My singing teacher is as full of words as I am, and as soon as we speak we come tumbling at each other and leave echoes around us.
I 'phoned her from work today, forgot what night it was that she told me she was headlining at the Renaissance Cafe.
Somehow that went from "can't wait to see you!" to "what do you MEAN you want me to go up there too?!?"
And I stammered and protested and pointed out that maybe I should wait for people to stop cringeing before I even consider inflicting myself on a stage at them.
I don't really want to be on a stage in the first place, I just want to immerse myself in music, because of what music has come to symbolize for me.
Cars, sedans, SUVs, those aren't luxury.
The ability to throw yourself into the study of music, to treat your brain and soul with all the depth you can muster, now THAT is luxury. Luxury of time, of spirit, of situation, of intelligence, of everything.
But she pressed on, about that stage, about how we've been doing nothing but classical lately, how I can't guage my stage-worthiness by something so difficult.
"We'll practice something else along with those two pieces I gave you".
Two pieces, already, a Rossini aria as high as it goes, and the fastest aria (for mezzo) that mozart ever wrote.
She gave me those last Saturday. This Saturday she plans to add another one.
Amazing the way a paragraph can end, when it began as simply as "hello".