Chatauqua

Last night All Angels hosted 'Chatauqua', a charming event where the British members of the church made pancakes for the rest of us (in honor of Shrove Tuesday), and then we all headed upstairs for a church-wide talent show.

All Angels has an interesting church population, made up of one part families in the city, one part young artists, one part recovering evangelicals, and one part homeless population.  I'm sure there are more parts, but that's what I've discovered so far.  I felt overwhelmed by the lovely beauty of all these people, sitting around the church's all-purpose room in folding chairs, watching kids run around, making chit-chat with total strangers or dear friends, delighting to be together, inside and warm on a cold snowy night.

And the talent show-- a sock puppet show to Carmen's Habanera (see picture), a Chopin Ballade from our minister of music, who is pursuing a doctorate at Juilliard, a 12 year-old who played Vivaldi on the electric guitar, a woman reading stories of her time in Thailand.  An older couple who would pass the time on long road trips by singing together (back before they had a radio) sang a song in two-part harmony about Old New England.  My new friend Rachel, a singer-songwriter who has started to write songs to respond to her friends request for advice was probably my favorite (check her out at http://advicemusic.blogspot.com/), but equally endearing was a gentleman, obviously of the homeless or near homeless population, singing original works.

I decided to go with something comic, and sang the Seguidilla from Carmen, and in a stroke of genius asked the guy who emcee'd the night to play Don Jose.  We never rehearsed, but he is at heart an improv guy and took my direction to 'pretend like you're ignoring me but really you're into me' and ran with it into the hills.   Needless to say, I got upstaged and could barely get through it for laughing, but who cares- raucous laughter for an Opera scene!

Shnookered

Is that a word?  Did I spell it right?  Well, regardless of the spelling, shnookered is the perfect word for what happened to me on Saturday, when I walked into the  Pastrami Queen:

I had walked by this place several times on my way to or from the subway, and last Saturday, decided I'd pop my head in to see what was what.  A sign greeted me on arrival:  1/2 sandwich and cup of soup, only $15.95.  My jaw hit the floor.  Fifteen bucks for lunch?  You've got to be kidding me?  I turn around to go, but all of a sudden feel three sets of eyes staring at me-- the men behind the counter.  Not wanting to look too cheap and save some face, I say to myself, Oh Joanna, just go up to the counter and see what they've got.  Maybe they have something for, you know, $8 that you could have for lunch.  So I walk up to the counter, have some friendly chit-chat with the guys while scanning the menu on the wall.  Nope.  Nothing.  EVERYTHING was between $15-20 bucks.  I prepare myself to turn tail and go when one of the guys says to me, 'Would you like to try the corned beef, ma'am?  It's very good today.'  Uh, did he say try for free?  Heck, ok.  He proceeds to place four succulent slices of corned beef on a plate for me, still warm from the oven--four pieces of delicious, dripping, savoriness.  

And that's all it took for me to buy a $15 dollar sandwich:

That was half of it.  The other half I took to go.  I swear the thing weighed 10 lbs.   Yummy!

Opening Ceremonies

I'm watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver while doing laundry and emailing.  Anyone else planning to go to Vancouver as soon as humanely possible after this is over?  I am.  That city is freaking glorious.

Anybody else worried about the aboriginal peoples who have been dancing non-stop during the entire Parade of Nations?  If I were dancing, I would have asked my little sister Jess to dress identically and would have done a hand-off after every five countries.  Jess would have been game.

Anyone else love that half the countries have only one competitor, and that person usually fell in love with a winter sport while at boarding school in the States?  Anyone else cry when the delegation from Georgia came into the stadium sporting black armbands for their fallen comrade?  Anyone else think the U.S.'s hats look uncharacteristically silly?

I confess, I'm so proud of Canada right now.   Our retiring neighbor to the north, I hope they cash in on the medal count.  I mean, I love the U.S. and feel very proud of my country, but I kind of love the Canadians like I love a shy cousin who takes the mike at the family reunion talent show and lights up the stage and nails a song-- give THEM a chance to shine, people!  Heck, the country's entire population is less than that of California.

I'm totally going to follow Mens' hockey.  I've never watched an entire hockey game, but this is my moment to become a fan.  Maybe. Unless I get bored.  In which case I'll just read the papers and watch the final.

I WILL not get sucked into watching figure skating.  I hate those commentators-- they take a perfectly amazing sport and turn it into 'tsk, tsk',  'that's too bad' and 'what a disappointment'. 

Sigh.  I always feel like a kid when the Olympics come around.  There's the whole world, this huge international gathering of goodwill and games and sports and parties.  What an amazing thing to be a resident of this planet.  Feels like what the human race should be, fundamentally, about.

Alright, time to let those aboriginal people take a knee... on with the show.

On the Subway

Singing and Snow Day

It is coming down out there.  A poor pigeon just landed on the railing that lines the shaftway outside the 2nd story of my Starbucks only to sink into three inches of piled snow.  I went first thing this morning to Macy's to buy boots, and found out that I was a day late-- apparently all of NY went to Macy's YESTERDAY and plundered the store.  I still managed to find a pair of stylish black-rubber-with-flannel-lining-Sperry's, and while I was considering the purchase, a saleswoman slapped a 50% off sticker on them.  I love a deal.  Sold.

I lived the life of a singer yesterday.  I woke up, warmed up, then met up with Diane, a woman who spent 15 years as an opera singer in Germany and Austria, and then spent the last 15 years at the Met.  We walked around St. John the Divine's up on the Upper West Side (beautiful, and may I say, far more lovely on the inside than National Cathedral).  Then we went to this funky Hungarian Bakery across the street-- delish.   We finished up, I raced back (if you can call any form of travel that uses a bus as racing) to my apartment, grabbed my music and went back to the West Side, this time to the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, that Mecca of All Things Opera.

I had an appointment with Lydia, an accompanist at the Met, who is friends with the woman I'm subletting from.  I was to meet her at the stage door to go to the rehearsal rooms, but she was late and I got to sit and silently observe the comings and goings of the many characters that make up that huge operation.  Carmen was going up in about an hour, and friends of the cast were coming by to pick up their comp tickets.  Singers who were rehearsing the other productions that go up later in the week were popping in and out.  No one went in or out without a key card or a visitor's pass, and all of this was overseen by a large man up on a podium, who stared down all comers and orchestrated this intricate dance of entrances and exits.  I wanted to ask him if he got sick of the half-door that would slam after every person went by, but thought the better of it-- he didn't seem like he had a sense of humor.

Lydia finally came to fetch me, and we wound our way back into the catacombs.  I saw, briefly, the stage entrance, and then hopped on an elevator up to the 2nd floor.  The practice room she had secured was full of costumes for Shostakovich's The Nose.  I mildly joked that if an alarm went off, I'd have no idea how to leave the building.  She said that this was one of the less tricky places to get to!

I sang for her, and it went about as I expected-- she said I need a French diction class -no argument there.  It's different to sing French than to speak it, and I have spent ZERO time on words anyway.  She was also confused about what rep I should be preparing.  I wasn't surprised by her confusion since my voice teacher still won't classify my voice ('When you sing the mezzo stuff, you sound like a mezzo!  When you sing the soprano stuff you sound like a soprano!').  She gave me an amazing compliment, though.  She basically said, 'the voice is right' and 'your voice is big enough to sing this stuff HERE'.  Hallelujah.  Upshot-- you're sloppy, but that's some voice, girl.

Made for Joy

All Angel's hosted an Artist's Retreat on Friday night through Saturday afternoon, led by a wonderful man who's name is Dick and who felt like a relation of Bob Ross (painter of happy little trees).  It was an intense, worthwhile time.  

God seems to be bringing up all my past issues in the first weeks of my arrival here and making me deal with them head-on.  Last week's sermon on gender roles in the church brought about an experience of God that left me feeling free and full of joy about being His daughter, fully loved.  

This weekend the Artist's retreat felt like God was trying, very gently, to show me how my identity as an artist is broken.  It was intense, and I'm tired of crying, but now feels like such a relief, since it was such hard work trying to pretend like it wasn’t broken.  I’m also tired of the ambivalence I feel surrounding what it is I’m trying to do.   

God seemed to say, ‘Yes, Joanna, you do need some healing in this area.  But it’s going to be a joyful, happy sort of thing.   You were made for joy.  Please let Me speak some things to you about who you are.”

So I am waiting with expectation of how He is going to do this, like clay in the hands of a Master.   

Back from D.C.

Yes, I've been in D.C. for the past few days, and just escaped back to New York City this morning.  I say escaped because apparently a 'snowpocalypse' is about to hit our nation's capital.  People are emptying bread aisles and hunkering down.  Here in Manhattan, the air is not balmy, but definitely not cold, and they say we might get 2 or so inches tonight.  That sounds great to me.  A light dusting.

D.C. was fun.  The first thing I notice on arrival was how much space there was and it made me uncomfortable.  The second was how small their metro system was and that made me feel snobbish.  Already a New York snob.  Doesn't take long.

My friend Julie was in D.C. for work, and so I enjoyed a lovely visit with her.  The boltbus got me there for $15, Julie's work paid for a swank place on DuPont Circle.  I enjoyed looking around the usual federal fare, and then practiced in the hotel room every afternoon, hoping that the guests beside and above me were far too busy to be in their rooms at 2 p.m. or that the cleaning crews vacuums drowned me out.  Anyway, highly successful.  I grabbed drinks with Julie and joined her and her friends for dinner.

On the bus ride home, I had the distinct privilege of sitting beside a guy who's dad was an ambassador for Albania during its communist days.  When democracy flooded that country, his family fled to, of all places, Dallas, where they now work in an Italian restaurant.  The guy was an unflagging conversationalist for the FOUR hours of the ride, which taxed my more introverted self.  I confess I actually got out one stop early so I could have a few extra minutes listening to the soothing drones of the subway.

I'm reading a Prayer for Owen Meany, and I'm just curious if anyone out there is a huge fan...huge fan, anyone?  I find it impossible to put down, but Owen Meany is SO uncomfortable.  What's going to happen?  The book is hilarious but at all times reminds you that you're heading for tragedy.

I leave you with my favorite thing, hands-down, from the National Cathedral, which I found to be impressive in scope but lacking in loveliness inside.  There are some fantastic wrought iron gates on the front doors, depicting scenes from the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the early church.  Can you determine what stories are below?

Avatar-- In 3D-- and IMAX!!

This incredibly attractive picture of my brother Jon and I was taken last night at North America's largest IMAX screen theater outside of Lincoln Center.  Sold out, super crowd, lots of fun.   A phantasmagorical feast for the eyes.