

I am not one of the talented wunderkinds who went to an elite conservatory (by choice of my own mind you, which I could still remedy) and won a job before I reached drinking age. I aspire to hold jobs that some of those same precocious geniuses now possess, though, and it leaves me cold when I think of my resume lined up with theirs at the age of thirty-one. I haven't taken a serious audition in more than eight years. I have at least six months of hard-core musical ditch-digging to do until I'm back on my A game.

Not that any of the above changes my decision, mind you. My A game is formidable, and I have recordings to prove it (and remind me when I feel like a human dung heap.) I can honestly say that when I'm on I'm a contender, no lying and no bullshit. Me at my best is as good as any wunderkind.

Not that I have a choice. When I went back to school a few years ago I discovered in spades that I was meant to do this and learned not to question that any more. Now I just have to figure out somehow how not to be terrified of the idea of taking that big step forward and making the leap of faith that I can do it. Dammit. I don't want to look back on my life and wonder. Dammit. I don't to lose out because I'm afraid.

So here's my question to all of you: how do you psych yourself into doing things that terrify you? How about when it's not just for one day, but day after day after day? Help a girl out-- now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of your fellow blogger, even if you've never commented before. I need some answers.

And now, to serve as food for thought, the Decemberists:

Pssst.

Hey you. Yeah, you.

See that? ----->

You helped make it happen.

I want to thank those of you who responded to my desperate plea the other night. Thanks to each one of you who contributed your own bits of wisdom and help, my audition CD is in the mail.

I can't tell you how each of your comments helped me. Lest you think no one's listening, I can point to at least one specific thing each of you said that got me through the four-and-a-half hour recording marathon that produced that little gem over there. My brother-in-law is completely responsible for getting me in the room recording at all. All morning I heard ringing in my head your sage advice that the only failure is not trying to begin with. It drove me to go out, get up, ignore the acid that roiled in my stomach every time I thought about going over to get it done. Finally your words got me up off my ass and in the car and into the studio at 7:30 PM to take the first step.

Keith Handy is responsible for making me stop staring at the recorder across the room and go turn it on and start. Man, your reminder to take things in baby steps allowed me to take one step at a time and simply begin. Your final advice not to mentally hand over the power to someone else allowed me to take a deep breath and have at it, balls-to-the-wall, and knock out five of the better takes I've ever done.

And when I was sitting with my head in my hands, sure that I couldn't do it one more time, it was Frankenberry's quiet and humble confidence that let me get up and try one more time to get it right, which at 11 PM after three hours of trying is no small matter. Never underestimate the power of friendship and being someone's cheerleader when they need it most, even if it's not in person.

And last, but not least, I have to thank Dan P for his most tangible gifts of support: his time, his Zoom recorder, and access to a space to record, as well as the invaluable gift of a kind and refined ear to help me decide when it was good enough and when it was done. More than words can say, I appreciate the kind of supportive and enthusiastic and honest friend you are.

So there you have it folks. The package is in the mail, and it's simply for me to wait and see if they decide I make the cut. If so, all right and still at the grindstone, if not, all right, but at least I tried.

By and large, I like teaching my students. Most of the time it's fun to see them accomplishing new things and learning, trying out new ideas and flexing their musical muscles. It's always so rewarding to hear a student make an artistic breakthrough, to see that look on their faces when the light goes on and they realize they've made someone react simply by the sounds they've created.

For every artistic breakthrough, though, there's a kid who has a complete artistic breakdown, and most of the time it has nothing to to with ability: it has to do with discipline.

I've talked before about the Catch-22 of musicians needing discipline. It's the one ingredient that any successful musician has, whether they're trying it on as a vocation or an avocation. Either way, though, you can't be a good musician without it. Kids with no discipline don't end up as musicians that really know what they're doing, they just dick around and hate themselves when they grow up for being amateurish. I have no vested interest in that-- I want my students to understand what is required for them to become artistically viable musicians, whether they end up only playing for their own pleasure or for a paycheck someday. If they honestly decide that the instrument, and music, is not for them, then fine, but I want them to try as long as they study with me, and the difference in very obvious in the two situations. It's also very obvious if the kid just doesn't like me, and that's fine too.

This week I had another kid in the long procession of disciplinary failures. What usually happens is that during some random lesson I'll begin to test the student's ability to take criticism and disapproval about their practice habits if they've been bad so far. I'll set them up on a practice schedule-- so many minutes, so many times during the course of the week, and I'll talk to their parents about it at the end of the lesson to make sure they know what I'm requiring of their child. Nothing insane, small goals like fifteen minutes of work a day, but I'm firm about it. If the kid doesn't have the self-motivation to do it at their age, then I enlist the parents to help them along and get them on the right path. The next step usually involves consequences-- no practicing, they get sent home and owe their parents the money for the lesson, in work, trade, or cash, whatever makes the biggest difference then and will have the biggest long-term effect.

Most kids I have to have "the talk" with never make it past the first step, and this kid was no exception. We had the talk at her last lesson and I let her mom know the deal, and both of them seemed on board when they left. In classic fashion, though, I got a phone call the day before the next lesson letting me know they weren't coming and that they wanted to talk to me about whether or not they would be continuing lessons. The problem, apparently, was that the kid was now saying she didn't like the sound of the clarinet-- that it hurt her ears, and she wanted to quit.

Ummm... bullshit flag.

What happened was that the first time this kid's parent had to make her work at it, she decided that she didn't like having to work. It's not as if she's ever practiced before in any serious way. After all this time she can't even remember the notes. She never has her assignments done, and her parents are paying me an enormous amount of money that is completely going to waste because this kid isn't doing the work, which is seriously less time than she spends on the phone texting her friends after school. Twenty minutes a day, five days a week.

I guess what bothers me so much is that this is a trend with a lot of parents. I'm sorry baby, you might have to do something unpleasant? You don't have to then. It's okay for you to quit.

Bull. Complete and utter crap.

When the going gets tough for these kids, they'll drop everything because no one ever required them to persevere. It's pervasive-- I watch it on their faces. Rather than think through a problem, they wait for someone to give them the answer. Rather than requiring them to work, their parents make it easy by making excuses for them and not requiring them to be responsible for their choices. And when they grow up, they'll expect someone to make it easy for them, and life will punch them in the face. It's not just about quitting music lessons-- these are kids that will quit all kinds of things for the rest of their lives because it's "too hard" or they were "too busy" or their mom said they didn't have to. It drives me crazy.

It's not that I mourn the loss of this one particular kid-- I don't. It's a relief not to be pissed off for one more half-hour lesson every week, and I have a waiting list of kids wanting to get going with lessons. I just hate having to kick somebody out that revolving door when they haven't even tried.

At least they had the good grace to read the guidelines and not request a refund (I don't give refunds, ever, because if they're going to waste my time it's at least going to buy me a new pair of shoes.)

Tonight was a completely bizarre trip into my past. Tonight I bought a musical icon who figures in one of my most vivid college memories a gin and ginger.

Many, many years ago, I was in college. I can remember my Then Boyfriend, much older and more worldly than my little nineteen-year-old-self whisking me off to a concert in parts unknown of another state to hear a rising star of the music world, a new and young and dynamic pianist very unlike the status quo, with a physique and stage presence to match. I can remember shaking his hand and stammering a nervous hello after the concert as he discussed the craft and art with the Then Boyfriend before turning to the next set of well-wishers. I can remember the stars sliding by through the open sun roof as we drove home through two states, marveling at the sounds we had just heard.

Tonight after rehearsal, I asked if he wanted to join us for drinks and he accepted. Then Boyfriend is by this year long gone and so he was stuck talking to me (more's the sorrow for him-- I am a dismal conversationalist when talking to someone famous I admire.) He got a martini, I got a beer, my friends had virgin daquiris and Diet Cokes. We talked about shoes. We talked about the new project. We talked about the crazy people across the world. We talked about fear of law enforcement, our careers, and hotel renovations. There were awkward silences and drink sip noises. Our friends talked to him of acquaintances shared and school days while I looked on.

My nineteen-year-old self could not comprehend sitting with him and conversing like equals. She would have lost her mind.

Who knows where we'll meet again. Under Mississippi stars, in local bars, concert halls, or restaurants. The world is a strange place, peeps.

You know, there are so many reasons why downtown D.C. is not so much the cat's ass, but rather, well, just ass, but tonight I got a real doozy after our gig.

So after we played, I schlepped all of my gear back to the car with the aid of The Boss, down the street and around the corner from the Verizon Center where way too many people were going see The Eagles tonight.

Just to clarify: like right around the corner. In plain view. Surrounded by parked cop cars and limos waiting for the schlubs to leave the concert.

When we got there, we were surprised to see the car behind mine swaying a bit on its wheels, then looked a little more closely at the front seat, where some random young dude was getting what was probably the most vigorous B.J. I have ever seen, ass pressed to the windshield (why that way, I have no idea, but still.) The Boss and I sort of looked at each other blankly and he said, a little wide-eyed, "Is he doing what I think he's doing?" "Umm, I guess so..." I replied, and popped my trunk to load in my gear.

Now people, my ass is nowhere near small, and we were both all tarted up for the show, so one would think maybe the couple in question would notice that there was an audience right in front of the windshield, calmly loading the trunk, but not a chance.

What was awesome? That the window was down just enough, or she was loud enough with it shut that I could hear her cries of "Oh shit! oh shit!", and she was obviously enjoying herself a lot. What was more awesome? When I shut the trunk and turned around to go about my business, they had really gotten going and started in on the deed itself-- his bare ass in the air behind the windshield working like a piston. (Now I ask you, who does it in the front seat?!?! Seriously.)

At that point I just looked at The Boss, shrugged, and we started making our way back down the street toward the bar to drink with Frankenberry and Heidelah and the rest of the crew, and when we turned the corner we just totally lost it laughing.

Thank God for beer.

In other news, if you want to see Gorgeous George's big rockin' feature debut tomorrow (or rather today), come one come all-- details are here. To quote my favorite student, it's gonna be stupid cool.

D on why he likes his job:

"Woodwinds are so finicky-- you have to play test them and pick around to see if they're fixed. Brass work is great, I mean it's like being a plumber: you don't have to sh*t in the toilet to see if it works, right?"

I am too old for this shit, seriously.

Why doesn't life come with a reset button? There are times when I hate my job, unequivocally, completely, and with abandon. Today was definitely one of those days.

Let me tell you a little story: after closing a very successful show last week, for which there was a lot of drama as usual, we moved on to the next one. Because we never know where the next paycheck is coming from, we agreed to pitch in on this one, even though we've spent our entire summer slogging through with no time off in pursuit of the meager paycheck working there affords. Granted, I know, it's not as meager as some things, but when you break down the rate per hour it's nowhere near union scale, or even fair wages. It is, however, a guaranteed check and a generally fun job sometimes, which can be few and far between as music gigs go.

Well, I can unequivocally, completely, and with abandon tell you at this very moment that it's not worth it. Tonight I was subjected to more shame, fear, and anger than anyone should ever have to deal with in a two-and-a-half-hour show, and I don't ever want to have to do that again. Not for any amount of money, and not for not-enough-money. All I could think about was when our friend bailed out last year in the same scenario, and how I couldn't blame him at all now that I was there now. And how I wanted to slap the conductor for making all of the same mistakes she railed on my friend about the year before that. And how trapped and shoddy and second-rate and prostituted I felt because I had to calculate in my head whether or not we could make rent if I walked out right then.

And then I felt like I couldn't breathe and I realized that two fucking hours had undone four days of sun and sand and song and laughter and relaxation with the Frankenberrys, and that there was not going to be any hope of me sleeping normally tonight. People dream about doing what I do for a living, but all I dream about it bringing someone coffee a la Mad Men and not worrying about paying the phone bill.

Reset, please.

So D and DanP and I just got done playing a gig with a great group a couple of hours west of home, and seriously, it was probably one of the best musical experiences I've had in a long friggin' time.

D and I have been playing at the theater where we work for a long time. It's not a terrible gig, by a long shot: by and large the people are pretty decent and it's fun to play the shows for sure, and I'm grateful to my bosses there for not firing my ass when I was still cutting my teeth on flute and sax. That being said, it's kind of become an untenable situation for us-- it pays too little to have to drive so far, and the interpersonal bullshit factor has gotten to be a whole lot to deal with lately. More to the point, we've come to the decision that the way we feel when we leave that building isn't worth any amount of money anymore, for more reasons than I've talked about here. Gigs like the one we played tonight are a good wake up call and a reminder to stick to our guns: we left tonight feeling like that was the kind of experience we aspired to have as musicians when we started out on this path.

We got called a couple of months ago to fill in for the horn section with this band on a gig a few hours away from home, and we negotiated a deal and planned it out-- a full day of driving and playing. We showed up this afternoon to read down the books with the rhythm section, and frankly my head was completely turned around from beating myself up about my theater gig for two weeks. I was nervous as shit that I was going to embarrass myself and DanP and going to have to sell my horns and go into insurance sales or ditch digging or something.

Well, we started the rehearsal and from the outset totally exceeded the director's expectations, no exaggeration. I'm not gonna lie, I love it when my playing blows somebody's mind enough that their jaw drops. We read down the book with them, including totally owning a couple of section licks that the director had no clue we had in the pocket. I believe the quote at the end of the night included the word fantastic, and the best thank you that can ever come from a musical director: "You made my job easy."

For that, I'd like to formally give all those assholes that make me hate my job the finger. You guys suck, and I'm worth more than you think. And no matter how much you'd like me to think I suck, it's you who gets the raspberry once I break out of that little box.

And I do know, in fact, that this feeling is better than ice cream because that was my reward afterwards-- a heaping bowl of the fresh Mom and Pop store frozen mint chocolate chip custard they left for us in the green room. Damn. It's a good feeling.

And now I'm gonna go home, take a Lactaid and P.T.F.O. (definition one, and thanks to DanP for reminding me of that phrase) until tomorrow, when I get to go back to hell for two shows. And they can officially eat my musical dust. Bitches.

Sometimes the jokes are just too true:



Via David Valdez.

Went to have a little looky-loo at my new flute today and work on some financing details and a possible trade, and when I took the poor lovely out of the case... hey, who replaced my shiny baby with this skunked-out thing that looks like a piece of old PVC pipe? New finish-- totally oxidized inside the case. Looked like it was a hundred years old.

*sigh*

I really. REALLY. Hate the month of January. Nothing good ever happens in January. Can we skip it entirely?

You will notice, perhaps to your surprise, that this entry does not contain YouTube clips, LOLCats, or political rants.

Back in November I gave myself a time-out, because my mind was too full, my heart too heavy, and my soul too drained to do more than cope. Last year was perhaps one of the hardest I've survived in the span of my memory. I forgot how to laugh, how to enjoy, and eventually even how to cry, how to simply be in the stillness of a passing moment without the nagging insistence of doing. I shouldered too much weight for my own good, and found out later than I'd like to admit to that the situation was pretty dire and that I was as lost as I'd ever been in my life, so with a few polite nudges from the people that matter (you know who you are) I took a little vacation to figure out what ground I had landed on and in which direction to put one foot after the other to get back to myself, to what was right, what was joyful, what was true.

It wasn't just here that I made manifest that choice-- I literally made it the goal of my existence to un-learn and re-learn that eighteen months of lessons, and it was hard going. I left a job of over seven years, reprioritized and rearranged my participation in one of the great passions of my life, and rediscovered the concept of play, of free time, and of letting go. I'm proud to say that I have rediscovered what it means to have "free time" (what a strange concept for me), finished projects that have plagued me for years, and begun work on dreams I never thought I would try to tackle. I've kept promises I've made to myself and shelved for too long: I have slept peacefully, let other people handle teacup tempests, and written more words than I ever thought my mind could contain and wrangle. (Lest you should worry that you're missing them, they're not hiding somewhere in some other blog: I remain faithful to this place and to Twitter, and those 437,465 and counting words will come to light when they are finished and the time is right. I can only hope you will understand and not begrudge me that time to hibernate, and will still be interested enough when I make my regular return here to think, speak, and rant. If you can't stand the waiting and 140 characters or less will sate your curiosity, there's my Twitter feed.)

Most importantly, all of that time, patience and intelligent work has led to this: tonight I have a performance, which like the many that have come before it, is one more notch on a knife handle or bed post, except for one difference-- as I make ready, don the outfit, apply the makeup, heft the instrument cases and head out the door, I remember how to laugh.

Also, finally at long last (with Spencer's help-thank you), I'm closing in on a Poppet gaming table that's been partly finished for ages. I mostly work on these works between Poppet Planet duties and commissions and other projects with actual deadlines. It's that "chipping wisdom " I've mentioned before. If I don't insist on at least a little bit of time for new work each week, it will never get done. I've accepted that, at least for the time being, I'll rarely have long days in the studio working on whatever I choose. Honestly, that kind of luxury seems to be for amateurs. Not that there's anything at all wrong with being an amateur artist. Being a professional artist is a matter of choice. I made it, and that is that.

Which brings me to the point I actually wanted to make. I've talked about this before, but it's worth mentioning again. The sometimes subtle difference between "have to" and "want to." It's a perception thing and I won't go into a long essay about it (been there, done that) but just a reminder that when we wake up mornings and feel burdened by the day ahead, sometimes it's a good idea to remember that we made these choices. That we are doing these things because we want to, we choose to and that very likely, these 'have to's' benefit us or those we care about-- people or projects or causes. Anyway, just a quick note---let's remember to replace "I have to" with "I want to" or "I choose to."

It's a thing bigger inside than out. yes?

--Lisa Snellings, Artist and Poppet Wrangler

It has been a damnably long time since I posted something real on this site. Of course, like so many other bloggers out there, I'm torn as to what this means for the future of this blog in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, but you will not find here some long and sappy passage lamenting the demise of my one and only place to express my innermost drivel and ramblings: we all know that I'll always continue to do that in one form or another, and I don't need a dedicated webspace to do it. Christ, I'm a musician: I can always just go play some opera and weep into my bourbon.

No, instead I bring you news. News of the greatest import to my little toy tugboat of a world-- in a week's time I will once again be winging my way to the other side of the planet on yet another orchestra tour, back to China and cheese and insanity. And as always, I will be bringing you lovely readers (all two of you who still give a rat's ass) along for the ride. There will be thrills, chills, and plenty of lurid tour stories, and maybe, just maybe, if I ask very very nicely, there might be a guest blog, or even just a blurb, from the famous Frankenberry, who will be winging along with me on this particular jaunt.

But first I have a question for you: if you were going on a whirlwind tour of the Orient (yes, I know, it's not P.C., but it sounds quite nice), how would you pack? I took an enormous suitcase last time, but I'm a little leery of all that drama right now. The pertinent facts are these: we'll be gone for 13 days, be flying in and out of six cities, and I'll need clothes for sightseeing, performing, and sleeping. My clarinets will take up space as one carry-on and all of my insulin paraphernalia has to come on board with me at all times, but the other can be small or large, and I can check up to 44 pounds of luggage. So what say you? Is it possible to consolidate and still travel in style, or should I go all out? If you have any suggestions, leave a comment with tips, tricks, and ideas: I need all the help I can get.

Well folks, the verdict is in: my bags are packed and I'm off tomorrow morning for yet another crazy trip with my touring gig.

As for how I made out with my packing, y'all will probably be surprised to know that I'm toting only one carry-on plus the clarinets and my bitty backpack purse onto the plane. For how that's going to work out, stay tuned: I'll have a verdict for you in about fourteen days. It's actually pretty amazing what you can cram into a standard carry-on bag: in my case, clothes for seven days, wash supplies, a pair of shoes, performance clothes, meds and supplies, chargers, makeup, toiletries, you name it-- I got it, and the requisite weight only comes out to a measly 25 pounds, which is less than I myself gained between the last trip there and this one. It sort of begs the question of what in the hell I took on the last trip in that E-NOR-MOUS suitcase: I was smaller, and I still did laundry every seven days or so, so what in the hell did I think I needed all that crap for?? I can remember having space in the suitcase when I came back, but I can also remember just about driving myself nuts with all of those plane flights and two wheeled bags to schlepp. This time I'm take it easy and save my exertion for those steps at the Wall.

At any rate, the itinerary includes five or six cities in fourteen days from Orlando to Beijing to Shanghai and others, and everything from basketball games to playing concerts to hiking. Planes, trains, and automobiles, and food of every shape, color and size. Knitting socks and listening to audiobooks, and getting up to shenanigans with people I hardly ever get to see except on a tour bus. More than covered by what I packed to bring with me.

And now, I'm tired and ready to hit the hay for tomorrow's beginning so I can write more coherently than I have so far (as Blue Line Mike rightly just commented on my Facebook, I need to go to bed): when next you hear from me I'll be in the land of orange juice, Mickey Mouse, and NBA playoffs: Orlando.

Ahhh, the arrival day of an ensemble tour.

I think it's safe to say that I didn't get nearly the sleep I should have last night-- I went to bed at around 3 am and popped up out of bed at 7:15 or so, ready to go and with only the thought of finishing my to-do list and getting the hell on that plane.

While we're on the subject of planes, let me make one thing clear: Southwest Airlines rocks my socks. Not only do they have the most egalitarian seating policy around, their check-in procedure is friggin' brilliant and they really know how to take care of their passengers, including leather club chairs in the waiting area and power stations for those of us who can't stand to be without our electronics for any length of time right next to those same buttery leathery lovelies. I could do without the singing at the end of the flight, but why not-- they did a damn good job otherwise.

Also, the TSA was humming along today with insane efficiency-- I was in and through security in a record three and a half minutes today, which made my life amazingly brighter and lovelier.The flight was good, had lunch with the stage manager, who picked me up at the airport, and then the first major tour walkabout around downtown Orlando. Found a Planet Smoothie for a pick-me-up after almost three miles of walking up and down city blocks, and then rode around on the free Lymmo shuttle to get the lay of the land and headed back for a good nap and some knitting time.

By the time Frankenberry showed up, I was damn good and ready for a burger and a beer ($5 Hump Day Special at Watiki in DT Orlando) so we headed out and ended up meeting three of our favorite people at the bar: Mel, our cellist friend, and the percussionist. Since Frankenberry our cellist friend wasn't here for the reading of The Rules, we decided to revisit them via my Crackberry and I think we sufficiently scared the passersby with our insane laughter. In case you haven't read them, you should refresh so you'll be up on the latest news and notes.

Tomorrow: the first rehearsal. This should be interesting.

Aaaah, the first day of rehearsal.

This is when the rubber kinda meets the road: you get to see everybody sweat through their first encounter with the group dynamic and watch the newbies try to figure out all of the weird nuances that they've only heard about through myth and legend. You also get to hear the same old hacks do the same old things in the same places, different songs.

For my part, this program is pretty much a cake walk: I just have to play with a good tone and stay relatively in tune (I say relatively, because apparently there are many consensuses on where the pitch should be, and none of them good) and most importantly keep from laughing out loud when Frankenberry leans over and makes jokes during the really cheesy bits. I think I only have one piece where I have to hustle a little, and it's one of the biggest cliches of all time, so it's more a question of not laughing while I'm trying to do it in F# Major.

In all seriousness, the music I'm playing with this group is really one of my favorite things I get to do being a professional musician: there's just such a wonderful feeling when you play music with no agenda except that it's beautiful, beautifully written and orchestrated, and only has the purpose of making people happy. Not to mention that I feel extremely privileged to play this man's music, as all of the performance and distribution rights to his arrangements are still owned by his family and NO ONE gets to use them except us under very special circumstances (AND we're playing off of copies and originals from parts handwritten by him and his arrangers. How COOL is THAT?)

That being said, it was exhausting, and I'm on my way out the door for beer and good food, after a power nap.

Rehearsal done? Check. Music learned? Well, sort of check. Gettin' on a plane in the morning? Double check.

I know it's super boring, but the only thing to report about today is that we rehearsed some more and are getting on a plane in the morning for the three-leg journey to Guangzhou via Shanghai via San Francisco. All I can say is that I really, REALLY hope I don't have to sit next to someone unpleasant, because I'll be really pissed off. The cliques have already sort of formed and so we're going to try and get placed all together somewhere on the China flight so we can chill out in comfort and safety without fear of being mauled or annoyed by one of the many skeeves or loonies with which we find ourselves surrounded.

Today and yesterday were a great education in the difference in international musical terms: our conductor is British and so refers to things like "crotchets" and "minims" and "quavers" instead of quarter, half or eighth notes. It has occurred to me before that it has to be really difficult in and profession to discuss anything of great detail without running into issues of terminology, and that;s exactly the problem we had today: he'd ask us to change a crotchet to a quaver and you could pretty much hear the caveman noises emanating from our brains. It was kind of hilarious, so in order to provide for better communication across the nautical distance, I list for you now some common American terms and their British Equivalents:

• Whole note = Semi-breve
• Half note = Minim
• Quarter note = Crotchet
• Eighth note = Quaver
• Sixteenth note = Semiquaver
• Thirty-second note = Demisemiquaver
• Sixty-fourth note = Hemidemisemiquaver or "quick note"
• Hundred twenty-eighth note = Quasihemidemisemiquaver or Semihemidemisemiquaver
• Fermata = Pause

What is there to say about 34 hours of travel time? Not much except holy CRAP I'm so ready to never see a plane again.

A five-hour flight from Orlando to San Francisco, crammed between a squicky colleague and an old lady going to visit her kid and grandkid, then a twelve-hour flight to Shanghai and another three-hour jaunt to Guangzhou. Holy crap, I'm about as tired as it gets.

I got really lucky for the long flight and scored a seat in the same row as Frankenberry-- that was actually a lot of fun, apart from being stuck in an over-sized meat-rocket for twelve hours. That was thanks to our intrepid percussionist, The Juggler, who figured out we could check in ahead of everyone else via the airport kiosk, so we decided on the best we could get-- a window and middle seat by the galley, which ended up being awesome because the guy on the outside moved up to another empty seat before we took off and we had the row all to ourselves.The Juggler is my hero, and I'm totally buying him beer in the near future, because his quick thinking allowed me to sit and laugh with Frankenberry all the way up and over the Pacific and Alaska and down into China-- a gift that's truly immeasurable by any standard.

I have to admit, one of the things I'm most excited about on this tour is getting to spend some quality time with all of my friends, but especially him-- we're usually so busy in regular life that hanging out usually consists of going to get beers or sitting in rehearsal or at a concert-- not exactly quality talking time necessarily. (Now if I could just figure out how to fit Boo Berry into my suitcase or something for a similar one-on-one stint I'd be perfectly happy. I'll have to ponder that one...) At any rate, that's why I do these tours-- it removes me from the ebb and flow of real life and lets me spend time with some of my most favorite friends (and some of my most unfavorite people as well, but there's the price for the benefit) in a situation so removed from everyday life that it always kind of feels like a dream when it's over. As far as the pay goes, it's a pittance compared to the fact that my bottom line is covered so I can go and have some quality time with these guys.

The people on the tour have shifted again as usual-- a new wind section, same brass players, some new violins and cellos and lots of folks who are new to the China circuit. Groovemaster D is back on cello, as is The Mullet. Rock Star Roomie is rockin' the assistant concertmaster chair and the Troll is back in the first violins, and The Source is back in the seconds. Of course, Bossman is heading up the brass section, Muppet's in the horn chair, and the PTB is back on the low end. Same tour, different line-up, same problems, same bitching, same daily effort to be zen about it all and try to enjoy the experience for what it's worth, including getting to play that music-- all of this while endeavoring to have some quality time with the people you've come to love and escape from the ones you hate, inasmuch as it's possible on a plane or bus.

At any rate, mischief managed, we made it through the flight after a lunch at Gordon Biersch (oh, the tasty, tasty beer) and moved on through customs to our Guangzhou flight, which was delayed, and delayed again, and which had to taxi out to the farthest spot on the tarmac on landing. The ride back in to the terminal on the shuttle took us about 10 km and probably longer than it took us to get to the hotel, and we exited into a really surreal darkened and mostly empty and closed terminal in Guangzhou. Our promoter was waiting for us and soon we were on the bus one the way to the hotel, past restaurants and bars and places still open and hopping at 2 am.

The digs for tonight are a really odd nouveau-Scandinavian business hotel, where I now sit in the cool and bright room (YAY for air conditioning) Now I'm for sleep, because the first concert's tomorrow and there's stuff to see tomorrow morning after breakfast.

Well, our first concert didn't go exactly as planned, at least not for me. And on my birthday, too.

When I got up this morning and headed down to breakfast, I expected just to have a bite to eat and then a walk to check out the area around where we're staying, but then I met up with Frankenberry downstairs on his way to the Baiyun Mountain park to walk around, and so I joined up with them and headed out for an even better walk.

Now don't get me wrong, Baiyun Mountain was awesome, but my Indian name should seriously be Pansy because I was ready to pass out after about ten minutes. All joking aside, at least Frankenberry and Juggler and the lead trombonist were willing to wait around for my sorry ass to climb up behind them as I snapped pictures of plants and birds and views and huffed and puffed my way up stair after stair.

When we got back, it was off to get money changed and get ready for the concert, which ended up being at a totally different hall than the one where I thought we'd be playing-- this one was a beautiful new and modern concert hall downtown rather than the historic hall where we performed last time, and I was a little disappointed that Frankenberry didn't get to see the last one: he would have flipped over the detailing and the architecture and the gardens surrounding it. We had a sound check, a little pre-dinner snack, and then got ready to play, and that's where things went downhill in a flash.

Everything was running, if not smoothly, then acceptably until about 75% through the first half of the program, when I started to feel really, really strange: my heart was pounding, my limbs felt heavy, and I felt incredibly hot and dizzy, all right before and during one of the pieces where I'm fairly essential, so I tried to keep going the best that I could and managed to finish out the piece, even though FB tells me I was listing to one side at some point and he was worried I was going to fall over. I did what any good diabetic is supposed to do and checked my sugar (though I had to do it THREE TIMES because I kept screwing up the process because I was so out of it), which was sky-high, so I corrected and tried to breathe deep and power through the last piece on the half.

Over intermission I felt better, so I trotted back on stage to make it through the rest of the program, water bottle in hand, and sat down to give it a shot. My body had other ideas though, and once I started playing, my heart rate started up, I saw black spots, and I was having trouble breathing: I knew I had to get off the stage or risk becoming a news item for passing out and falling off my chair, so I told FB I was going off and headed for the door after the piece was over.

From that point it was all downhill: I was so dizzy and nauseous I couldn't stand up without help, and though I'm not sure how bad it was, I know I had a fever high enough to give me chills for a good hour or so. Luckily for me, the promoter's assistant was backstage and was an absolute dream: she made sure I had water, help walking to and fro, and a cold cloth for my head-- she even massaged my scalp and my hands to try and help me out, but whatever it was was having none of it so I just tried to lie there and not pass out or hurl on my shoes.

At this point I really have to state my thanks for having Frankenberry there: he zoomed out after the second encore to make sure I was getting some help and made sure I had a quiet place to lie down, kept people away from me (which is no small thing in a nosey group like this one) and even arranged for an alternate way for me to get back to the hotel in the car of the hotel manager and his wife, all while basically holding me up every time I had to walk anywhere. He was so good that the Boss Man just let him handle everything and stayed back out of it. He's an amazing friend, and I cannot possibly express how thankful I am that he was there to help me-- it would have been pretty terrifying and horrible to go through that without a good friend there to look out for me. He got me out of the theater and into the car, made sure I was all right on the ride back by cramming himself into the backseat of a tiny car next to me and alternately telling me to keep my eyes open (to help with the nausea) and holding a cold towel to my head, and then made sure I got to my room all right and had everything I needed (thank goodness the convenience store next door had Gatorade) to get through until my roommate came back.

Needless to say, it wasn't the best birthday I've ever had, and even though whatever it was has mostly passed, it's not something I'll ever put out of my mind while touring ever again: the feeling of having to leave the stage in the middle of a performance is terrifying and awful and not something I hope to repeat. We're now in Beijing and on for another concert tonight, which I hope goes far, far better than this one did for me.

Sometimes the aftermath of an event is as strange and devastating to get through as the event itself, and it's surprising to me that I never remember how hard it can be to deal with.

I must have had a fever of some degree last night, because this morning I felt weak as a kitten dragging my bags downstairs to the bus to fly to Beijing. I knew when I got up that I still wasn't one hundred percent better, and like any good Southern belle, I took that as a sign that it was time for the war paint.

See, as y'all know, I grew up in the South and as any Southerner knows, women down there live by the ideal that no one should ever see you not at your best in terms of appearance, much less see you sweat, even if you're just going to the 7-11, so I got up this morning and put on my nicest outfit-- the one I bring along for business dinners-- and did my hair and makeup and breathed deep while making my way downstairs for our next leg of travel. It's amazing how much a little facade can help you bolster yourself for a less-than-ideal situation.

I skipped on breakfast as such per the advice of my doc, who I called via Skype for a little consult (her response: "Oh fuck, you're calling me from China. This can't be good." Love her, srsly) and stuck with white toast and the Gatorade which Frankenberry was kind enough to score for me the night before when I got back to the hotel. And then the plane flight: let me tell you, never underestimate the power of pressure points: it was the only way I white-knuckled it through the flight to Beijing and I've never been so glad to be off a plane (P6 and LI4). I don't think I've ever been so glad to see a familiar hotel-- the Howard Johnson Plaza Royale-- I dropped off my stuff, popped downstairs for lunch, and then scored an epic power nap and got ready for the concert.

Though I felt all right when I started the performance, as I started to play through to the point where I got sick the night before I began to freak out: Would it happen again? Could I do this? Was my BG normal? Did I have my water bottle? It never occurred to me to prepare myself for this being rough, but it really blew me away how like PTSD it felt-- I could feel all of the things that had happened the night before again, though without the bite of the actual sickness. All I could do was breathe deeply and work my water bottle like a job, but I managed to make it through all right with my game face on, war paint and all. Back onto the bus, where I dozed until we got back to the hotel and dinner, which I was too tired to eat, and now I'm for sleep because tomorrow is the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven!!

[Guess what?!?!?!? I successfully badgered Frankenberry into doing his own post in this tour series, so here you go: introducing today's guest blogger!!!!]

So SB wanted me to to a guest blog entry, something that I really didn't want to do, originally, but she was so insistent and since she's kind of integral to some of the things I do, I figured I'd better keep her happy. A Managing Director scorned is...well, I don't want to think about the possibilities. So I'm blogging. Though I'm not a blogger. I'm not a tweeter, I don't even have a website. This is therefore very alien for me, and I apologize for any un-bloggish behavior. Now to begin:

We're in China. I really thought this would be the most different place on the planet from the U.S., but really it's coming across like a lot like big cities in Europe. It's quite dirty, kinda rude, and crowded. I don't understand them any better than I would Germans or Norwegians, though here there's little hope of finding someone who knows even a few words of English. These cities are dirtier and more crowded than Europe, but the comparisons in my mind are clear.

I must give props (yes, I said props, deal with it) to SB for being such a patient hostess. She has been my guide, advisor, and supporter, and has been kind enough to pretend that I'm not bugging her after a week of constant waking contact. Without her, I think this trip would have been a lot worse. Don't get me wrong, it's great to be here and see a few sights, but this tour is constant flying or busing, interspersed with concerts and a few hours of time in a hotel for sleep or a break. And for those who know me, you know I don't play well with others, so I may have been even more antisocial than I am right now, and sitting alone in my room wishing ill on everyone.

That being said, since this is a Sassy blog, I should say a few words about our orchestral compatriots, right? Right. You'll see the rules of the tour later, which will underscore their interesting behavior, but in reality this is just a case of being in a confined environment with 40 people for a very extended period. Personality quirks come to the fore, and many musicians just don't have the social filters that exist in regular life. Instead, we have folks who feel entitled to say what they feel, and expect other people to jump and react to please them. Goodness, I don't deal well with that. I would say something about suffering fools, but I bet someone will turn that around on me, so I'll avoid it. But gosh, I don't want to hear for the seventeenth time that you don't like your seat on the bus or your luggage got banged around or the woodwinds can't tune, because for one, no one likes their seat, for the second, that's life, and for the third, yes we can, evidenced by our blending on long octave passages between four players. So they can suck it. Yes, I can be as catty as the next musician, I just try not to show it very often. It's hypocritical, and I try to keep that to a minimum. I'm sure Boo Berry will have a response to that...

So I didn't have a good opening, and I don't have a good closing. I'm showing myself to be un-blogworthy.

And suddenly I have my close: Sassy is a Nosey Parker-- she just looked over once again to see what I was doing as we sit in this crappy hotel room in Wuhan drinking beer and catching up on our writings. Ha! I'm talking about her in the third person in her own blog! Unless she edits me. Hmm.

[SB: I promise, the only edits I made to this were a little punctuation. This one's all Frankenberry.]

There are always rules when you travel on tour, spoken or unspoken, and the most important one to remember are the ones learned from your colleagues' behavior on the road. After all, context clues make the story, so here are some things we needed to remember this time:

1. You must have long hair to play in the cello section. This is non-negotiable.
2. When talking to yourself in rehearsal, you must speak in a foreign language, preferably one that nobody understands, including yourself. Use of your outside voice is highly encouraged.
3. Don't ask, no one will explain why anyway.
4. Breakfast is better after 9:15. (See rule No. 3)
5. THRS: That's how rumors start. Just keep that in mind.
6. Talking about it always makes it better.
7. Keeping your eyes open usually helps, but not always. For example, when dizzy from food poisoning: yes. When in the men's dressing room: NO. Oh GOD NO.
8. Never practice anything you're going to perform in the concert while warming up or on rehearsal breaks. Play your favorite concerto or aria or quartet instead. Every night. Fortissimo. Or sing it, for even better effect.
9. FUCK ART.
10. When considering the quality of your performance, dinner, accommodations, or anything else that matters, remember "it starts from S." (said in a Russian accent.)
11. If you have the melody, by God, SLOW DOWN. Don't stay at the same tempo, that's not expressive enough.
12. No discussing of the rules on the bus in front of a manager.
13. Remember, there's only one James Bond, and his name is Sean Correry. (Yes, that's the proper Chinese phonetic spelling.)

I don't know what to say here yet-- everything from this trip is still too fresh on my mind. I hate traveling halfway across the world in a day, because though my body is back where I belong, my soul hasn't yet followed. I've made it to the other side of the the long succession of flights home, followed by a marvelous dinner with D and the Frankenberrys, and things may be quiet around here for the next few days while I order my heart and my mind and spend some time mending my soul. For now I sit, memories in mind, and have nothing really to say here, except this:

To all of you who made this trip such a blessing in spite of everything, know that I love you and hold you dear in my heart, second to none. The memories I have with you will be like treasured jewels I take out from time to time to remind me of how lucky I am, always, to know you and to love you and to be blessed enough to spend such intense time with you even for so short a period, even when it inevitably has to come to an end all too soon. Though you may worry, I assure you that I won't forget them, and that you are in my heart always.

So here's the thing:

I've missed you guys.

I've had some pretty heavy things going on in my life this year, things which basically have changed the face of my entire existence in one way or another. And I haven't really felt comfortable talking about that here, in public, for anyone and everyone to read. More importantly, there are very good reasons why I can't and shouldn't.

And frankly, it's killing me.

Because if you're still reading this, then I've probably known you, or had you as a reader, for long enough that you're probably wondering what the hell happened to me.

Because if you're still reading this, you're probably one of the people whose opinions and love I value enough that I'm going to need your help in the next year.

Because frankly, I need an outlet more in-depth than Twitter and less personal than Facebook.

So here's the other thing:

On March 1st, this blog is getting a makeover. I'll be moving it to a new server, shaking up the layout a little, and converting it to a new CMS, though the site address won't change. The ranting and raving and silliness will stay the same, only there will be some things that I don't want to share with everybody, some things that I may need to share and say, but only within certain circles. I'm tired of keeping it all pent up and I've done that for long enough.

If you're still reading this blog, and you're been a loyal reader or friend or even a long-time lurker, email me at (sassy{at}sassyblonde{dot}net) with the title of this post in the subject line or comment on this post and request an access key. I'd love to have you in the circle.

Til then, I'll be cleaning house and doing some renovation, and I'll see you on March 1st.

UPDATE: So, snow and circumstances being what they've been around here, I'm going to have to ask you guys to wait around a little longer, which actually ends up being appropriate for a lot of reasons. I've gotten all your emails and comments, and if you can hang tight for a few more weeks, I'll have the next phase ready on April 1st.