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Well, so. Alan did go to the Chamber dress. Bob even made him give some feedback, which, he said later to me, was fairly stressful, as he'd just been listening and thinking how nice a sound we have and then he had to listen critically. He came in and out a couple times, for which I don't blame him; I would have, if I'd had the option. And we went past 10, which was strenuous.
Halloween, which is my favorite and most sacred holiday, was an odd combination of circumstances, though I think eventually appropriate. I knocked off work early after German class, picked Alan up from his hotel, and took him to Café Brasil, which he protested as he'd wanted to check out hot coffee spots, but was impressed with nevertheless.
We adjourned to Hermann Park according to our plan. What more appropriate activity on Halloween than to do a table read of various scenes from that ultimate account of personal disguises, A Midsummer Night's Dream? But first, a frisbee lesson. I was less terrible than I could have been; contrary to my expectations, I caught almost every throw, but I was not as good at throwing. Then, for real, Shakespeare in the park. I do read a good Titania, I think. And I made him let me be Puck as well. His go at Oberon was fairly successful, despite his utter girl-out when a jumping spider jumped on his proffered finger. Really, he squeaked, grabbed me around the waist, and hid his head behind my shoulder. I'd told him it jumped at me when I said hi. Chicken.
I was absolutely determined to get some Minchin into his head before he left, so despite his fairly severe cat allergy I took him home to get some Rock'n'Roll Nerd. We stayed out of the house proper, and it was quite pleasant with some freshly squeezed lemonade in the backyard by the pond, till the mosquitoes came out in force and we battled a losing fight with citronella and then retreated to the front yard.
After awhile the sun started to get to us, and I had some more Minchinism best appreciated in comfort, so I took him back to the hotel and we got through a couple more and the new version of Archive (which he was flatteringly taken with, and asked to hear with the lyrics in front of him). Then he insisted on starting a Carlos Kleiber documentary he'd heard about. Admittedly, the first 15 minutes were compelling, but the subsequent parts had been copyrighted off of Youtube, so we haphazardly surfed the related videos till I had to go sing for Jesus. I said see you later, as we'd planned to maybe do up some Oberon and Titania costumes after my rehearsal was over.
The church rehearsal on Halloween perturbed me, anyway. I felt possibly a tiny smidgen of how I imagine slightly oppressed religious minorities might feel, since for the bucks I had to go spend the two prime trick-or-treating hours singing about Jesus and I didn't even get to carve my pumpkin. This holiday is really important to me, and it wasn't a very important rehearsal, except that if I'm not there everything falls apart (I know that sounds like hubris, and like I think far too highly of myself, but really, the choir needs even my help). I wouldn't get paid if I weren't there, and I wasn't there last week because of Dallas. So despite my extreme regard for this and only this particular calendar holiday, with its consolidation of the tradition of Misrule and its odd mirroring qualities of mummery and masquerade and reverse caroling... It's so medieval, except with a much ameliorated version of all the horrible things about the middle ages like misogyny and actual plagues. And it's weirdly and uniquely communal, despite being solidly idealized in my head as the holiday for me, me, by myself. When else besides Christmas are you supposed to go around and say hi to your neighbors and they give stuff to you? Or stay home and give stuff to anybody who comes to your door, and you actually expect them to and welcome it?
The present-giving on/around Christmas is a pagan tradition, too (Dies Natali Solis Invicti, birthday of the unconquerable sun with the whole solstice thing). Saturnalia's where the origins of Misrule are, anyway, and not the middle ages; I tend to think about it in medieval terms because that's when the strictures were so tight and everything was so very religion-driven that it was especially remarkable when they were turned upside-down. Church became profane and the King of Misrule was selected form among the laity and his word was law, at least for the festival. So often the Catholic church tried to ban it, but the pressure of such a rigid societal setup as theocratic feudalism had to be let off somehow, so it never totally went away. But it's true, strictures on noncitizens in Hellenistic Greece and Classical Rome were pretty tight, too; the slaves got to be kings for Saturnalia and the citizens served them dinner and "natural order" was upended. And it was all fine, because everybody knew that it would be over after the holiday. But it was still a weird and kind of dangerous reminder that things could be very different. As it is now, when anyone can be anything, the usual keep-to-yourself order is backwards and you must approach strangers with what used to be a request veiled in a threat.
We didn't get any trick or treaters, which I was sad about, but I wasn't home anyway. Neither was Dan or my mom, and I let her know it was sort of letting the side down, since candy-giving is so awesome, but she said in the last three years no one's come to the door on Halloween.
So, I am impressed by how special Halloween is, because there's nothing else like it in the pantheon of American holidays, and it's not really postponable if you live in the city, because this is the one night when people are walking around looking like whatever they feel like and there are candles inside gourds all over the place smelling like pie.
And then, when I was done with rehearsal, I was perturbed by a text from Alan: he'd gone to dinner with someone he'd met on the internet and couldn't hang out the rest of the night. So I drove disgruntledly home and shook it off, as it gave me time to maintain my own important and solitary tradition, the Jellicle Ball. I've sort of religionized into something like a rationalist celebration of the potential to do anything. I put on my catsuit and rags and tail and face stripes, lit two (but only two, so it would still be dark) candles, and watched the Cats DVD with my wireless headphones on, dancing wildly as appropriate. It's an epic poem in some places, which is like bardic performance, and then there's the periods of intense dancing, which could represent any physical pursuit, just as Cirque broadens the horizons of the physical potential of humans, and there's the glorification of "the mystical divinity of unashamed felinity", which is particularly apropos for me, but could stand in for any personal trait worth celebrating, the divine is within us, we are all god together and apart, etc. So I reiterated my worthiness to act on my own potential. And went to sleep.
Halloween, which is my favorite and most sacred holiday, was an odd combination of circumstances, though I think eventually appropriate. I knocked off work early after German class, picked Alan up from his hotel, and took him to Café Brasil, which he protested as he'd wanted to check out hot coffee spots, but was impressed with nevertheless.
We adjourned to Hermann Park according to our plan. What more appropriate activity on Halloween than to do a table read of various scenes from that ultimate account of personal disguises, A Midsummer Night's Dream? But first, a frisbee lesson. I was less terrible than I could have been; contrary to my expectations, I caught almost every throw, but I was not as good at throwing. Then, for real, Shakespeare in the park. I do read a good Titania, I think. And I made him let me be Puck as well. His go at Oberon was fairly successful, despite his utter girl-out when a jumping spider jumped on his proffered finger. Really, he squeaked, grabbed me around the waist, and hid his head behind my shoulder. I'd told him it jumped at me when I said hi. Chicken.
I was absolutely determined to get some Minchin into his head before he left, so despite his fairly severe cat allergy I took him home to get some Rock'n'Roll Nerd. We stayed out of the house proper, and it was quite pleasant with some freshly squeezed lemonade in the backyard by the pond, till the mosquitoes came out in force and we battled a losing fight with citronella and then retreated to the front yard.
After awhile the sun started to get to us, and I had some more Minchinism best appreciated in comfort, so I took him back to the hotel and we got through a couple more and the new version of Archive (which he was flatteringly taken with, and asked to hear with the lyrics in front of him). Then he insisted on starting a Carlos Kleiber documentary he'd heard about. Admittedly, the first 15 minutes were compelling, but the subsequent parts had been copyrighted off of Youtube, so we haphazardly surfed the related videos till I had to go sing for Jesus. I said see you later, as we'd planned to maybe do up some Oberon and Titania costumes after my rehearsal was over.
The church rehearsal on Halloween perturbed me, anyway. I felt possibly a tiny smidgen of how I imagine slightly oppressed religious minorities might feel, since for the bucks I had to go spend the two prime trick-or-treating hours singing about Jesus and I didn't even get to carve my pumpkin. This holiday is really important to me, and it wasn't a very important rehearsal, except that if I'm not there everything falls apart (I know that sounds like hubris, and like I think far too highly of myself, but really, the choir needs even my help). I wouldn't get paid if I weren't there, and I wasn't there last week because of Dallas. So despite my extreme regard for this and only this particular calendar holiday, with its consolidation of the tradition of Misrule and its odd mirroring qualities of mummery and masquerade and reverse caroling... It's so medieval, except with a much ameliorated version of all the horrible things about the middle ages like misogyny and actual plagues. And it's weirdly and uniquely communal, despite being solidly idealized in my head as the holiday for me, me, by myself. When else besides Christmas are you supposed to go around and say hi to your neighbors and they give stuff to you? Or stay home and give stuff to anybody who comes to your door, and you actually expect them to and welcome it?
The present-giving on/around Christmas is a pagan tradition, too (Dies Natali Solis Invicti, birthday of the unconquerable sun with the whole solstice thing). Saturnalia's where the origins of Misrule are, anyway, and not the middle ages; I tend to think about it in medieval terms because that's when the strictures were so tight and everything was so very religion-driven that it was especially remarkable when they were turned upside-down. Church became profane and the King of Misrule was selected form among the laity and his word was law, at least for the festival. So often the Catholic church tried to ban it, but the pressure of such a rigid societal setup as theocratic feudalism had to be let off somehow, so it never totally went away. But it's true, strictures on noncitizens in Hellenistic Greece and Classical Rome were pretty tight, too; the slaves got to be kings for Saturnalia and the citizens served them dinner and "natural order" was upended. And it was all fine, because everybody knew that it would be over after the holiday. But it was still a weird and kind of dangerous reminder that things could be very different. As it is now, when anyone can be anything, the usual keep-to-yourself order is backwards and you must approach strangers with what used to be a request veiled in a threat.
We didn't get any trick or treaters, which I was sad about, but I wasn't home anyway. Neither was Dan or my mom, and I let her know it was sort of letting the side down, since candy-giving is so awesome, but she said in the last three years no one's come to the door on Halloween.
So, I am impressed by how special Halloween is, because there's nothing else like it in the pantheon of American holidays, and it's not really postponable if you live in the city, because this is the one night when people are walking around looking like whatever they feel like and there are candles inside gourds all over the place smelling like pie.
And then, when I was done with rehearsal, I was perturbed by a text from Alan: he'd gone to dinner with someone he'd met on the internet and couldn't hang out the rest of the night. So I drove disgruntledly home and shook it off, as it gave me time to maintain my own important and solitary tradition, the Jellicle Ball. I've sort of religionized into something like a rationalist celebration of the potential to do anything. I put on my catsuit and rags and tail and face stripes, lit two (but only two, so it would still be dark) candles, and watched the Cats DVD with my wireless headphones on, dancing wildly as appropriate. It's an epic poem in some places, which is like bardic performance, and then there's the periods of intense dancing, which could represent any physical pursuit, just as Cirque broadens the horizons of the physical potential of humans, and there's the glorification of "the mystical divinity of unashamed felinity", which is particularly apropos for me, but could stand in for any personal trait worth celebrating, the divine is within us, we are all god together and apart, etc. So I reiterated my worthiness to act on my own potential. And went to sleep.