Monthly Archives: February 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qHX493bB3U

Wild. Thing. The song has been a guilty pleasure for decades. Not much to it. Three chords. Simple, uncomplicated lyrics.  .  . “you make my heart sing….you make EVERYTHING….groovy…but I wanna know for sure….” When I was younger I didn’t think much about the lyrics of the song. There are few things that are certain. Important things.

I’ve always been more of a glass half full girl, naturally enthusiastic and optimistic.  Enthusiasm can be a gift and a curse.  Passion burning TOO brightly  for too long causes burnout.  If not burnout, the spirit certainly has a way of getting scorched and seared. Misunderstandings. Miscommunication. Hurt feelings.  What my grandfather meant when he said you can’t (or maybe it’s shouldn’t) have your cake and eat it too.

After weeks of auditions and rehearsals we finished a successful run of “Once Upon a Mattress” this weekend.  I’ve been  grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with such talented young instrumentalist, singers and actors.  For colleagues and friends who affirm and support this work to promote the arts. Building and nurturing creativity.

Hearts. Sing. Groovy.

Taking the time to enjoy the “moments” I’ve become less concerned about what was and what might be.  It’s one of the great gifts of creating music. . . those beautiful ‘moments’.  Collaboration with others becomes a model for all relationships. The music of ‘life’ is quite lovely!  

The wisdom of this poem brought the last few years into perspective.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich

Stumble. Fall. Pick up. Move along.  Life and apple trees are exceedingly rare. ...wouldn’t you agree? Taste. Let them sing. Groovy! 

Friday was Valentine’s Day, a day that will forever belong to my maternal grandfather.  His patience, unconditional love and generous spirit have guided me.  All who knew him admired him. EVERYONE in Monroe  knew ‘Papa Nick’.

He would sit for hours listening to me ‘perform’. “One more time, baby doll.” Little did I know I was practicing.  Months before I could drive he bought my first car, a 1963 white Ford Fairlane.  He wanted me to be prepared. He ‘escorted’ me to school for the first four months I had my permit, not because he didn’t think I could drive, but because he wanted to make sure I was safe.  In retrospect, there is comfort in that. He never missed a single performance I was in.  He was one of the first people to hold both of my babies.

A year or so before he died we talked on Valentine’s Day. I asked his plans. ‘Baby Doll, I’m going to visit the old people.’  He was 90, still driving. He would take flowers to each of the nursing homes on the Southside of Monroe. Valentine’s Day was a day to be celebrated. He understood agape without ever knowing the word: unselfish love, giving without ever asking in return. It was sensible and quite logical to him that EVERYONE got a card, flowers, candy, some small token on Valentine’s Day. There was nothing extravagant about his gesture, although he was definitely larger than life. He just had that much love to share…and shared it so generously. Big love! GREAT love!

I was surprised to find that Friday was also “Singles Awareness Day”.  Odd, because I never thought of Valentine’s Day being something just for eros: romantic love.  Thanks to Papa (and my parents, too),  my awareness of love is so much bigger and beyond a label…..

Balancing full-time teaching with a private voice studio and theatre can be challenging. An exercise in prioritizing. People, for instance, are more important than things like ‘housework’. I remember my mother saying: “Leave it, Mary Beth. It’ll keep. ‘They’ won’t.” My mother was a very wise woman, ahead of her time.

Driving to rehearsal last week I heard an interesting report on NPR about how the linguistics of ‘homemaker’ to ‘stay-at-home mom’ had changed over time. Along with the change in language came a change in the culture of family dynamics.  The report further stated that  in a very clear downward spiral from our parents and grandparents generations, most of us struggle with keeping our homes clean.

Color me guilty!

Last week’s ‘water cooler talk’: Renee’ Fleming’s performance of the National Anthem (and Vera Wang’d) at the Super Bowl, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s untimely death splashed with the usual meaningless political and sports chatter: local and otherwise. On Tuesday Facebook’s 10th Anniversary  sixty-two second DIY bio-pics went viral.

Friday night a stage manager friend  and I  went to dinner and a play; “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot”.  The play wasn’t a light evening but it was certainly cathartic and well wort the effort.  Timely. An examination of our own personal betrayals, our own lapses of belief and who we look to for forgiveness.  The original production had been directed by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2005.

Time marches on. No stopping it.

When it gets down to it, keeping our ‘homes clean’ like most everything else, it’s about choice. What we allow in:  Resentment. A sense of betrayal. Entitlement.  …..or….. Gratitude. Joy. Love. Grace.

Choose wisely….decorate with love and trust the mystery….no telling what you may find…

T