Oh, gee, now i remember why i don’t like theatre.
It’s a shame this thought always strikes me after i audition.
Personal
Art and beauty are so subjective that i’m sometimes frightened by them. A song that almost wound up going unplayed has become everyone’s new favourite. Last night someone told me they thought i was sexy. Some people read my page, and some don’t.
My audition was terrible… i couldn’t understand where the piano-arrangement fit in with my vocal notes, and i just kept shooting the pianist a befuddled look while my voice teacher sat in the back row and scribbled furiously on her legal pad. Corrections, for our next lesson. Rounder ‘O’ vowels, “remember” should be “ri-mem-bur,” breath before the phrases, don’t move my arms around so much. I don’t remember singing it at all, but i know what i did wrong. In fact, i thought that my audition was pretty terrible — panicked glances to the accompanist are rarely the mark of a chorus-member in the making.
At the end the voice inside my head said “Fuck it, Peter. Show them you can sing.” I shut my ears tight against the pianist and looked straight ahead. “Can lead to joy. And hope. And love… yes. Love.” C, D, Eb, E. Flawless. I just grinned as the piano roll to the end of the song began. The cheering was wonderful; i walked off as calmly as i could and proceeded to totally collapse in my chair hugging Elise and whispering “i did it, i hit it, i did it.”
No one mentioned my high notes, but everyone claims my song was wonderful. I didn’t think so, and i keep saying “But, what about the end?”
Tonight i’ll be at callbacks. Someone thought it was okay.
Every day is a day that your whole life has been leading towards; each step is the step that all of your life has been preparing you to take. Until the next one.
Two years ago i auditioned for Hair. I had so far only had a bit part in a main stage show, and i had never sang on stage before. But, i had the most hair of any of the boys who were auditioning. This, i was sure, was my shoe-in.
Our director asked who would sing first, and a hush fell over the room packed with aspiring tribe-members — no one wanted to set the bar. So, i did… with assurances that i could get up and try it again later. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life: my arms went numb, i forget my lyrics, and i couldn’t understand the piano arrangement. I barely remember the act of singing so much as i remember the lights blinding me as i wandered off the side of the stage, knowing that my second try would not make much of a difference.
When i didn’t get a callback, i was not entirely surprised.
Everything between then and now has been my stumbling rehearsal for tonight’s audition for Fiddler on the Roof. Every failed audition, and every successful one. Every note i’ve hit and every note i’ve missed. Every smile, every tear, everything. Yes, it’s about whether or not i can hit my E, as i am acutely aware. But, it’s also about who i was when i took the stage 730-odd days ago and who i can be tonight.
It’s not about hitting your stride in the moment, every moment, living for each. It is about sustaining through them all, stringing them together like a legato string of pearls.
Not coincidentally, that’s what my voice teacher keeps telling my about hitting the high notes in my audition piece. Maybe after i get it right in my singing i can manage to apply it to life.
A few days after Christmas Amy and i went to IKEA to buy various pieces of furniture, and while we were there i bought a set of four 12oz rose-colored glasses. For the entire next week, they were all i drank from.
One just broke. I have two, now. This post is about permanence, and the lack thereof.
In 1998, four years ago this week, my grandfather died. At that point in my life i had lived in the same house for over a dozen years, written a dozen songs, and had never kissed a girl. It was a day like any other; i had probably just gotten home from a late rehearsal, walking down 64th street breathless and running lines in my head. Turning the key in our flimsy front door. I remember my mother was on the couch, and when she spoke it was just like a scene from a movie. I numbly walked upstairs to my mint-green room, put on track 9, and laid on my bed.
I cried there for an hour, alone. That day i wrote the first song that i would actually go on to play for someone other than myself. Since then i have moved four times. However, it was a while before i kissed anyone.
I am an easy person to convince of things, despite high surface levels of skepticism. If you’ve been dating for a year or two and tell me you’ll be together forever, i believe you. I start angling for a spot in your wedding party. I take it on faith that if you’re used to each other and happy that nothing will ever go sour; i’ve never done it myself, so it must be possible.
I wound up getting the question about Fallacy of Ignorance right on my Philosophy final, but i might have not gotten the point.
When a couple breaks up after two years together, it’s hard for me to understand how the world will work afterwards. For me, and for them, and at large … how can i believe in anything if nothing lasts forever like it says it’s going to?
Just before spring of 1998 i wrote “I never kissed somebody so that they would break my heart” in a journal i shared with my best friend Andrea. She replied that she never much cared for Lisa Loeb. The other day i found myself singing the same line as i walked down Walnut street. It still sounds the same, but it means something different now.
My mother is taking a loan to pay off her credit cards; she wants to buy a house. I might fail a class for the first time ever, and it’s my own dumb fault. Auditions are Tuesday. I’m listening to Firecracker.
I can’t tell if things change or not. Thoughts?
I have had my ups an downs with Dan Savage’s Savage Love column, and the particular letter that was pointed out in my comments the other day fits nicely somewhere in the middle. Specifically, the first half is an up, and the last paragraph is a down.
While Dan’s opening is indeed quite Savage, it’s also sadly true; the easiest way to stop being mistaken for a homosexual is to stop “acting” like one. Of course, the harder way to stop being mistaken for a homosexual is to only cultivate friendships with people that avoid such idle and generic stereotyping based on shopping, cooking, and Madonna. I enjoy shopping because i’ve had to shop with my mother my entire life, i enjoy cooking because i think it’s one of the sexiest things you can do with another person, and i enjoy Madonna because i’ve always loved music and she’s always been good. So, if those traits (and others) make me “gay,” then… well, then i’ll take the dictionary definition, thank you very much.
Savage hits the melancholy nail right on the head with his second paragraph… that most women would love to meet men like myself or the writer of the letter, but that they would love to meet them so that they could have them as friends. Witness this exact reaction in my friend Lisa, who refers to me as her sassy gay friend. When it comes right down to it, she doesn’t really care whether or not i’m gay — she’s just in it for the sass. The point that was brought to light that i never thought about is that women do want to think they’re bringing out the sensitive side in their men, and so a pre-sensitized guy can seem like sort of a letdown. Of course, not all women subscribe to both of these rules (thank god); some girls like a guy who’s a little bit ambiguous, perhaps for the exact reason that they bring out the guy in him rather than the sensitivity.
The down about this particular column’s closing is, for once, not one i have with its author. The letter writer in question is so superficial of a skirt-chaser that he’s “cultivated” the traits in question, and so Dan dismisses him by telling him to “[B]utch it up a little bit. Shop a little less, care a little less, and listen to Madonna a little less.” I would say the same thing to the man in question, maybe even adding “And try being yourself for once.” I’m sure he was thinking it, though. The down, for me, is that Savage isn’t really addressing the question in my mind, which is “What about if that is yourself?” I can surely be blamed for any sexual ambiguity i present in the form of lap-dances and suggestive commentary, but Savage is essentially endorsing that artificially touchy-feely men should drop the pretense, so i’d assume he’d similarly endorse laying off the pretense of being more of a guy’s guy as well.
So, what’s a girl’s guy to do? In my opinion, not a whole lot — other than believing in the things that make you yourself. No, most girls don’t find sensitive men overwhelmingly attractive (unless they’re fronting decent emo bands, and then it’s open for discussion). However, the girls that do tend to fall for the softer sort of guy are more confident about themselves, i think … enough so that that don’t need a alpha male to lead them around by the arm. This doesn’t mean they’re perfect, or self-confident, or what you’re looking for … but they are probably free from playing the more typical parts of the daily boy-girl game most people subject themselves to.
Mention Madonna a little less? Maybe. Give fewer lapdances to “Queer?” For sure. Change? Never.