Music – BethSings

Behind the Wheel

Sometime in the last century I got my driver’s license, not because I wanted to but because that’s what teenagers do.

The Summer of 1975 I took a driver’s ed class from the head football coach with two close friends, Patsy and Diane . Every Sunday that Spring, my father would take me to the long dusty roads near the airport to practice, patiently working on my driving skills. By that summer my grandfather had a no frills, white 1963 Ford Fairlane parked in our drive-way. Nothing fancy, just a safe vehicle to get me back and forth to school and rehearsals. Everyone on Lee Avenue was ready for me to get the license…..except ME.

For most teenagers a driver’s license was a sign of freedom, a step closer to adulthood. Maybe because my mother didn’t drive. Maybe because I didn’t understand cars. Whatever the reason, as my November birthday approached I became more nervous and reluctant. My parents encouraged me to take my time with the decision. Finally after the first of the year my father took me for the driving test. I passed with flying colors.

Funny thing. Now I do enjoy driving….especially long distances. It IS freeing.

I’ve been on several long distance journeys this summer….Last week I listened to a 70’s playlist I created several years ago. On it was Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. The first time I heard that song was around the time I had been struggling with not wanting to get a driver’s license. At the time I didn’t understand the song, at least not in the way I do today.

Driving on this last adventure, listening to the music and lyrics for the first time in a while cleared the cobwebs for some letting go. Sometimes there’s sadness in saying goodbye but this time there wasn’t. This time there was certainty in being behind the wheel with the road ahead and some good memories tucked away for safe keeping.

It’s taken over 40 years to admit it but getting that license wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought it down

Oh, mirror in the sky clouds

What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above? Me and mother

Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder

Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older, too
Oh, I’m getting older, too

Landslide

Witness

How does a moment last forever?
How can a story never die?
It is love we must hold onto
Never easy, but we try
Sometimes our happiness is captured
Somehow, a time and place stand still
Love lives on inside our hearts and always will.

Last week I woke up vividly remembering a dream. It was the kind of dream that seems real and lingers. I was 8 or 9 years old sitting in a circle, singing with other children at the community center my mother once managed. I was leading a song. My mother was there in the distance. I couldn’t see her face but felt her presence, comforting and secure. All of us in that circle were connected through the music. What was happening seemed right and important.

The dream was a memory.

Journey Window – St. Aloysius Catholic Church, Baton Rouge, La.

That recollection has been with me for the last week. I thought of it again today as I witnessed a mother’s sad farewell to her son, a seventeen year old with a sparkling personality who I had the honor to teach. A bittersweet day in a myriad ways. Countless really.

Sometimes our happiness is captured with friends and family, frozen in time with stories that will live on. We’re blessed to have them and remember them. Moments that last as long as we do…..and beyond.

For now I’m content to continue dreaming….teaching…and learning until I find ‘my corner of the sky’…..

Corner of the Sky – Pippin

004-001

A Happy Resting Place

I don’t claim that I am psychic
But one look at you and I kick
Away every scruple
I learnt as a pupil
In school my dear

I’m not one to make predictions
But I’ve thrown off all restrictions,
And I don’t mind confessing
I think it’s a blessing
That you are here

Though I’m prepared to find I’m wrong
I’ve got a funny feeling we belong together

Home from rehearsal —pumped! Sleep eludes…..so I write….

For the last two months I’ve been working as music director with the Young Actors Program for the local community theater for the musical comedy, The Boyfriend. This is my fourth year to work with the company. It’s been a pleasure being a part of these young artists’ lives, seeing them grow in every way.

Brooke Bell as The Widow looks with disgust at Thomas Prochaska (Hortensio)-001

Mitchel Boyle (Lucentio) gazes at Kaitlin Perry (Bianca)

Since the weekend we have been in technical rehearsals, an exhilarating, exhausting week (some call hell) prior to the show’s opening night this Thursday. During tech all of the whistles and bells are added to the production: costumes, lights, sound, set, scenery, props, orchestra. These actors, musicians and designers have developed life-long skills – they’ve learned balance simply by the choices they make with hours spent in rehearsal and finishing homework. Many of them are honor students.

Tech Week can be a challenge for adults and professionals. It requires patience while technical problems are resolved or set changes are rehearsed so that what the audience sees is seamless.

On the drives home recently my thoughts have been on these young actors and on my own theater mentors: Chris Ringham, long-time director at Monroe’s Strauss Playhouse. Dr. Bill Rambin, Head of the Theater Department at Northeast Louisiana University (now University of Louisiana at Monroe) Both encouraged and shaped my love of theater—inspired me to be and do better, to make adventurous choices. I learned from both Chris and Bill that there are no rights or wrongs on the stage – only choice. The theater is, at it’s best, an understanding community where choices are welcome. On the stage we are a reflection of the world -both best and worst.

Chris Ringham formed my understanding of community theater. Anyone who knew Chris still hears his raspy voice barking directions from the back of the dark Strauss theater. Chris believed in the power of people but more importantly the power that art had within community. He was organized, funny, salty, innovative, a quick mind. He had vision, expected excellence. The art and the audience were foremost in his mind.

It dawned on me last week that it’s been forty years since Chris cast me in my first musical. I was a junior in high school. He guided me through auditions at his theater then beyond.

Chris Ringham

Fantasticks

One of those Chris–suggestions came when NLU announced Tony-award winner Ron Holgate would be joining a student production of The Fantasticks as El Gallo . I remember Chris sitting in the Strauss Playhouse box office, his asking to see me, if I planned on auditioning. He strongly suggested it so I did. It was during The Fantasticks I met Dr. Bill Rambin who directed the show, his wife Linda, choreographed; Andy Isca was music director. The Fantasticks will always be the one.

Bill Rambin was the perfect director…fun, smart, charming. He inspired…and still does. He probably knew how scared I was. He always said the right thing at the right time and still does. He taught me the importance of time management, to be professional. How to say thank you. He was never afraid so we couldn’t be. Bill Rambin is fantastic!

During break at rehearsal last week I was playing on one of those phone ‘throwback’ apps and found some pictures from productions over the last few years. Those photos caused my thoughts to drift to Chris and Bill. Their legacy. My legacy. The support we give to each other when we least suspect it. How grateful I am to have the support from these two artists and the communities they served. They shaped me and so did the communities.

I could be happy with you
If you could be happy with me
I’d be contented to live anywhere
What would I care
As long as you were there?
Skies may not always be blue
But one thing is clear as can be
I know that I could be happy with you, my darling
If you could be happy with me.

Singing this song from The Boyfriend everyday for the last eight weeks….interestingly enough I’ve rediscovered contentment not just from my children, family, friends but a simple contentment that’s from and in me. Instead of perpetually striving and living unsatisfied, I could be happy. Chris and Bill described, maybe not in so many words, that contentment in the building up of community….finding the gift in yourself….then sharing it with others….

It’s something to hang your hat on.. a happy resting place.

Leap

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by the rules
Of someone else’s game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!

Ana Gasteyer – “Defying Gravity”

Full disclosure. I’ve never been a big fan of the musical Wicked. I read Gregory Maguire’s best seller in the mid-90’s and was probably one of the few people who found it, well, in a word…tedious. He does get points for marketing “chops”. Capitalizing on The Wizard of Oz was a stroke of genius right up there with Disney but Dorothy’s journey down the yellow-brick road is sacred as far as I’m concerned. Who messes with Baum and Judy Garland?

Friday night my friend Beth and I saw Ana Gasteyer’s cabaret show—great friends and music. She and I reminisced about taking my daughter to Houston several years ago to see the show…and many other GNO’s over the span of our wicked friendship. A lovely, serendipitous evening!

Another disclosure. My New Year’s resolution seemed to drift into February. Good news: I haven’t had a Diet Coke since January 1, bumping the water intake significantly. However, at the end of January when the health screening came around I got news that my blood pressure was not just high but off the chart. Reality check into making better choices and living a healthier life.

Great, I thought, another sign of middle age, that is, if I plan on living to 112. Not bloody likely! Truth be told, in the last year I had let diet and exercise slip with the exception of weekly yoga practice and the occasional salad at lunch. Ash Wednesday was set as the 40 days to a Healthier Life start date, embracing Lent as a time of joy, a new spring. Eating at home – which shouldn’t really be a choice – I enjoy cooking. I’ve carved out more quiet time reading, photography and yes, exercise—yoga and getting back to walking/running again. The result at 20 days and the halfway point— I’m already down almost 10 pounds, several inches and my blood pressure is improving. More importantly I feel better. Ironically, I was too busy taking care of “things” to recognize I felt bad, mostly things out of my control. I’ve practiced not complaining and letting go of things out of my control; when in doubt I go to my yoga mat or put on some music.

I’m through accepting limits
’cause someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I’ll never know!
Too long I’ve been afraid of
Losing love I guess I’ve lost
Well, if that’s love
It comes at much too high a cost!

Richard Rohr wrote recently that “pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing: we must go down before we even know what up is. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to both destabilize and reveal our arrogance, our separateness, and our lack of compassion.” He defines suffering as whenever you are not in control. Through the sufferings, great or small, we learn to trust ourselves and others….or we don’t. The experiences can be transformative, almost without realizing it. They show us what to do with our pain, with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” .

So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky!
As someone told me lately:
Ev’ryone deserves the chance to fly!
And if I’m flying solo
At least I’m flying free
To those who’d ground me
Take a message back from me

The take-away in Wicked-The Musical is forgiveness…of self and others and as Richard Rohr says: always building something new, good, and forever original, while neither playing the victim nor making victims of others.

Flying Free…….who needs monkeys to do that? Like Dorothy, I love a good adventure.

Reflections

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

In the last few weeks I’ve given thought to why I started this blog. A few reasons, really. As a novice photographer, I wanted to thank and share my journey with my son. Christmas 2013 he had surprised me with a Nikon. Both he and my daughter are excellent photographers. A connection to them, to home, a way of keeping track of progress. Over these years, the blog has evolved….and so has my photography….

At my son’s request a week or so ago I returned to one of my favorite places in Baton Rouge to take some shots of the cresting Mississippi River. It was one of the first places I went three years ago. There’s no place lovelier at sunset.

First Photo on the Mississippi – December 2013

Three years ago, when the water was significantly lower I started this blog to say thank you: to my son for his generosity, to my daughter for books and advice and to family and friends near and far. Those two words are as sincere today as they were then.

I’m grateful for rediscovering photography and it’s quiet voice in the second half of life.

Only Karen Carpenter can say it better…..

Sometimes - The Carpenters

These Are That Day

And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back–if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?
C. S. Lewis

I’ve started this one more than once. Some in my head, in traffic. Some lying in bed—early morning, late at night. Walking to work. In the shower. Finally at the computer.

Like the proverbial light bulb, something hit me.

Expecting. Anticipating. Waiting Counting days. Whether we use candles, games or in the silence of our hearts.

Waiting for….a miracle.

Fifty-six years ago tonight my parents had been playing a waiting game. The eight years between my brother’s birth and my adoption. My uncle’s untimely death. Ordinary days. Extraordinary days. Wondering, waiting, hoping and praying. ….every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation….My family were such people.

A drive to Shreveport, a family is changed. I was changed. Everything is changed…

by love….

by the gift of patient waiting.

Over these December weeks I’ve focused on giving of self rather than something that can be wrapped and tied with a bow. My parents’ ninety mile journey that December was such a selfless act….

but others also show such acts…..parents, children, friends, strangers.

Last weekend, the A Capella caroling group I sing with had the opportunity to sing for the residents of one of our local retirement communities. It was a lovely morning singing carols and Hanukkah songs as well as celebrating the 97th birthday of one of the long-time arts supporters. As we were wrapping up someone tapped me on the shoulder, asking if one of us could sing a carol in his mother’s room. We all went.

Voices of all ages filling a room. A son gently holding and caressing a hand that had once cradled him…

Silent Night. Holy Night. Sleep in heavenly peace.

…..every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day……

Connection. Gift. Selfless……Love’s pure light.

My take-away is this: miracles aren’t the same as magic.

Miracles are found in ordinary things like oil or a baby, a song you’ve sung thousands of times, sharing time with family and friends. The gift, at least for me this year, is to remember how extraordinary ordinary is….then to wait for it…

in gratitude….. for each day…

Plenty Left

A family joke… When my typically loquacious grandfather hit his 54th birthday he became quiet and reflective. It was the age his father had died. Papa waited a year for something to happen. A heart attack. Bad news from the doctor. None came. At 55 he moved on. This all happened several years before I was born but I remembered the story. The waiting and the moving on. It must be something about the age 55.

The quiet drive back to Baton Rouge after helping my daughter move a few weeks ago cleared my head. I’ve always been of the opinion that music and the arts have value, what we do matters, what I do matters. It’s the life I would lead even if I weren’t paid for it. Thankfully, I have been able to make a living while supporting my family.

A full, fun life! This month alone…. Working on a production of The Taming of the Shrew. Working as a substitute liturgy coordinator while a colleague was recuperating from surgery. Working teaching, directing. Work.

On the drive back from Austin I reflected not just about the rigor of work but the opus – the body. The people and the beauty of creation. Loving and honest family and friends. Blessings all. So much to be grateful for! Not that there hasn’t been struggle. Those struggles help us appreciate the good times and know who the real people are. They help us find the stuff we’re made of….Yvonne Nash called it “character building”.

One year ago, driving from the theater, I was hit from behind by a car going at a high rate of speed. I had never been in a serious car accident before. It totaled my car. A few feet more, personal injury would have been much more serious than a concussion and back pain. The what if haunted me longer than I cared to admit….I avoided talking about the accident.

Then I remembered my grandfather’s story…..and that I was his granddaughter.

What’s the take away……

The first half of life is about building a strong container; the second half is about discovering the contents the container was meant to hold. Yet far too often, solidifying one’s personal container becomes a substitute for finding the contents themselves! Richard Rohr

My grandfather lived 94 years discovering both the container and contents. He, along with my parents and grandparents, taught me to build a fine container. There’s PLENTY left to fill.

Cheers!

Just Singing

Teaching, like all professions has it’s challenges.

While friends were planning last minute trips to the beach three weeks ago we began the journey into this new school year; my thirty-third. What joy, unwrapping the gift of music (and now theater) with young people. A year of new possibilities.

But teaching, like life has had it’s ups and downs.

Sunday night blues. Monday Morning mayhem. TGIFs. Days. Weeks. Months. Years of inquisitive faces. A blessed life.

A poem by Mary Oliver reminded me of those bittersweet early teaching days and the not-so-distant-crazy-hormonal-menopausal early 50’s. They had a lot in common.

With the support of trusted friends and colleagues “I took my old body and went into the morning….and SANG.”

Here’s to continuing to find that still place..not looking back or forward….just singing.

Do You Know?

America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans.

Everywhere else is Cleveland.

Tennessee Williams

Kindest regards to all “Clevelands”. New Orleans is a good hours drive from my door. I fondly call it an ‘adult playland.’. Food. Fun. Frolic. As the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans has been calling. In the heat of the summer some friends and I took the day to explore. Some places were old ‘haunts’, some were new adventures, some we left for future discovery.

Reflective……..

Walking into vintage shops and stopping at her tables under shady trees is like seeing an old friend. “Pieces of eternity.”

“Don’t you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour – but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands – and who knows what to do with it?” Tennessee Williams

New Orleans….resilient and a sense of humor….

Our final stop was at a fine New Orleans restaurant, an institution that surprisingly none of us had eaten before. Exceptional food and service. At one point someone asked what we were celebrating…This morning I know….New Orleans…..

Puzzle People

Driving home from my oldest’s friend’s son’s wedding last Sunday it occurred to me that life is like putting together a puzzle. At times we’re not quite sure what the picture is unless we look at the box.

Not too long ago someone said they had seen some of my photography, asked when I took lessons. On that drive home I recalled those “lessons” and others in the process of putting ‘the pieces together’.

Mr Galleon was my 7th and 8th Grade Science Teacher. Unconventional, he believed in “life lessons”. He built a dark room in the science lab so that those of us who were interested could learn photography. He took photos around town for everything from sports events to weddings. What a profound influence both he and my band director, Mr. Howard Jackson had in my life. Mr. Jackson rebuilt the old Paramount organ at the school. The band room was the place everyone would hang out. That was over forty years ago. Both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Galleon were educators who went beyond the classroom. They were servants, not people showing up to do a job.

Follow your bliss and doors will open for you that you never knew existed. Joseph Campbell

We are all worth more than the worst thing we have done in our lives. Sister Helen Prejean

In mid-June the final pieces of the puzzle for a composer’s forum came together, numerous artists and arts organizations sharing their time and talent to bring about an amazing weekend of art song and opera, some had never been performed in Louisiana. For over thirty years I’ve been an events organizer but this puzzle was different. Given the opportunity to discuss and collaborate with the creators of the works, our artistry was called to a deeper place. We were called to a place of patience, understanding, forgiveness.

Sometimes puzzle pieces fit. Other times the discovery takes sifting for the picture to become clear.

In the summer, my grandmother always had a puzzle going. The creativity of each individual piece fitting into another individual piece.

People and their lives are like that. There’s always another piece of the puzzle waiting. My theater friend Carole had figured that out. Eighty years old when she died a week ago Friday, she volunteered not only at the theater but also with St. Vincent de Paul. Lovingly nicknamed “Moose Lady”, she was a puzzle person.

Lately I’ve been less concerned with the big-picture….and enjoyed the pieces. Like Mr. Galleon, Mr. Jackson, my grandmother and Miss Carole, hope that makes me more of a puzzle person.