Drums

At Christmas I am often reminded that the changes in my personality are quite organic. I guess, I remember that I am the same person I have always been, only older, If that makes sense. When I list the sorts of books and movies I loved when I was little, it looks nothing like my taste now. But I can see how one set of tastes grows out of another.

How does this relate to Christmas... well, who remembers the drummer boy stop animation video. It was never a classic in my house, but I know it is in many households. I would have loved it as a little girl. But I can't actually sit through it now. But I've always loved the carol that the movie was based on. Ironically, when I was little I liked it because I liked to say "pah-rum-pum-pum-pum." (My other favorite christmas was Oh Holy Night because it had the line "Fall on your knees")

When I was a teenager I was glad that the a cappella quartet group I was in didn't end up singing it because I couldn't get through it without tearing up. At that point, I loved it because of the second verse. I identified with the boy who is impoverished and never good enough. "I am a poor boy too/ I have no gift to bring/ that's fit to give a king"

I heard a version once that was by a band that had a great drum solo in the middle. I have never figured out who did that version, but I liked it.

I love a good choral version of this song, but somehow, it seems like the perfect song for a rougher sound.

 It's about not being polished, or high brow, or good enough for the elite, deeply religious people who really understand Christmas. Of course, that is a great contradiction because a sincere follower of Christ, no matter what their intellectual or social status, is not an elitist. So they will kneel at the manger beside the smelly shepherds and the heathen kings, and the little boy with spiky hair who makes a lot of noise on his drum set.

I like the expression on this guys face while he beats the heck out of that drum set. I have no idea who he is.

So perhaps there is a part of me that still secretly loves the sappy and melodramatic spirit of the song. I know a lot of people hate this song for how cheesey it is. But I grew out of the type of girl who took such things very seriously. For example, I totally took Star Wars Episode One seriously until Episode Two came out and I realized that it was completely ridiculous.

So I never get tired of hearing a new version of the Drummer Boy Song. I even put up with the Celtic Women singing it, but I will spare you that video.

"I played my drum for him/ I played my best/ then he smiled at me/ me and my drum"

It's a very simple gift and a very simple acceptance from God made man.

Music and Writing

Looking at grad school programs. Some of them are really interested in making sure writers know how to talk about their writing process. This is a mysterious and personal subject. Certain things help everyone, but no two processes are exactly alike and no method will always work. Everyone hits a wall sometimes.

I like to listen to music. But it has to be a certain kind of music. I love music I can sing along to, but that makes trouble when I am supposed to be writing because I end up typing song lyrics in with whatever I'm working on.
The solution to this is sound tracks and classical music without vocals, or with vocals in another language.

Recently I have been reading various authors talk about what it feels like when they are writing well. A lot of people describe a feeling of discovery rather than creation, letting characters go their own way, rather than inventing a character and making them do certain things. I don't know if I've ever had that experience. But I have slipped into a mode where ideas come and language flow easily and it builds until I am not stopping to scratch my head about how I'm going to describe something or come up with a motivation for a character to do something. It's a really great feeling.

In trying to articulate this, I found myself using the same kind of language that I might use to describe some of the music I like to listen to when I write. This is what it feels like. 

(and if you haven't seen How To Train Your Dragon, you should look up the clip that corresponds to this track. Animators having fun with body language, no dialogue necessary.)

And before this dragon movie became my guilty pleasure, (along with kung fu panda) I listened to this:

That's what a good writing day sounds like.

Marches

I've been listening to the Lord of the Rings sound tracks lately. The music is one thing I don't complain about when it comes to the LotR movies. Howard Shore did a good job. I haven't listened to them in a really long time though. I like Return of the King best. I liked it so much it almost made me want to watch the movie. Almost.
This time I noticed that there are a lot of marches in those sound tracks. I used to think of marches as those happy, grand pieces of music that one hears at parades. None of the Lord of the Rings marches are like that. What a wide variety of moods a march can have. I knew that all along but I've just never really thought about it. I had one stuck in my head and with it went a few little bits of script from the Two Towers.
Theoden saying

"If this is to be our end, I would have us make such an end as to be worthy of remembrance."

Or something like that.
I think the march is actually from The Return of the King (Pelennor Fields I think but I can't find a good recording of the bit I'm thinking of) but it brings those lines to mind because Howard Shore did an amazing job of putting that sentiment into his music. Whoever is marching to that music knows they will probably not come back but they go on with as much honor and spirit as they can muster.
That's why I want to study music composition in college.

A Bit of Earth

When a thing is wick it has a life about it
Now maybe not a life like you and me
But somewhere there's a singles streak of green inside it.
Come and let me show you what I mean.

When a think is wick it has a light around it
Maybe not a light that you can see
But hiding down below a spark's asleep inside it
Waiting for the right time to be seen.

You clear away the dead partsso the tender buds can form
Loosen up the earth and let the roots get warm
Let the roots get warm
Come a mild day,come a warm rain
Come a snow drop, a-comin' up
Come a Lily, Come a lilac come to call
Callin' all of us to come and see

St. Therese called herself the Little Flower. She wrote beautifully about how God had carefully planted and tended her all through her life. She grew up in the rich soil of her family and was carefully sheltered and cared for until she was transplanted to her Carmelite convent where she lived the rest of her life blooming happily.She is probably not the first one to use a garden as an analogy for our lives and our relationship with God, but she always pops into my head when I think about my favorite musical so I'm giving her an honorable mention.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote some of those formative stories that make me who I am, used the image of a garden to symbolize changed, growth and healing. The Secret Garden is about several broken people finding healing in a garden. It's a classic of children's literature that every girl, at least, should read at a certain age.

Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman who adapted it for the stage accomplished what everyone who adapts books tries for; fidelity to the heart and spirit of the story. They took a beautiful book and made it into an equally beautiful musical with essentially the same story and message to give us: A person's life becomes meaningful and beautiful when it is occupied with somehow giving life to others.
I really can't discribe it. The more I try the more convinced I am boring everyone and not getting my point across nearly so well as that show does on it's own. You just have to listen to the soundtrack (or read the book first if you haven't). It is my fovorite and, I think, musical theater at it's best because, although the story is told apart from the music, the songs add a layer of meaning to ever scene that couldn't possibly be put into a sript.

Quick, irrelevant reasons I love this musical:

• There are ghosts!
• I want Dicken to be my older brother
• Lots of songs I can sing at the top of my lungs when I'm alone in the car.
• Duets! Trios!! Quartetes!!! Now, if I could find some other people to sing them with me...
• In general I love the music; "Winter's on the Wing," "I heard someone crying," "Wick," "Lily's Eyes" *sigh* "Race you to the top of the morning" so many and SO Good.
• The girl who plays Mary on the soundtrack is briliant. She doesn't sound obnoxious and over confident like a typical broadway child star, she is just a little girl.
• Martha and Dicken and their Yorkshire dialect!
• When Dicken sings, sometimes he is talking to Mary and sometimes he is talking to the audience about Mary and sometimes he is talking about Spring and you can never really tell which.
• The music does such an amazing job of showing how the characters change and their relationships to each other.
  

A person's a person, no matter how small.

Act Two (being the scenes directly following Act One)

Horton sits on the egg for fifty one weeks. He is pulled from town to town and draws a crowd of thrill seekers cause he is so laughable. How humiliating. One day, who should come looking for a laugh but a flashy bird named Mayzie with a fabulous tail. It takes Mayzie a little while to remember who Horton is and why he is so happy to see her. Horton offers the egg back to her. He has made his promise good and now he would like to go home. Mayzie makes a few lame excuses and then tells Horton that, since it has made him such a big hit in show biz, he can keep the egg. Gee, she feels great about herself. She gave something that was hers away to help make someone else happy and successful. Her shallowness never ceases to amaze me. She makes a hasty exit leaving Horton with the egg for good. Horton is technically free to get rid of the egg now, if he wanted to. He's not baby sitting, egg sitting, anymore. But he sees the egg as abandoned and unwanted and helpless, just like himself, so he keeps it. He sings over it about a place where he can find belonging. Solla Sollew is a far away place where people are kind and there is no war or cruel winters. It's the place that Horton and Jojo go in their mind when they are thinking all alone. They have been looking for it all their lives. Sometimes Horton thinks he's almost there but it's always just out of reach. When they finally find it they will be home and they will stay there forever. Unlimited desire for perfect Home.

Back to the Whos. When the clover was dropped and lost, Whoville was wrecked as if an earth quake had struck. In military school, General Shmitt has been training the boys to fight. There is a war on Who against the people who put their butter on the wrong side of the bread. On Christmas eve, on the field of battle, Jojo takes a stand against the General. He refuses to fight, gives up his sword and his uniform hat and walks away... right through a mine field. There is an explosion and General Shmit has to break the news to Jojo's parents as they are trying to celebrate Christmas without their son.
The Cat takes us back to the scene of the tragedy to see if we need really fear the worst.
I guess I'll tell you a bit about this song since it's one I can put up here for you to hear. All through the show, Jojo uses his imagination to make the world more colorful for himself. When he stands up to General Shmitt it is the first time he uses that brilliant mind of his to do something that means something. Then when he is escaping over the mine field the Cat (a symbol of his imagination) comes with a group of creeping figures called hunches. His imagination is running the wrong way with him. He's scaring himself into helplessness. In the middle of the song he shouts at the Cat to go away. He doesn't want to think any more. It always gets him into trouble. Then the cat gives him a new 'think'. The Cat thinks a glimmer of light for Jojo. The hunches are all in Jojo's head and he starts to control them in stead of letting them confuse him. He uses that great mind of his to find his way home. At the end of the song Jojo makes it home and the music swells to end triumphantly with Jojo's two songs; The theme from Alone in the Universe ("I have wings and I can fly...") and then the chorus of hunches sing 'anything's possible!' It's one of my favorite moments in the show. Jojo and his imagination are undervalued because the other Whos don't see a practical use for it. In his song Anything's Possible, Jojo (with the help of the Cat) makes a huge mess of his house cause he let his 'thinks' carry him away. Later he feels alone in the universe because no one else wants to share his 'thinks' with him. When he uses his 'thinks' to find his way home, the other Whos can finally value and share his gift. Both Alone in the Universe and Anything's Possible are resolved and completed by the end of 'Have'in a Hunch"

I bet you forgot about Gertrude McFuzz.
Well, that's okay, I mean, everyone does.
But Gertrude did something that not any bird could do.
So this is the tale of Miss Gertrude Part two.

Gertrude shows up in the show again at the foot of Horton's tree in the middle of the night. Her tail is gone. Horton is kind of surprised to see her. Why should she even be there. He asks how she found him. When Gertrude says it's a long story, I don't think Horton realized what he was asking for.
Gertrude launches into the tale of her tail. She realized that the tail was more about her own vanity then helping Horton and so she had it plucked out. It was a painful operation but it was worth it cause now she could save the man she loved. She went through a horrible fantastic journey to get to him sacrificing every form of comfort and security all for Horton. She tells Horton, in great detail, all the things she did for him. The song keeps growing and growing. The words are a crazy tongue twister. She pretty much pours her heart out for him. Always repeating and reminding him that it was 'for you' "All for you!"

"Now here I am, the worse for ware, and here you are. I'm here, your there.
And maybe NOW you'll now I care for you!"

Completely out of breath she adds quietly.

"Oh yeah, and Horton, one more thing. It took me seven weeks, but I found your clover too."

That is the happiest moment ever for Horton. What a great feeling to have his Whos back and know that they are safe. "Gerturde, I've never noticed before, but you're amazing" Way to pass on the joy! Gertrude is floating.

Their joy is short lived however. The Sour Kangaroo and the Wickersham Brothers show up and put Horton under citizens arrest. They take him to trail and testify against him. He is charged with 'talking to a spec, disturbing the peace and loitering on an egg." Yurtle the Turtle quickly finds Horton guilty and sentences him to be locked up in the Nool asylum for the criminally insane. The clover is doomed to be boiled in oil. Horton doesn't care what happens to him but he cannot see Who destroyed. As the Wickersham brothers try to pry the clover out of his hand... trunk.... he makes one last attempt to prove that the Whos exist. He calls to the Whos and asks them to shout, all together shout and make themselves heard. Horton can't help them but if they shout loudly enough they can save themselves and Horton too. They must shout over the gleeful singing of the Nool Citizens with their tinny voices that only Horton could hear to begin with. It's a pretty noisy song. The Whos are shouting "We are here, we are here!" The Nool Citizens are chanting "Boil it, boil it!" and Horton breaking in desperately to encourage them. Then the cat friezes everyone for a moment. The Whos look to Jojo, the thinker. "Think of something!" The Cat narrates:

"Now just for a moment, young Jojo looked Grim
The fate of the Whos rested squarely on him.
And then came a think, a peculiar new word
no one ever had hear."

Then everyone is singing and chanting and yelling again and over it all, the small voice of Jojo carries

YOP!

The citizens of Nool gasp, they hear! Horton's not crazy, the Whos really are persons no matter how small, Jojo is a hero and a great thinker. The Sour Kangaroo promise to help protect the spec. And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me Too!"

Just as Jojo is about to 'think' a perfect ending for this story the egg begins to hatch. Or maybe that was the ending he thought of. In any case it hatches and out comes an 'elephant bird'. Horton has that sinking feeling that you get when you are handed the most wonderful gift that you have ever recieved and you know that it won't fit, it's not going to work, you are somehow unworthy, or unable to enjoy it.

"Oh Gertrude what'll I do? I'm slow and I'm fat. All I know is the earth. He'll need much more than that!"

Then Gertrude gets to sing his song for him so he knows, beyond a doubt, that he can count on her and he'll never never be alone in the universe again.

Gertrude sings: "I have wings and I can fly.
You teach him earth and I will teach him sky."
Horton: "Just call my name,"
Both: "And I'll see you through"
Horton: "One small voice in the universe"
Gertrude: "One true friend in the universe"
Both: "Who believes in You!"

Then the cat ends it all by putting it all back into his hat. And, after one of my favorite curtain call songs of all time, leaves that hat, the symbol of imagination and creativity, in the hands of the boy from the beginning of the show. What will the boy do with it?

"Their adventures were over,
The sky became... pink.
And then guess what happened?
Well, what do you Think..."

One true friend in the universe

Zita is using a lot of will power cause she is about to rant about something for several pages but it could be several dozen pages so count yourself lucky, and if you need a break you can always read the rest an other day.

If you could give a child a message, an idea you wanted them to keep and believe in all their lives, what would it be? How would you tell this child so that the message would stick forever? Put it in a story. Make it rhyme. Set it to music. It will stick. Just ask the advertising industry. I think I've said that before. Oh yeah, the other way to make something stick is repetition. Stories stick, rhymes stick, music sticks. They all stick especially well in children. What would you tell the child? I would like to tell a child to be who God wants him to be. Be truly himself. I would like to tell a child to pay attention to the world around him; notice things and never lose his imagination or wonder at God's creation. I would like to tell a child to stand up for what's important, defend the weak, especially people; people are important. You know where this is going don't you? There is a musical that has a great story, rhymes all the way through and is about 75% music. AND hidden in this rhyming musical story, is a message about being yourself, using your imagination, standing up for what's right, defending the weak and valuing people.
What's good for a child is good for an adult. An adult might walk away from this show with the same messages as a child, but on a deeper level. That is, if the adult pays attention and is humble enough to be taught a lesson by an elephant, a bird, a little boy and a cat.... in a hat.

At the opening of this show there is bare stage in the middle of which sits a solitary hat. You know the one: it's tall and has red and white stripes. A boy walks on and starts to imagine things about the hat. He imagines the Cat and suddenly the Cat appears. Throughout the show, this boy and the cat imagine things and they come into being. It all comes out of that marvelous hat. The stage quickly fills with color and characters and music.
I'm really bad at summarizing plots. I am hoping you have all read Dr. Seuss books. They pretty much mixed all the best stories together and put them to music.

Project playlist has it's limits and so if you want to hear the Seusical music (which I've had here before) you have to scroll all the way down, hit pause on the regular player, then scroll all the way up and hit play on this little player
here--->

That's all they have at Radio Blog so that kind of gives you a taste. I wish I could find a few of my favorites. As much as I love the Cat, I really prefer everyone else's songs.

There are basically three stories interweaving in Seussical The Musical.
The main one, around which all the others hang is about Horton the elephant. There are two parts to Horton's story; first of all Horton hears the voices of people too tiny to see. He promises to protect a tiny planet called Who that looks like a spec of dust. No one believes that there is anyone living on it but him.

The second plot is about the boy who lives on the small planet of Who that Horton is protecting. His name is Jojo and he has an over active imagination. He has too many "thinks." His parents and the whole community think of this as a serious problem and they send him off to military school to keep him from 'thinking.'

Thirdly, there is a bird named Gertrude who is irresistibly attracted to Horton's big heart. She thinks she's too plain to be noticed and spends much of the show trying to impress him by changing her appearance.

And of course, there is the cat. He shows up in each story and guides it along, making things more complicated or saving the day by turns.

Horton is the heart and soul of this show. His faithfulness and determination and most of all his humility make him very reachable as a hero. There are things that Horton believes in and these are so important to him that he is willing to face the scorn and ridicule of his peers and go through all sorts of terrible things. How many of us would do that? His belief in the sanctity of life is so strong that nothing will deter him from protecting these small people that called for his help. Over and over he sings quietly, in his simple way 'a person's a person, no matter how small." That settles it for Horton. Let them all laugh. He has promised to protect a tiny planet full of people only he can hear. Nothing will shake his resolve and his faith.
Horton's pretty solid, but that doesn't mean it's not hard for him. He hits a low point in the show after he has been guarding the Whos for some time. The other citizens of the Jungle of Nool and their mockery are starting to get to him. He has to find something to get him through it. He observes that the other jungle animals lack a gift of hearing and noticing. It makes him even more lonely to know that no one else notices all the wonderful things he can see and hear. But this gift is also his comfort; he has wings that can raise him up and out of reach of the base nastiness of his neighbors.
As Horton is singing about this bittersweet loneliness, on the tiny planet of Who, Jojo is also singing. Jojo is at Military school where he'll "sweat and shiver and eat raw liver" in an attempt to make him like every other Who boy; practical, neat, clean and, ultimately, unimaginative.

"Nobody knows that I have wings, yes, I can fly
around the moon and far beyond the sky.
And someday soon I know there you'll be...
One small voice in the universe,
One true friend in the universe
Who believes in me."

In real life, God sometimes puts people in your life that feel like family (in a good way) after you've known them for a matter of moments. It's one of those miracles that happen two or three times in a lifetime and make you feel that perhaps the world is not such a bad place. In a musical, that sort of miracle happens when two characters, who haven't met, are singing the same song in two different places. It's a pretty good way of describing it actually: Suddenly you hear someone singing the harmony to your song. Horton hears Jojo singing and they become friends between the second verse and the final refrain. The song is called Alone in the Universe and it's one of my favorites. I love friendship duets.

Meanwhile in an other part of the jungle... well, next door actually, Gertrude McFuzz is frustrated cause she's been singing along with Horton for weeks and he hasn't noticed. She is attracted to Horton's compassion and determination and wants to help and support him but their neighbors keep drowning her out. She not very loud, in fact she kind of shy and plain. She is a bird with only one feather in her tail. Her friend Mayzie has a flashy fabulous tail and everyone notices her. So Gertrude, at Mayzie's advice, goes to a doctor and demands special pills to make her tail grow. Does this sound familiar? How many women do this sort of thing. Somehow we think that we are not good enough just the way God made us. We change the way we look or dress or act. We think that these superficial things will keep us from being wall flowers. We all want to be noticed or somehow affirmed. Gertrude obviously doesn't want the kind of attention that Mayzie gets but she thinks that's the only way. So she gets herself a big colorful tail.
Does Horton Notice? He's got too many other things on his mind to care about birds with giant tails.

Some of Horton's neighbors, a trio of monkeys called the Wickersham brothers, steal the clover on which the planet Who is resting. They lead Horton on a desperate chase across the jungle. The clover gets dropped in a field full of clovers where, they are sure, Horton will never be able to find it. Horton is crushed but he just takes a deep breath and starts picking clover, one at a time and searching for his Whos.

Also determined, Gertrude follows with her tail to get Horton's attention. All her parading brings no results at all. Horton is too busy listening to one clover and then an other. He's not real interested in big tails anyway. He's an elephant after all. Gertrude keeps taking pills, her tail doesn't even fit on the stage anymore, but Horton won't notice her.

As Horton is out in the field someone else is feeling hopeless; Mayzie. She's bored. Now, for a children's show, this is a bit borderline: Mayzie is stuck on a nest cause he boy friend left her with an egg. Yeah. *cough* Remember Mayzie is the most popular bird in the Jungle of Nool because she is fabulous and beautiful and shows off her big colorful tail. Now, look where all that attention has gotten her. She has no idea what love is. Sacrifice is the language of love andMayzie doesn't speak it. She is just looking for the next thrill, the next joyride. Her last joyride leaves her on a nest with an egg that is demanding her care and attention. It demands sacrifice. It demands love. All she wants to do it get out of it. PoorMayzie will never experience the lasting joy that comes from giving yourself to someone, for real. She whines to Horton about how unfair life is. He sympathizes. She asks him to take care of the egg for a while so she can have a short vacation.
She'll be right back.
Really.
Horton is so sweet, he knows what it's like to have a responsibility that seems too heavy. Horton's self esteem is really lot at this point. He feels like a failure because he lots the Whos. He needs to prove, to himself if no one else, that he is dependable and capable of defending the weak like he promised. He agrees to take care of one more helpless little person. It is obvious to us that Mayzie isn't going to come back any time soon but Horton keeps hopping in her. He promised to take care of the egg and even if she doesn't keep faith with him, it doesn't matter; "an elephant's faithful, 100%". Why would he do that? He has no special love for Mayzie. Why would he sacrifice for her like that? It's that hope and conviction in him that keeps hims sitting on the egg for months. He may realize that Mayzie is not coming back, or he may not, it doesn't matter. The egg needs him now. Helpless people need to be protected and as far as Horton is concerned, the egg is also a person.

The main problem is that sitting on the egg keeps him from searching for the Whos. When rain and storms come Horton is terribly torn between searching for and protecting the Whos, thereby letting the egg frieze or staying with the egg and hopping the Whos will be alright. He ends up sitting miserably on the egg and worrying.

An elephant sitting on an egg is so ridiculous that when some hunters come through the jungle they decide to capture Horton and sell him to a circus. Horton calls desperately for help and Gertrude hears him and comes to his aid. Unfortunately her tail is so long and heavy that she can't really... fly.... at all. Just when he needed her most and he would have been sure to notice her, Gertrude utterly fail him. All because she had tried to get his by superficiality. What good is a big beautiful tail if you can't help the person you love when he needs you?
It's too late, Horton is taken far across the ocean, egg nest and tree.

End Act One

Yesterday was the last Chant Mass of the year until January.
Now I have to be really creative to find ways to sing with people every week.
Dana took me to see the Big Bing Theory. That was pretty cool. Once again, I love a cappella music! I want to do something like that SO bad. They really own the songs they do, even songs that have been done a thousand times. They are just having fun up there preforming together. That's what I really miss; being in a group where you will probably make a fool of yourself but you're all in it together and you're mostly just having fun. It's something you get in theater but not so often in a choir situation. It makes me miss CYT and Christmas Quartets especially.

Fire of Hope is our only warmth

Have I mentioned that Advent is absolutely my favorite part of the Church year? I think I say that about Holy Week too. But it's not Holy Week now, it's Advent. Or it will be tomorrow. We can't listen to Christmas music in my house until the first Sunday of Advent. I've been waiting FOREVER and I really NEED to sing Christmas carols now. So I was on project playlist looking for nice Christmas music to put up here and I found one of my favorite obscure Advent songs of all time. I can't believe that had it! I wanted an a cappella recording of Veni Emanuel but of course they didn't have that. But they did have Night of Silence. Not a very well preformed version but I LOVE this song SO much that I don't really care. Christmas is not complete unless we sing it. I'm so glad they have guitar in this version. That's important for me cause my dad plays it. Anyway, that made me happy. I should do homework now. I'm not out of school till most of Advent is over but I will make the most of it.

Zita is not the patroness of poetry

That would be really convenient. I have always wanted, very badly, to be into poetry or, even better, to be able to write poetry. I have to write a narrative poem for English Lit and hear I am doing anything but. I guess I've been told too many times that my stories need to be longer and I have lost the ability to say much in few words. Blah. So I sat down to do it and ended up writeing something like a story. I don't know how I'm going to get it down to poetry format and a decent length that wont make my classmates hate me when I have to read it aloud.

I am taking violin lessons this Winter! *dance* I haven't met the teacher they have there yet. They hide her office away under some stairs in a dark corner. It took me forever to find it. Then she wasn't there. Bother. I am going to take voice lessons too but I have to take a few prerequisite classes first. The voice lessons are going to be more important. I am ten times more a singer than a violinist but the violin is still so special to me that I am more excited about that.

So the violin lessons have been bouncing around in my head and the art project I'm doing right now (which you will probably get tired of seeing over Christmas break, so I won't go into detail yet) involves me drawing my violin. So I sat down to write a narrative poem. I wanted to write about something I had actually experienced so it had to be my story and the first thing that came to mind was the violin. Go figure. Do they call that 'stream of consciousness' writing where you just write whatever comes to your mind at the moment. When I do it, it makes for very short, choppy sentences and odd phrases that only make sense to me. A lot like what I do on this blog most of the time. I couldn't write a poem till I know the story I was going to tell so I wrote down what I remember feeling and thinking at two moments long long ago. Only time a sleep will tell if I can make it into a poem.

~*~

"What do you want to play" my mother asked me. Maybe if I'm quiet and don't look up, she will not ask again or expect an answer. Everyone plays an instrument. Someday I would too. But what? Names bounced around in my head, each hopping to be the one that made it into my mouth. Something different, something new. Not the Piano or the Guitar. Dad and Dana played those. But what sound did these other names make. Bassoon? Oboe, Clarinet? That thing that's like a guitar only round. What's that called? Cello, Violin? No, not the violin; every one plays that. I wonder what they sound like. What wonderful sound comes out of a bassoon? The Clarinet has a lovely sounding name but when you strum or pound or blow across it, what music does it make? None of these are safe. This one will be mine. Name... name... "What do you want to play?" My mother asks again. She doesn't know what anxiety she is causing. Panic. Name... name... a different name. "Banjo." I proclaim. My mother blinks. What is a banjo? I think I knew once but the image has flown. I think it has strings. Mother gets an encyclopedia and we look it up. She reads to me about it and I look at the picture. It's that thing that looks like a guitar only round. Darn. That's not mine. I want her to stop. Go away and let me go back to the game I was playing. Forget that I said anything. I'm too little to play the banjo or anything anyway. But she doesn't. She tells dad and our friends. They think it's interesting and always look so surprised. Why can't they forget? They forget all sorts of other things. Like how I'd like a doll for Christmas, and how I don't like cake or chocolate. I have to be introduced to every adult they know who plays the banjo. I have to look interested when they talk to me about it. I have to think of something to say.

Dana has piano lessons down town in a room with lots of electric keyboards and headphones. Dad and I go with her. I'm too little to play the piano. Dana doesn't like to. I wish I could wear the headphones and play so no one could hear but me. Dad is going to get some guitar strings at the music store. We walk together between the tall buildings, in and out of the square patches of sunlight. our shadows stretch in front of us. The music store is filled with warm tingling air. There are instruments everywhere. "Here is a banjo." Dad says. He shows me how to hold it and some chords to play when you are tuning. Dad can play anything. The banjo holds no interest for me. Why don't they forget? I know what most of the instruments are but they hold new magic when they are right there; real and solid. There is a violin on a special stand on a table. It is so quiet there, all by itself. We stare at each other, the violin and I. Violin is graceful and small but I am smaller. The polished wood seems to glow and the gentle swell and curves fill my vision. Someone in the shop is telling me to try it. Try what? They hand me the bow. A strange tool. It feels awkward in my little fist. You are supposed to draw it across the string. I don't want to pick up the instrument itself. It's too big for me. I might drop it. I see the beautiful wooden pieces scattered across the floor. The violin will have to stay where it is. I twist my arm around to draw the bow. Slowly, carefully, gently. Something in me is trembling and the world seems to have fallen completely silent. I can feel how very busy we are when we are trying to hold still. The brightest thing in the room is that wooden instrument. The pale horse hair makes contact with the silvery string. Clumsily, for all my shyness. The music is an awkward scrunchy sound. The shop keeper and dad, who have just appeared again, laugh, not unkindly. I get all jittery and try not to knock anything over as I replace the bow. I smile and laugh too. What a silly noise. Dad pays for his guitar strings and we leave. I look back. There is the violin. It still rings in my ears. I know it was not a nice sound, but it rang. Everything vibrated and tingled. The sound is bigger than me but I made it. I want to do it again.

Tap

One of the things I'm liking about going to school is the library. It's not a very big library, not like the Eastern library or the Gonzaga library but it has a a set of the complete works of Palastrina which is very surprising. The best part for me is that it has a collection of obscure musicals. It's a small colection but they have some of my favorites and some I'd never seen. So weekends have taken on a whole new meaning too. Friday means I check out a musical to watch on Saturday night.
There was this era of movie musicals that might be the golden era. When Judy Garland and Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly and all those classic stars were singing and tapping and doing both at the same time. There are some real duds from that era too. We watched some that dragged so much in the second act and were so depressing that we didn't finish them. But we have found some real gems too.

This is all Heidi's fault, by the way. She posted this amazing video of Gene Kelly tap dancing in roller skates (yes. I'm serious) and I watched it one Friday morning before I went to school. It totally made my day. I don't know why watching people tap dance makes me happy but it does. David likes it too. On my way home I looked at the DVD's in the library and low and behold, the musical from which the song was taken was sitting on the shelf.

It is called It's Always Fair Weather and it was really fun. These three guys were friends during WWII and they swear (to their favorite bar tender) that in ten years they will return from their various life paths and still be as close friends as ever. So they don't see each other for ten years and when they get back to their old favorite pub they find out that they all changed into exactly the sort of people who can't stand each other. The plot doesn't get much more interesting than that, they all kind of reflect on who they wanted to be when they met again and why they didn't become those people. They are set up to appear together on a TV show. None of them know they are going to be on the show together and by show time they have decided that they hate each other, or maybe just themselves. There were a whole bunch of great dance numbers and lots of silliness and a musical fight scene. I love fight scenes in musicals cause they're choreographed like dances and they usually involve lots of furniture smashing. It ended happily which is important for me; I like movies that are uplifting. The roller skate number was the highlight but the rest of it was well worth watching
too.

The other movie I really enjoyed was Three Little Words staring Fred Astair and Red Skelton. It was about a career of a song writing team and their friendship. I love musicals about friendship. Astair's character wants to be a magician but that seems to be the one corner of show business he can't get into with any success. Skelton's character likes baseball. He's just funny. They spend a lot of the movies harassing each other about their childish hobbies. They harass each other about a lot of things actually. But they mean a lot more to each other then they will admit. Lots of songs, lots of dance (it's Fred Astair after all) lots of comedy (Red Selton is hilarious). Both of these are really simple in story and message there are not a lot of show real brilliance as far as music goes; they are not masterpieces, but on a weekend when you just need to relax they were perfect.
See also Summer Stock.

The Big Climb

From the time when you can talk in complete sentences, people are always asking "What are you going to be when you grow up?" I got asked all the time. Even before you can talk people speculate. The thing you are going to 'be' usually refers to the way you will make your living. Sometimes they mean something a little less superficial; ones state in life; married, single, priest, religious. These are the ways people define themselves. When I was little and people would ask it always seemed like they were checking up on me so I wouldn't forget I had a dead line coming up. "You have about twenty two years to figure out how you will define yourself to you'd better be thinking about it." It's a horrible terrifying thing to be the only seven-year-old you know who doesn't have a plan for the future. But where was I going with this.... SPLAT
The Catholic Church says (and I think Protestant Christians would agree) that how you make your living comes second to your personal relationship with your God. The most important thing about your state in life or your place in the world is how it leads you to Christ. Remember in the Gospel (and, typically, I don't remember where or which one it's in or where, silly Catholic) when John the Baptist is preaching and all these different people come to him and ask him what they should be doing with their lives? He tells the tax collectors to quit cheating people etc. pretty common sense, good morality. But the point is that he doesn't tell the tax collectors to get more respectable jobs, he just tells them to do their job honestly. Neither does he tell the soldiers to become tax collectors, they get to God as best they can from where they are. Each of them lives out their own vocation. Your vocation is supposed to be the surest path to God. Everyone is different and so is every one's vocation. (And every vocation fits within the Catholic Church, but that's another rant all together.)
Some years ago someone wrote a musical based on a real person's search for the surest path to God. There are a lot of musicals about people searching for God but this one was a little more explicit. It was especially beautiful in that the character is mainly concerned with loving people; whoever is around, and seeking Christ in them.

When you are looking for that surest path to follow to God there are two things people will tell you to do; (And I speak from personal experience) they will tell you to pray hard and they will tell you to think of every moment, every opportunity, and every person you meet as a vocation. Right now, my vocation is to be a student, a big sister (a little sister) a daughter and various other things. God leads us step by step. Live every day just walking with God in little ways and eventually you will look up and realize you are well on your way on the path God chose for you.

There is a good reason that Sound of Music is so famous. It because it's true; not just cause it's based on a true story, but because Maria's search for her surest path to God is so real. She has it all figured out. She has prepared herself all her life to join a convent. Then, God throws a wrench in her plans via Mother Superior. She is given a whole new place to serve God in a whole new way and has to resign herself to His will. She just takes it one day at a time, trying to understand why God has put her in the house of a sad widow with seven children. She is always guessing at Gods will and she usually gets it half right. She things she's there to prepare the children for their new mother and she's right, sort of, but not really. The amount of love she gives these children that she doesn't even belong to yet is tribute to the love she has for God. "Make me a channel of your peace" St. Francis prayed. That's what Maria is; a channel through which God pours His love on the Trapp family.

Then suddenly she finds herself messing up what she thought was God's plan. There is never a point where she sees that the Baroness is all wrong for the family. We see that as clear as anything, but she never wastes an uncharitable thought on the baroness. As far as she can see, it's God's will for the captain to marry the baroness. Then the baroness tells Maria that the captain is in love with her. That was not supposed to happen. And Maria is in love her him. That was Definitely not supposed to happen. She thinks she has done something terribly wrong. So she flies away back to the Abby where she is sure God really wants her to be. Wrong again. Rogers and Hammerstein did an amazing thing when they wrote some of the songs in this show. Climb Every Mountain is a pretty simple song with not too many words and a beautiful melody. It's a 'Something More' song that puts the search for a vocation into musical theater language. Your spiritual director doesn't usually tell you to follow every rainbow but he might tell you that after a storm, look for the surprise opportunity and open door. The 'dream' in the song is your path to God and it will need all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live. Very cool.

God's plan for Maria is to be the bride, not of Christ, but Christ in Captain von Trapp and the mother of seven happy children. And she continues to live life one step at a time as God leads her.
You all know the songs so I wont tell you how much fun they are. Sometimes they get undervalued cause you hear them so much, but they really are popular for a reason. I really want to know if R&H wrote the vespers and the Alleluia at the beginning. I think they did. I like it.

Karen stranded in a strange library

Karen has two hours of dead time every morning between English Literature and Music Theory. Of course there is homework to do and girls club talks to write and all that important stuff. But is that what I am doing with the laptop I have rented for the two hours? No. But to my credit I'm not on Facebook either. I'm on project play list typing in the titles or first lines of random song I only half remember. I'm in the mood for gospel and spirituals lately. It's very cheerful and hopeful but also quite aware that there are plenty of reasons not to be cheerful and hopeful.

For your information, the voice common to the two duets (Music in the Air and Have a little talk with Jesus) is "sister" Rosetta Tharpe. According to Wikipedia, Rosetta was revolutionary in gospel music because she mixed the jazz and blues and early rock styles into her church music. She shocked the people she sang in church with and was wildly popular with her secular audience. All sorts of people including Elvis name her as an inspiration or a favorite.
I don't know who is singing This Little Light of Mine. But I thought it sounded pretty good. So there it is.
And there is some music from Sister Act and Sister Act II and I know that's just sick and wrong but I can't help it. I like it. As a matter of principal I have to hate those movies but I'm a sucker. I hope I never hear that particular version of the Hail Holy Queen in church but it sure is fun on it's own, even with the phony Latin. The second one was better.

Belated reflections

I wrote this sometime several months ago; maybe early July, when I was missing my violin so much. My mind works at an incredibly slow pace. There is a long period of information gathering, then a long period of processing information and forming opinions (that part can take years) and eventually I might be able to articulate it all. Then, some months later, I feel ready to share. Oh, well, here are some belated opinions on things I heard in Malibu.

The Violin is a really awesome instrument. When I went to Malibu, there was all that emphasis on a cappella as the only kind of music suitable for worship. It got me thinking about why I played violin for five years and why it's still so special to me. Did that make any sense? Probably not. I was hearing people say that man made instruments, like the violin, were unworthy of God's praise. I tried to imagine going to church and never hearing anything but the human voice. There is that saying about singing and praying twice. I can't remember which way it goes now cause our choir director always said "he who sings prays twice." but I seem to remember hearing "he who prays twice sings." That has always made a lot of sense for me, either way. I plan to spend most of my eternity singing. Ah, heaven, where there is no such things as a sore throat. But the problem with singing your prayer is that singing almost always involves words. Catholics have the reputation (mostly true) for being no good at spontaneous prayers, we're just an inarticulate lot when it comes to talking to our creator. It's just so much easier to say what we mean by reciting psalms or the Lords Prayer. But sometimes even these fail us and this is the reason I can't say that only the human voice can truly worship God.

When you play an instrument like a violin, you end up carting it around with you a lot of places. Carrying it around so much, I always harbored a hope that I would find myself in an empty church with my violin and no one else around. It happened a few times and I would play all the hymns I could think of by ear plus some improvisations of my own and this was a deep form of prayer for me. I didn't need words. Words would not have been enough.

Anyone who has heard some of the religious music of Bach and so many others knows you don't really need the words to pray those songs. After the communion hymn is over in some parishes there is an instrumental piece which serves as a meditation. I hate it when they pick songs with words for that, it kind of defeats the purpose: they should have songs that let every heart provide it's own words or let Jesus sing to each heart alone.

Our Lady of Sorrows.

September means a lot of things to people: the end of summer, back to school, so many things starting and ending. The month is dedicated to Mary in the Catholic Church. It sure seems like a lot of months are dedicated to Our Lady but I can't think of anyone better to dedicate September to. Specifically, September is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. Mary has a lot of titles too. But when you think about it, everyone has a lot of titles, no one is just one thing to everyone.
The Church gives us these feast days for Our Lady to call attention to some aspect of her that may be helpful to us in our journey to heaven. There are seven moments of sorrow in Mary's life that we are asked to reflect on:

1. The Prophecy of Simeon.
2. The Flight into Egypt.
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus for Three Days.
4. Meeting Jesus on the Way to Calvary.
5. The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus.
6. Jesus Taken Down from the Cross.
7. Jesus Laid in the Tomb.

There you pretty much have the spectrum of suffering for a womanly heart: Impending doom through the death and burial of a child.
I could rant about how amazing Mary is for a very long time. Our Lady of Sorrows is possibly my favorite Marian feast. When I read the scripture accounts of the seven sorrows and put myself in Mary's place, reflecting on her feelings and thoughts as a mother, as a woman, and I know she had perfect trust in God, (as she demonstrated when she agreed to bare His Son) my respect and admiration for her grows so much. And, just as she said in the Magnificat, I always find myself thanking God and seeing Him magnified in her.

I put two different settings of the Stabat Mater on the music player. The Stabat Mater is a beautiful prayer in Latin that is traditionally associated with the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. It depicts Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Lots of composers have written music for this prayer. The English translation is also very nice though when you sing it, it must be in Latin. My favorite version is a very modern choral piece that I heard the Gonzaga choir sing two years ago. I can't remember the composers name. But anyway, these two are kind of interesting cause they contrast so much. I've heard the first one somewhere before but the more modern one is totally new to me and I'm not sure what I think of it. There's no rule that says you can't have a synthesizer in a setting of Stabat Mater but somehow is seems wrong to me. Not to mention the drums.
Here is the English translation:

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.


Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
all His bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.


O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blest,
of the sole-begotten One.


Christ above in torment hangs,
she beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.


Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?


By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.


She beheld her tender Child,
Saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His spirit forth He sent.


For the sins of His own nation,
She saw Jesus wracked with torment,
All with scourges rent:


Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother's pain untold?


O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
make my heart with thine accord:


Make me feel as thou hast felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.


Holy Mother! pierce me through,
in my heart each wound renew
of my Savior crucified:


Let me share with thee His pain,
who for all my sins was slain,
who for me in torments died.


Let me mingle tears with thee,
mourning Him who mourned for me,
all the days that I may live:


Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.


Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;


Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;


Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.


Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;


When my body dies,
let my soul be granted
the glory of Paradise. Amen.

Opera Spaghetti

Opera tastes like spaghetti. When ever I hear La Traviata I think of my dad and my grandparents and I smell spaghetti. It's so much fun to be Italian.
Opera is an acquired taste. And that doesn't mean it's something you like if you are forced to listen to it and there is nothing else available; like freeze dried meals. No one really likes them but you definitely acquire a taste for it when your other option is a peanut butter flavored power bar.
Opera is like the spaghetti sauce my dad makes with four or five cloves of garlic; it's REALLY good, but NOT for the fainthearted. You have to redefine your idea of what is normal cause it's a little bit extreme but once you do there are whole new levels of enjoyment to be explored.

Burnt Marsh-wiggle of La Mancha

Dana says she and her friend Tristen talk about what's wrong with the world sometimes. I don't think I've ever done that with one of my friends. Not seriously. No wait, I guess that's what me and Millie did at the library the other day. Anyway. It's just so easy to get depressed with a conversation like that. What sometimes needs talking up is being a decent person despite the overwhelming number of people who will think you are crazy for it. To stand up to the things that are wrong with the world is the hard part. In a lot of ways I can't make much of a difference in the world but I have to try anyway. So, where am I going with this? And what does it have to do with the title of this post? *Karen tries for several moments to remember* oh yes, the next musical on my list of favorites deals with this hopeless situation we find ourselves in when we are trying to live as citizens of the Kingdom of Christ in fallen, corrupt world. The Man of La Mancha smells of Burnt Marsh-Wiggle.

I have never managed to read Crevantes' Don Quixote so I don't know how the book compares to the musical as far as plot and such. I'm not very good at plot summaries anyway.
The whole play is written with all these layers of metaphor. It's set in a dungeon where the pensioners are acting out the story together under the direction of Crecantes. We weave in and out of Crevantes' dream and Don Quxiote's.
This musical is on my list because the message (which everyone ought to hear) is so inseparable from the music and the music from the story. This is the way musicals are supposed to be.

Content warning: There is much adult content in this story. It is not always handled tactfully. Certainly PG-13 rating for sexual content. Generally, I don't like shows like that. Phantom of the Opera could have been a little higher up on the list if it wasn't for all the sensuality in it. La Mancha is an exception because, although it's much worse than Phantom in that regard, the sexual content serves a purpose in the story and is not meant to be a crowd pleaser.

Don Quixote is out on his quest to right all wrongs. Righting all wrongs includes slaying windmills and (in one really fun song) rescuing a legendary helmets from a traveling barbers who has mistaken it for a shaving basin. It also involves defending the honor of a woman whom Quixote calls Dulcinea and everyone else knows as Aldonza. Aldonza makes her living selling drinks and food and herself to whatever man walks into her inn. Not much honor to defend. Quixote doesn't see it that way. He sees Aldonza as she was meant to be (Dulcinea) and raises her up out of the life she has been living to something more worthy of her. Aldonza thinks he's crazy. Okay, he is crazy but maybe being crazy is better than being sane and hateful like Aldonza is. First she mocks him with everyone else, but she finds she cannot laugh at him. Why? He lives in a dream world where good always triumphs over evil and people are moral and honorable by default. What Does He Want of Me, she sings (Gorgeous song)

"no one can be what he wants me to be."

The real world simply isn't like that. Aldonza has a very dim view of the world. She can only hate it and she cannot comprehend Quixote who seems to love it even when it is just as cruel to him as it has been to her. Taking her hate from her leaves Aldonza with only despair (or so she tells him in one of her songs) but Quixote is full of hope even in the face of his hopeless quest.

The only recordings I could find from this show are sung by a British guy. And it's obvious. It might be Peter O'Toole cause he plays Quixote in the movie version. I've never seen it. This is really wrong because the actor who play Don Quixote should at least fake a Spanish accent if he doesn't have one naturally. I hear the movie makers cast with singing ability second to acting. That's a matter of opinion I guess. I don't think I would like it. And I absolutely refused to put Frank Sinatra singing the Impossible Dream. It's just wrong. *Sigh* the recordings I find are seldom what I was hoping for. My apologies, you all need to go find the sound track with Placido Domingo.
There is so much passion in these songs. Some of them, I cannot sing along to because they are not G rated but the ones that are clean are very beautiful. I love the Spanish flavor; the brass and the castanets. Ah! It's so good!

Other favorites of mine from this show are "I Really Like Him" in which Quixote's faithful 'squire' Sancho attempts to explain his devotion to a bewildered Aldonza. Okay, any time Sancho sings it's great fun. While Don Quixote lies dyeing his servant comes to his bed side with 'a little gossip' mostly to cheer himself up, since Quixote is unconscious. He's full of common sense and nonsense.
And there is this little song... Quixote's death scene is very moving and at the end, while Dulcinea and Sancho try to make sense of the mans life the good Padre sings a prayer under their dialog and it might be my favorite part in the whole sound track. Maybe it's just cause it's in Latin. *grin*

The Man of La Mancha opens

Hear me now, or thou bleak and unbearable world
thou art base and debauched as can be.
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled
Now throws down his gauntlet to thee!

That may be the theme song and opening number but The Quest is really the heart of the show. It pretty much sums it up.

Quixote: It is the mission of each true knight, his duty, nay, his privilege..
{sing}
To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chase from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest: to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right, without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause.
And I know if I only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this;
That one man, scorned and covered with scares
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreadable star

*Squeek*

Every summer of my life a terrible thing happens; what ever it was that I was doing musically for the rest of the school year, be it theater, youth symphony, choir, whatever, it stops. In a way this is a relief. Whatever I do, I always end up leaving out and neglecting part of my musical interests. Some years I did a lot of violin and not singing, sometimes it's all musical theater and no Church music to be heard. So when summer starts I dust off whatever it was that got left out and play around with it on my own for a few weeks of summer. It's nice to have time for variety. So this year, and for the last few years, actually, my poor violin had been sadly attention starved.

When we had our floors refinished all our bigger instruments, the guitars mostly, got hauled down to my parents room and we never bothered to bring them back up. My fiddle was down there with them and the other day mom cleaned her room and brought them all up and left them in the living room for us to deal with. So I was innocently typing on the computer (okay, I'll admit it, I was probably on Facebook) when I heard my violin calling me. It was calling for help cause my six year old sister had it and was... I don't know what she was trying to do with it but it sounded desperate. I ended up clipping my finger nails and spending about an hours quality time with my old four stringed friend. Boy, three years of not practicing sure don't do anything for your tone. It doesn't help your memory either. I couldn't even remember my favorite Suzuki standards. I knew that would happen. But it was still sad. So here I am complaining about my own failure to practice.

So that's why there has been all that violin music playing here. I'm going through withdrawal. I get opera arias stuck in my head and get chills when someone sings really well and I'm sure there is nothing quite as beautiful as my favorite motets by Byrd. Then I find myself at a symphony concert featuring Sarah Chang and I'm totally hypnotized, hardly breathing. *sigh* Someday I'll have time to be a singer and a violinist. I feel like Sam; always torn in two.

All I need is *mublesomthingaboutkissingmumble* and music, Music, MUSIC!

It's been a long, full week. So I'm going to rant about it now. I guess I shouldn't use the word 'rant,' cause that kind of implies that I'm angry about it. Wouldn't want to give that impression. I tend to use that word to mean that I have a lot of thoughts on the subject in my head and they are going to be spilled all over the place and probably not in anything like a logical fashion. I don't know what you would call that if it's not ranting. It's too late to think of good words. In any case, I don't think I'm capable of doing this sort of 'ranting' out loud (and my sisters would get sick of it and stubbornly change the subject) so I put it on the blog.

For those of you who don't know, I was at an a cappella sacred music symposium at Peperdine University. Let's see if I can find a link... There we go. The Ascending Voice

Peperdine is a Christian university; Church of Christ by denomination. I didn't know anything about the Church of Christ. Apparently they have a long standing tradition of using only a cappella music in their worship. So they put on this symposium to celebrate this tradition and invited some other faith traditions to come and share their love of a cappella. So the Gregorian Schola got to go and me with them.

The Schola being respectable musicians And in proper concert formation in our starched white robes. Who would guess we are capable of so much Dufay? Don't be fooled by the innocent looks.

I have always loved singing with people more than anything in the world. It's never mattered much what we sing or how we were accompanied as long as I got to blend my voice with someone else's. This is still true but now I can say that a cappella music is my favorite. This week was Amazing.

There were all sorts of choirs and little groups who came and sang throughout each day and panels and presentations and workshops in between. The presentations were great and I learned all sorts of interesting things but the performances were my favorite part. There was not a single group that I didn't enjoy but I tend to gravitate
towards the simpler music. I enjoyed the really polished, complex music like a grommet meal but I really prefer the spirituals and simple harmonizations for everyday wear and tear. I guess that's cause I've been raised on so much folk music and the like.

The 'schola gang.' Don't we look fierce? Wouldn't want to meet us in a dark alley would you. We might sing Terra Tremuit at you or something.

Our concert went really well. We have worked hard on it since November. When we practiced together in the common room of our dorm for the first time since school got out I think we were a bit nervous cause our end of the year concert was recorded and we had all heard that it was not particularly brilliant. So we started working really hard and things started to click. We did a months worth of singing together in about three days and we went from sounding okay to sounding quite lovely in most places and pretty darn good everywhere else. I really wish I could hear or see a recording. I personally was not at my best cause I was quite sick a few hours before we sang. Someone must have been praying cause I recovered very quickly. That's an other story. But I did alright, I think. I have grown SO much as a singer in the last year it amazes me. I'm amazed at my own musical brilliance. Just kidding. I have a long way to go but Dr. Ed has picked on me enough this year for me to hear a significant difference. Now, if I only I can keep it up...

Under all this excitement was a bitter sweetness cause we knew that our director Dr. Ed was leaving and probably not coming back. This was his last concert with us. We were at the air port home at last and suddenly he was getting in his car and driving away and I realized that that was good bye for a very long time. Sad.
Dr. Ed
It's up to us students to continue the schola now. The director they hired to replace Ed for the first year is very talented and knowledgeable but it takes some specialized knowledge and skill to direct the schola and not many people have it. There are simply not many people out there with a passion for Gregorian Chant. The fellow we have for the next year is not even Catholic. How do you lead a musical group thats main purpose is to sing at a service you don't understand or believe in? So it's all up to us. What big shoes to fill! And we will just miss Ed for his own sake of course.

So, it was an amazing week. On top of all the music, Peperdine is a pretty nice place. You have to walk up a lot of hills and stairs but at least we stayed in shape and there were all these deer that pretty much owned the campus. There was a whole family of them that wouldn't let me walk to my dorm one evening. They were stubbornly standing in my path and looking at me as if they were considering getting a camera to take a picture of the strange creature that wondered into their yard as if it owned the place. Okay, my sentences are getting really long. I better stop now.

When you spot a John waiting out in the rain.

Speaking of great New York accents... What do you get when you mix a bunch of gamblers, a night club singer, and... a salvation army missionary? Hehehe. Guys and Dolls of course. My dear friend Tristen took me to see the local Civic Theater production of this show several years ago and I've been hooked ever since.

The story goes something like this: Nathan Detroit runs a floating crap game which is highly illegal. "The heat is on" and finding a place where they can do their gambling is a real problem. The only available venue demands $1000 in advance. All of Nathan's friends are counting on him. he has a reputation to hold up. And all the big gamblers are in town loaded with dough and looking of action. We learn all this in some colorful dialog between Nathan and some of his henchmen (including 'Nicely Nicely' Johnson who is my favorite) and a song sang by the local gamblers "The Oldest Established"

By the way, it's Nathan's anniversary. The anniversary of his engagement to Adelaide, a night club singer star. They've been engaged to be married for several years... fourteen, actually. Nathan wants to wait till he's in the money and Adelaide wants him to get a steady job that doesn't involve breaking the law. Adelaide is putting on the pressure for Nathan to marry her already. All the waiting around has given Adelaide a terrible cold. Her song Adelaide's Lament is comic genius. Nathan is considerably stressed out about his dice game as it is and it doesn't help that he has to hide his involvement in the game from her.

But the answer to that dilemma is coming into town. A famous gambler named Sky Masterson has come into New York looking for some action. Sky has a reputation for taking very unusual bets at very high stakes. But he's also not a "chump." (Gambler lingo for a gullible sucker.) Nathan tries to get him to stake a thousand bucks on a rigged bet. Sky doesn't fall for it but they get to talking. They talk about women. There is a difference of opinion because Nathan firmly believes that Adelaide is something special but Sky is pretty sure that all women are the same. He could find a doll this afternoon, take her to Havana tonight and get rid of her tomorrow when he comes back.
Would you put money on that? Say one thousand dollars?
Sure, name the doll.
And who should walk by just then but Sarah Brown.
That one!

Sarah is a Salvation Army missionary who is determined to convert the sinners of New York. Or she was, but she has been coming up against some road blocks. She hasn't converted a single sinner since she came here. Her mission is in danger of being closed. Then in walks Sky Masterson. He is a very successful gambler who has come to repent and be saved. He is very eager in fact. Sarah is suspicious of him from the start. Why would a successful gambler feel the need to amend his life anyway? And it unnerves her that he knows the Bible better than she does. She has serious doubts about his sincerity.
Sky is getting no where with his 'all dolls are pretty much the same' theory. Sarah wont be swept off her feet. She's a mission doll. She has a very firm idea of what the man who sweeps her off her feet will be like. And he will NOT be a gambler. "I'll Know" Sarah sings

"for I've imagined every bit of him, from his strong moral fiber to the wisdom in his head"

Sky says this is ridiculous.

"What are you picking, a guy or a horse?"

But we find out something interesting about Sky; in front of Nathan he says that doll are things to have around only when they are useful "like cough drops" but with Sarah he betrays his longing for perfect love. He is waiting for someone special too. He doesn't have a list a qualities that this girl will posses but like Sarah he is certain he will know her with she comes along.
This is a musical and at the end of a long song, even if it's not a lover singing to his love, there has to be a kiss. Sky thinks he's made some progress with that but she changes his mind with a solid slap across the face.
So he switches to gambler business mode. If Sarah come to Havana with him, he will bring her a dozen sinners to convert and therefor save her mission. After much deliberation she agrees to go with him for the sake of the mission.

Nathan is waiting for Nicely and the others to bring him the news of Sarah and Sky. All the gamblers are assembled in a diner and ready to shoot crap. They are wearing carnations as a ticket to get into the place. Nathan's luck is never very good, but it's especially bad today. Both the police and Adelaide catch him here and want to know what's going on. It looks pretty suspicious, all those known gamblers together, just hanging out. Thinking fast, one of his buddies helpfully tells Adelaide and the cop that they are celebrating a bachelor party for Nathan who is eloping that night. That satisfies the cop for now, and thrills Adelaide of course. And both leave without knowing that the game is still on. But then the other guys get back to tell Nathan that Sky and Sarah are on a plane to Havana. This throws Nathan into a panic. He's lost the bet. He now owes Sky $1,000 and he still has no place to shoot crap! But, at Sky's suggestion, the other missionaries at the Salvation Army have gone on a crusade in the dead of night leaving their mission empty and unguarded. Perfect.

In Havana Sarah finds that she is having a good time... a very good time. Okay, Sky gets her a little tipsy and than doesn't stop her from getting a little drunk. What a jerk. But this is a musical and in musicals when the prudish girl is finally forced out of her shell she finds that she was made to love and be loved. Suddenly she feels more alive than ever before, something is very right. "If I Were a Bell I'd be ringing"

Sky has run up against a little problem. He's in love with her. He wasn't going to fall for that. Now he's caught the epidemic that has been sweeping the nation. As Nicely and Benny (Nathan's henchmen) observed when discussing Nathan's devotion to Adelaide in the title song

"Love is the thing that has licked 'em"

and Sky has joined Nathan on the list of victims. He finds that he wants to share things with her that he has never told anyone. His real name, he confides to Sarah, is Obedia Masterson. He takes her back to New York and shows her the streets at night. "My time of day" is about a minute long and it's high on my favorite song list. I don't really know why. Something about the accompaniment.... I like it.
There are two other love songs both of which I really like. I've Never Been in Love Before is in the live play and comes just after My Time of Day. Surprisingly, it is Sky (or Obedia) who first professes this. The one in the movie is Eyes of a Woman in Love. It bugs me in the movie that they overuse the tune so much that by the time they actually sing the words you're really sick of it. The movie bugs me in general. And I'm not a fan of Sinatra in musicals. It's a very pretty song. Both are kind of quiet; two people observing mildly that they are in love with each other and it's a very new feeling or both of them. I love duets.

Unfortunately the mood is completely broken when Sky walks Sarah back to the mission just in time to see Nathan and his gamblers running out as fast as they can to avoid the police. This looks VERY bad. The missionaries left at the suggestion of a gambler only so that the very sin against which they fight can be committed in the mission! Sarah is furious. Sky is determined to make it up to her. He can't convince her that he had nothing to do with bringing the crap shooters to the mission. He still has to hold up his end of the deal. He leaves to find a dozen or more sinners to bring back to her.

Where does he find the gamblers? Well, he has to do a little searching. He goes to the theater where Adelaide works to find Nathan. He finds Nicely there waiting to break it to Adelaide that she will not be getting married tonight. They are still shooting crap and don't show any signs of stopping. Adelaide is heart broken that Nathan is running the game behind her back and, of course that she will have to wait, yet again, for her plain little band of gold.

Sky leave her in tears and goes to find Nathan. Where? In the sewer. Where else would you shoot crap. The problem is, there is this gambler named Big Jule. He has money to gamble away and he's a terrible bully. While they were playing in the mission he was loosing... badly. So he wont let anyone leave or stop playing until he has won some back. He starts playing on credit. Then he pulls out his own dice... with no dots on them. But don't worry, he remembers where they were. No one would stand for this but he's a great big guy and no one wants to stand up to him. Using his blank dice, he starts to roll away the money Nathan has been making on the game. Just then Sky shows up. He plays a few rounds (with real dice) and his luck is looking good. Then he give them the real deal. He stakes some big money against the souls of the gamblers. If he wins, they have to go to a prayer meeting at the Salvation Army mission. Since the gamblers don't value their souls so much anyway, they have no objection. Sky, on the other hand has everything to loose. This is where he sings Luck be a Lady.

Classically, the lights go down just as Sky throws the dice. But we have very little doubt that he wins the roll. The next thing we see is Nathan coming up out of the sewer only to meet Adelaide. She wants to elope. NOW. Nathan, always trying to get out of tying the knot, manages his best excuse yet "I gotta go to a prayer meeting!" The one time he is actually telling the truth and does she believe him? Of course not! Nathan going to a prayer meeting? Filthy lier! Cheers for rant songs! Adelaide rants at him and good! She has a lot of complaints to unload. And when she runs out of breath Nathan comes in humbly singing "Call a lawyer sue me, sue me, what can you do me? I love you!" What an aggravating man. She launches into another round of frustrations and again he comes back "Sue me, sue me." The fact remains. Nathan loves her. And Adelaide loves him. What are you gonna do?

The prayer meeting has started and it looks as if Sarah's mission is saved. Nathan shows up a little late. Sky is not there but he has told Nathan that Sarah did not actually go with him to Havana and therefore Nathan has won the bet. Nathan feels the need to apologize to Sarah for their illegal activities in her mission. He tells her the truth. The whole truth. The fact that the whole trip to Havana was for the sake of a bet does not sound well in Sky's favor but the fact that he isn't making Nathan pay seems hopeful. Then the police show up. Someone reported that the gamblers were seen leaving the mission. Can the missionaries please identify the men that were there? The moment or truth.
No, officer, I have never seen these men before.
The Gamblers are starting to enjoy the prayer meeting. Nicely gives his testimony "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" and everyone is having a rollicking good time.

Sarah slips out to think a bit, humming I've Never Been in Love Before slowly. She finds Adelaide outside too. She's muttering a reprise to her Lament. Cool, how those two songs fit together. They compare notes briefly. There may be a solution to their dilemma. A plot is formed: get commitment now, get reform later. Okay, I think it's a stupid idea but I love this song so I will forgive the bad judgment on the part of the poor frustrated ladies. Marry the Man Today reminds me, strangely enough, of Cruella de Vil. It's the evil plot song. That evil plot drum beat. I don't know, it's really fun. They get so excited

"Give him your hand today and save the fist for after."

So the next thing poor Nathan and Sky know, their married to their dolls and starting to live respectable lives.

That was long and I even skipped some songs. I found the opening song, Fugue for Tinhorn, so that's on the playlist. I wish I could put some others on there.
Why is this one of my favorite shows? It has something to do with the craziness of the story, the jazzy, big band, big city sound of the music, the comedy of the characters and I feel uplifted at the end when Nathan catches a cold at his wedding. Sarah actually succeeds in converting Sky and he joins the missionaries. That's a big deal and a very happy ending. You don't get stories where the sinners actually give up their evil ways much anymore. Sky decides that virtue and being married to a beautiful virtuous girl is more fun than living in hotels and gambling every night. I guess it all comes down to the fact that I love to sing the songs, and I care about the characters.

King of New York

I was going to have Lion King as the next musical. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that I like it almost entirely for the music. It has a decent story and characters and all that. But without the African music that they added specially for Broadway, I would never have thought of it. So honorable mention goes to Lion King. And also to The Music Man and My Fair Lady which didn't make this list for similar reasons.

I'm breaking a rule. I said I wasn't going to add any off stage musicals. Musicals are best enjoyed live but now and then there are movie musicals that would be incredible live but no one has ever managed it. I don't know if anyone has produced Newsies professionally but if they haven't, they should.

Newsies is the ultimate kid power movie and it's based on a true story. It stars a bunch of orphan or impoverished boys who hawk news papers for a living. When the newspaper owner (Mr. Pulitzer) decide to raise the price the Newsies pay for their papers, two boys rally the Newsies and other child laborers from all over New York together and go on strike. Can a bunch of kids stand up to the most powerful men in New York? Can they win?

The cast of characters is incredible. Many times in musicals there are a few main character and a chorus of townspeople or whatever. If chorus members are going to have any character of their own it's up to the actors to put them in cause the writers could care less. Not so with Newsies. Each boy in the Newsie chorus has a name and a character and the writers support them even if they don't have time to develop them fully. There are still some main Newsies that you get to know better than the others but if you watch carefully you can get to know about lots of the others. This adds a brilliant bit of depth to all the chorus songs cause when a boy gets a solo line it always fits with his character. The chorus numbers are jewels in this show. The dancing and singing has a very 'boy' feel to it. It's rowdy, wild, teasing, rough housing, riotous fun had by all with some fist fighting mixed in. With all the action (Warning: there are some pretty violent scenes) if it wasn't a musical it would have to be classified as an adventure movie. And they all talk like New Yorkers of course and this makes it even better.

Jack: You only took 20 papes; why?
David: It's a bad headline.
Jack: Well, dat's da foist thing ya gotta learn - headlines don't sell papes. Newsies sell papes.

We meet our main Newsie pretty early in the opening number. "Carrying the Banner" doubles as character development, exposition of the setting, and comic relief as the Newsies are getting ready to go out and peddle the papes. Musically it's challenging cause, though it starts out very simple, the writer kept adding more counter melodies weaving in and out. The Newsies are a harmony singing mob! But back to our main character. His name is Jack Kelly (or so he says. He has a habit of "improving the truth") and he wants out of New York more than anything else. He wants to go west to Santa Fe where he can escape crowds and the police of New York. He has all the other Newsies calling him Cowboy. What Jack's crime is I don't remember so it must not be important but there is a very nasty, cheating, crooked juvenile delinquent officer after him and we have every reason to hope that he is not caught. He is a natural leader and the Newsies look to him like a big brother. He is sure he doesn't need anyone but he sure likes being needed. His only real loyalty is to himself and his dream: "Santa Fe." There's another 'something more' song for you.
The other Newsie leader is David. David is only a Newsie temporarily while his father recovers from an injury that cost him his job. David is under confident and mild mannered. His little brother Less is better at selling the papers than David is due to Less' big little-boy eyes. Originally, Jack sees Less as a potential business partner. Jack's street smarts and Less' irresistible face will make the two of them highly successful Newsies. But David wont put up with such an arrangement and argues his way into the deal.
The friendship between David and Jack challenges both of them to learn from each other. Jack has to learn some loyalty and David has to learn some courage. This process of growth involves some painful wounds on both sides. But they come through alright. In that way you could say that Newsies is a coming of age story.

When the Newspaper owners hike the price of papers for the Newsies it is David's idea to form their own union and fight back. But it is Jack who takes the initiative and has the courage to act on it. They convince the other Newsies to fight back in "The World Will Know" So the partnership is formed: David's brains and Jack's charisma. A third vital member is added to this team when a news reporter named Denton stumbles onto the scene of the Newsies strike. Denton sees the potential and the larger issue at stake in this David and Goliath story. He writes it up for his paper and the Newsies make the headline. Now their unstoppable. As Racetrack says

"You get your picture in the papes, you're famous. You're famous, you get anything you want. That's what's so great about New York."

Here follows my favorite song: "King of New York" which includes dancing on table and spinning while hanging from ceiling fans. YES!!
The strike spreads to all the other New York papers as Pulitzer's Newsies prove that they aren't going to loose heart. Characteristically, David encourages the rough Newsies with a hymn-like song "Seize the Day" which they immediately take and add tin can drums to and make into rousing rally song. Their courage and conviction attracts other Newsies groups from all over New York. Even the famous Spot Conlon and his gang from Brooklyn. (Spot is a big favorite of mine.)

Jack: So, what about Brooklyn? Who wants Brooklyn? C'mon, Spot Conlon's territory.
[the newsies look at each other]
Jack: Whats'a matta, you scared of Brooklyn?
Boots: Hey, we ain't scared of Brooklyn!
[pauses]
Boots: Spot Conlon makes us a little nervous.

"David: I've never been to Brooklyn - have you guys?
Boots: Spent a month there one night. "

Then things get ugly. Pulitzer hires thugs to beat the Newsies into submission. Newsies are arrested during a rally.

(Spot Conlon: Your honor, I object.
Judge Monahan: On what grounds?
Spot Conlon: On the grounds of Brooklyn, your honor. )

There is bribery and black mail and Jack is forced to turn scab for a chance to make his Santa Fe dream come true. Denton can't write for the Newsies anymore cause no one will print it. Pulitzer, leading all the other papers in town, has adopted the tactic: If it's not in the papers, it didn't happen. If no one knows about the Newsies strike and the brute force that is being used to deter them, no one can support them. But there is one more story to be written and there is an old press in Pulitzers basement where they are keeping Jack prisoner. Jack, David, Denton and David's sister Sarah (cause they had to have a token girl and a love interest for Jack) sing "Once and for All" as they publish their story with mounting intensity. The ragged army of Newises join in as they spread their story to all the voiceless kids in New York. Pulizter can't ignore or silence them anymore. It's not just about the Newsies, it's about the child labor force of all New York! That's the power of the press.

"When you got a million voices singing, who can hear a lousy whistle blow?"