"Remember that you are human..."

Today's (tonight's) title...a quote from the darling and blunt JP.

I have exactly 24 minutes to write this entry if I'm going to make my midnight deadline for this post to authentically be written on 8/29.  I desparately tried all day to first read my muse's post, but constantly kept being (kindly) interrupted.  Such and so called.  This person stopped by.  It was time for the 13th medication.  The 3rd breathing treatment.

My mother is misbehaving once again, AKA - is in the hospital.  Pneumonia.  With all the misbehaving she's been doing over just the past three months, I would say she's been shopping in the wrong catalogue.  Not only did she have to get  a cancer that happens to only 1-2 per million people. (We know you're one in a million mom, but this time you've just gone too far!!)  But to add to this, she's had a pulmonary embolism, atrial fibrilation, seizures, and now pneumonia!  That's just about everything in the book, don't cha think?

So what does all of this have to do with me, the singing, and the dreams?  Nothing short of everything.  You see how far back I'm pushed with trying to get this blog entry in under the deadline.  Can you imagine if this were an application deadline when it really mattered???  But it isn't an application.  Thank God it isn't.  I talk about dreaming, but the biggest part of it is dealing with the everyday reality.  The paradoxical reality that just because I'm human it doesn't mean that I'm always to blame when things go off schedule, off track.  And it's not my mother's fault either.

I have eight minutes left.  But if I were in Florida, I'd already be an hour late, while in California, I'd still have two hours to spare.  So is it really that big of a deal?  Of course not.  Not this time.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that this weekend was supposed to be about learning and practice.  A couple of days devoted to broadening my repetiore and locking it into place for my lesson next week.  A lesson that I may not get to because flying out to San Francisco might not be the best thing right now.  I can't feel bad that my music books have been riding around in my car for the past two days, sliding about with every sharp turn and even gentle slowing to stoplights.  I brought them because my mother has a piano in her house and I don't. 

It's a Clavinova keyboard, one of those you can plug a book into and play along with this symphonic accompaniment.  It was a new and novel thing, top of the line when we first got it.  I remember all of the different experimentations with rhythms and modes.  Stereo Piano 4 is my favorite.  In all its timelessness, it has been a place where my awkward fingers failed at even basic piano until the age of 10.  It's been the source of musical doting and duels where my mother's creative input bellowed from its keys to help me play my violin in tune.  And now, it's a place where note by note, I pluck away at new arias and sing them as she once did on a piano long ago. 

12:05am has just rolled around and I've missied my deadline.  As hard as it will be for me to grasp the fact that I will physically write two entries on the same day, what's fortunate is that my blog graces me and charts the minute you start, not the mintue you finish.  Hmmm, I think a quote or some profound sermon should be born out of that...

Question of the day - Are there aspects of your life that may not be going quite right where you need to "remember that you are human...?"

New Direction...The Sammie/Julie/Julia Project...

It's Blog Relaunch Day!!!!!

Okay, so I'm an abandoner...I began this blog a year ago upon anticipating my move to Fresno. What I wanted: A courageous tale about a young woman finally reaching her dreams!! What it turned into: Endless droning about the awfulness of central California and my depressing internal state!! BUT!! I now have a plan. On August 14th, I watched the movie Julie & Julia three, no four, times. Coincidentally, I found "The Juile/Julia Project" actually still in its raw form on salon.com. Read along with me here: http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html

I think Mrs. Powell and I have a lot in common. Well, that is, when she first started her life-altering project. Likewise coincidental, she began on August 25th, 2002. So, eight years later, I link up with JP in an attempt to change my own life with only one simple rule: For every day that she wrote about her journey through the Julia Child cookbook, so shall I write about my quest for full-time operahood.  So no, I won't be cooking, with the intent to write about it, anyway.  I'm a good cook and I love doing so, but here's my take.  My mother is ill. Cancer. "There's nothing we can do." 4-6 months they say. HA! Only GOD has the final say!! Knowing her, she'll be smiling and kickin 4-6 years from now!!! Reality sets back in...

I'm an opera singer. She wanted to be an opera singer. She wants me to be all the opera singer both she and I were/are supposed to be. So, I have the rest of her life to sing my way into some opera grandeur - whether landing a contract, winning mega opera competition(s), encountering a magical moment when that particular career-enabling someone just happens to hear me.  Oh say, during "borrowed" time in a Blair School of Music practice room at Vanderbilt or some other random juncture that would make for good storytelling!

Audition season is upon thousands of singers with the same objective (hopefully without the ailing parent part.) So, applications are going out, new arias and art songs being researched and memorized, cross country treks to lessons are being booked. I'm just going to sing. If they want me, great. If not, don't ask me what I'll do then, but this process is not about that. It's about the one and only opportunity I have to make my mother's final resting pillow plush with the news that her daughter has plenty of places to sing...

Aaaaannnnddd..ACTION!! Buona voce!!

(The one thing I am keeping from the old blog format...) Question of the day: Don't you think it's time to relaunch some things in your life?