a prayer for the truly desperate

I thought I knew what was worse than needing to give plasma to be sure I can buy Christmas presents without exceeding my budget (I must stay within it until March, or there will be very serious problems), but when I actually went to give the plasma, I found out there is something even worse.  There are several time-wasting and tedious processes in place to prevent people much more desperate than I from trying to give more plasma than is healthy.  Every time I ran into one, I would think, "Seriously?!"  They have to have these elaborate safeguards in place because so many people try to do this?  Oh, man  . . .  Saying a prayer for the truly desperate enough to hurt themselves tonight.

For the fictional love of fictional country

I've been watching Burn Notice now that the show is complete.  (Thank you, public library.)  I've been burning through it, actually.  (Groan.)  After season 3, I found myself wondering what makes me like it so much.  At first, I thought maybe it was because it's about a person who wants to set the record straight with the government he served.  (I know how that feels.)  Thing is, I always like this kind of show: different identities every week (Pretender), dangerous ops and deception (La Femme Nikita in the 90s), witty banter, conspiracies (Nowhere Man), touchy but frequently humorous family relationships (Psych), etc.  I liked these things before my injury working for the government ever happened.  Going into the final season, I'm wondering if what I'm looking for is someone who loves his country so much even after having his life and everyone he loves crushed in its dispassionately turning gears that he will still actively put himself at risk of death and worse to make the world a safer place.  Even if it's all fictional, maybe I want to see someone betrayed much worse by the government he loved still able to actively love it the way he used to.  I want to see the possibility even if it is fiction.

Packing and Unpacking for the Win?

Packing may be like saying prayers with a rosary, but it is not anything like efficient when the items in question are books.  I don't really let that inefficiency stress me out, though, because spending time with books and savoring my memories of them and finding quotes and notes and bookmarks and remembering is not an unworthy use of time.  It can also double as a test of willpower: can I resist the temptation to stop, drop, and read?  And as long as I start packing soon enough, does it matter? 

I do hate closing a box and stacking a new box on top, though, because it is a farewell, and even if I have not looked at these books in months or years, there is a sadness that comes from knowing it will be over a month before I see some of these old friends again, and if I suddenly feel the urge to read them, I won't be able to.  There is also a happy anticipation, too, though, because I know I will be seeing them again soon.  I look forward to the unpacking, not just because it always goes way faster, but also because it is like a reunion with friends.  Also, I get to alphabetize lots!  WIN!

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

It took a long time from first day of reading to last day of reading, but I recently finished Guy Gavriel Kay's history-based fantasy The Lion's of Al-Rassan.  It took me a long time because everything these days takes a longer time, what with all the moving planning stuff that has to get done and the pain and such, but the real reason it took a long time is because I was dragging my feet because I knew this book would end in tears.  And holy cow, did it ever.  I've read four of this author's books now, and there are SO MANY TEARS IN EVERY ONE that I think I will need a Terry Pratchett chaser.  (Sorry, new Dresden Files book.  I will continue to exercise extreme self-control and put you off until I really need a pick-me-up and have a whole day to give you.)

I see why writers like Kay.  He is a master of technique.  He does things I would not let many other authors get away with doing, but he does them so well I just have to smile crookedly and bow to his mastery.  For instance, I should really be irked with Kay for this dragging out of cliffhangers he sometimes does.  Other authors have the decency to open the next section far away with another set of characters to distract us or just start out the next section by handing us the information in the first sentence.  Kay sometimes drags it out for PAGES.  And he does it brilliantly.  It just grinds the tragedy with the uncertainty for that much longer, and I should resent him for this obvious artifice.  Instead, I suppose I appreciate his acknowledgement that patient readers can sometimes savor the not-knowing for a while, that good readers can trust good authors to only use this device when it intensifies something important.  He uses these techniques with restraint, so they don't get tedious.

I knew that one of the characters was based on El-Cid, but I purposely didn't go and look to see how that story ended.  I didn't need to.  The fun thing about making fantasy out of history is that you don't have to be a slave to it.  Also, I was sure it was going to end in tragedy.  I don't know a lot about that period in history, but I did know that it was around the time when Spain went from being a society where Jews, Christians, and Muslims could mostly co-exist rationally to a place where that really wasn't the case anymore.  Lots of war and religious extremism and violence and religion used to disguise a desire for power and domination and the destruction of an era of peace that allowed some things to flourish that never had before.

Kay's omniscient point of view is excellent.  He effortlessly switches between characters, always moving to just the right character to keep the plot going, and he is deadly with his foreshadowing.  (It's kind of like a bludgeon, but he adds this foreshadowing sentence at the end of an otherwise seemingly slow-moving section, and it's like a punch in the gut.  You don't go on to the next section wondering what will happen.  Instead, you keep reading and wondering exactly how it will all go wrong.)  It's not that all of the POV characters are likeable; it's that they are all expertly drawn.  You understand something important even about the ones you dislike (and Kay knows how to limit your time in their heads to just the parts of the story that need to be told from that point of view to best move the plot along).

The story is so very timely for me right now, too.  The radio has recently been reminding me that this kind of "ideological" clashing didn't stop in the 11th century.  It's happening in the Middle East and in Southern Asia right now.  It is scary and it is ugly and it is messy.  It always has been.  It always will be.  It destroys things and people.  It breaks my heart, it probably breaks God's heart, and it breaks the world.  Reading the kind of mindset that causes it is important but difficult and a little terrifying.  

I love Kay's books.  His grasp of story is very strong, and his voices are compelling.  I'm off to read some Pratchett, though, because I need some more gentle humanism right now.  I'm a couple Pratchett books behind, so I can probably read a few powerful and slightly soul-bruising Kay books followed by some Pratchett.  Not a bad plan in a stressful time.


NOTE: For those of you who like to see book covers, check them out here.  My favorite is the top left (Canadian Hardcover).  No confusion about who the fourth person is; though I understand the desire for architectural symmetry.

Rehearsal

She gives me the part.  Maybe she believed me when I said I'm a choir chameleon who can blend with any group.  Maybe she just liked my voice.  Then again, maybe not because once I have the part, she tells me to sing completely differently.  In her heaven, the angels all have lots of vibrato.  In my heaven, there is no vibrato.

I have never been formally trained.  I used to take a sort of pride in the openness, cleanness, and clarity of my voice (when I wasn't rusty).  I don't actually know how to control and use vibrato for good and not for evil.  Actually, I don't even really know how to use it for evil.  It is not something that comes naturally to me.  I'm not really an alto either, something my old choir director used to say but I didn't really understand until I was out singing with older adult choirs.  Yes, I will now freely admit that I am a mezzo who doesn't have a high range anymore (since I wrecked my health a bit my senior year in high school).  I can't quite bring myself to say I'm a mezzo-soprano, I, who have spent my whole choir life holding up the alto section because I could hit the low notes.

She wants me to sing with more of an alto tone (deep and rich and solid), to keep my voice tall and closed, to pour on the vibrato.  I give it my best shot, trying to memorize the piece so I can spend that mental effort on trying to blend the soprano 1's and alto 2's vibrato while also bridging the openness of the soprano 1 with the closed-ness of the soprano 2 and trying to remind folks about dynamics and to--above all else--listen and make lovely music. 

But at the last practice, our first with the orchestra, I forget everything because the choir is singing and they are getting it right and the orchestra is so full, and I let all the beauty going on distract me, catch me up, pull me away from my duty as bridge/anchor/chameleon, make me forget that I am tasked with singing about the holiness of God so wonderfully it blends into a whole where I don't stand out at all but support and redirect attention where it belongs.

This is why one of the ladies who has also joined the choir just for this events says she likes singing with church choirs more than professional choirs: because this music is not only beauty to us but is also truth.

Audition, Part 2

When I posted the first part of my audition adventure, one very kind writer friend said, "i don't get why you couldn't audition with what you had prepared, since that was their instruction, right, to be ready with these songs."  First of all, I made an assumption based on the information on the audition sheet that was, in the words of another friend, "Totally understandable but also totally wrong."  I had questions; I should have asked them.  My own fault I didn't.

My kind friend said, "i am assuming you did not get the part, or get a place in this group?  it all seems so wrong, given your beautiful voice."  I don't know yet if I got the part, but I thought that maybe it would help to explain the audition in terms of writing and publishing because there are some similarities. 

When a writer sends in a submission to a magazine or anthology publisher, the writer should know that it's not (only) the quality of the submission that is being judged but how well it fits in with the whole.  Maybe your piece is lovely but just not quite matching the theme or maybe there's another submission that is slightly better than yours and covers some of the same territory.  It's not just the quality of your writing that is being examined; it is how your piece blends in with the whole.

A rejection is therefore not necessarily a judgment that a writer is not good at writing.  (This is why reading through some issues of the magazine or journal one is trying to publish in is highly encouraged: it can cut down on wasted submissions of perfectly good work to places where it just won't fit, which saves time for editors and emotional energy for the writer.)

One way a vocal audition is not like trying to get published is that, while you have a short time to wow the decision makers in both situations, you sometimes have to somehow try to demonstrate the whole stylistic range of your vocal talent in an audition, to show all the possibilities.  You don't have to do that in writing.  In writing, it's okay to just be really good at one style or genre.

Sometimes a person has a lovely voice for one kind of singing that doesn't necessarily translate to being a good fit with another kind of singing.  I have a good voice for sacred choral music (straight tone, resonant in a good acoustic, no vibrato, able to blend well with other parts).  The group I am joining for this endeavor is singing operatic, classical choral.  The quartet I auditioned for would likely be made up mostly of church ladies who are (on the whole) not formally trained and use excessive vibrato or are formally trained and use vibrato.  I knew that going in.  That's why I was kicking myself so much for forgetting that BLEND should have been the thing foremost on my mind and not just getting the notes right in that audition.

I'm not even sure I want the part.  My health still isn't totally reliable, and my voice definitely isn't.  (And if I get the part, it means I have to expend more than normal energy avoiding illness until after the concert.  I'm not sure I even have that energy.)  I think maybe I tried out because the process of preparation is important; I wanted to show myself that I can do that part in case I ever get healthy enough to get back into music more seriously.  Maybe that's why it was so disappointing that I couldn't even get that right. 

In the end, I explained the situation to the director and, unusually, ended up getting a call back for a second audition of the song I had prepared but for a different vocal part, so I learned that and prepped it and then had my audition.  I asked her what she was looking for, and she told me to just sing it, so I did.  She was impressed by my accuracy but seemed dubious  about my ability to blend with the others.  I told her that I was actually a choir chameleon because I could blend with nearly any kind of voice (which was often true in my last choir) and help pull the whole together.  And then I waited for a final decision, something writers who try to publish are very familiar with.  : )

The Audition

It was my first audition in years, and I am so very rusty.  There were three songs to choose from, and she said she wanted us to work on them in advance so that we really knew them when we were auditioning.  After I finally got access to a piano, I came to the conclusion that I really only had time to get one piece truly audition-ready, so I chose the one that I loved when I first heard it and it sent glorious shivers down my spine.  (The other two were ugly in the recordings I heard because they had opera soloists doing the small ensemble parts, but they were terrible at singing together, and it became this horrible contest of every soloist trying to upstage the others and making ugliness instead of music.)  I spent every spare moment of four days lovingly preparing a performance-worthy audition of that song I loved.  I practically had it memorized, and I had all the dynamics and line shaping mapped out.  I was very nearly ready for anything.  It probably would have gone better if that song were actually used for the audition.

Instead, bits of the other two songs were used.  And I had never really heard them, especially not my parts.  And I suck at sight reading.   While the men auditioned elsewhere, I vampired off other ladies who could sight read (music-by-ear is a gift and sometimes a curse) to pick up one of the parts, but then we had to audition, and I was kind of flustered by the new music and focused on somehow trying to give a performance when I'd never even seen it until that day and getting the totally unfamiliar notes right, and I was reminded of why I hated group work in gym class.  Group jump-roping routines, in particular, taught me that being right (on the beat, executing moves properly, etc.) sometimes matters less than blending in (rhymed with giving in and lowest common denominator and failure). 

I wish I had remembered that before I started singing at the audition.  We were auditioning for small group pieces.  Being on the right note on the right dynamic doesn't really matter if others are making a different (wrong) chord, and you are the only one who is right or you are beautifully bringing out the drama of the line as the dynamics are written to shape it, and everyone else is singing the same (wrong) dynamic.

It was hardly an embarrassing disaster.  I wasn't having an asthma attach from other people's perfume.  I didn't totally make a fool of myself.  Things could have been way worse.  So.  I suppose this is a good learning experience.  I need to remember to listen when I am doing group work and blend in.  Someday, maybe I will learn this lesson for real, and it will stick.  Because the Lord knows I'm not an opera soloist, so I have no excuse.