We just finished weekend one of Jesus Christ Superstar and I’ll go into that in detail in a bit.
First, the country is going through such stuff and it’s so big that I thought I should sometimes just pick one particular facet and tell you what I think. Today, it will be “American exceptionalism“.
I think it’s fine to think of America as “the best country in the world”. Just like I think it’s fine to think of one’s house as the ‘best house on the block’. It’s my (our) country and I love it and I don’t want to not be American. But thinking of America as the ‘best country in the world’ just because it’s America, or because of the way it was founded (and entitled to ‘be special’ in the world order) is to tempt yourself into the next thought, which is ‘it’s great the way it is’. Your house may be the best house on the block, but you still have to clean the gutters. My country, America, has many problems, as all countries do, and it’s not great if we are not trying to fix the current problems and atone for our past mistakes.
There is a tendency in this country, when someone suggests that we have some problem or other and maybe we should fix it, to fire back with ‘why do you hate America’? No, no, it’s not hating America to recognize problems and want to fix them – that’s care, that’s concern, that’s love. Ignoring the problems and letting them fester – or worse, encouraging them – is the real hate for America.
The America I want to live in is one where everyone has a place to live, enough to eat, health care and education provided, and the freedom to live our lives any way we want to as long as it doesn’t interfere with others living their lives they way they want to. Seems pretty basic – I wish our talking heads would always start from there any time they’re covering a current problem. This is our baseline, this is why ‘current situation’ is a problem, because it interferes with that.
And of course I could go on and on, and return to this again and again – and probably will. But not today.
OK, moving on. So, yeah, I did spent Oscar night with Josh and Mariah, who then, unfortunately, moved out of our building and off to Riverside Drive. Was it something I said? Oscars were fun, and I was delighted Anora won what it did. Adrian Brody apparently grew up in this neighborhood and went to school across the street from me, but judging from his Oscar speech, he’s not someone I want to get trapped at a party with.
J&M were anxious to get rid of stuff before they moved and I took one of their bookcases, as well as bags and bags of CDs and a box of paperbacks. All the CDs are now ripped to my hard drive, and I’ve replaced my old CD racks with the bookcase, which will hold more. I finally ordered the new bookcase for the living room, to match the one that’s already there, for the music library. So there’s an organizational order of operations coming up:
- New bookcase arrives.
- All music scores (mostly opera and musical theater full scores) move from the blond-wood bookcase in the office to the living room.
- CD box sets and binders move to J&M’s bookcase or the blond bookcase.
- Other bookshelves get rearranged, including getting that carton of paperbacks shelved.
And then my little organizational heart will be happy. Happier.
Speaking of books… I’m reading two print books right now. The Sol Majestic was given to me by my brother and it’s a queer SF book set at a super high-end restaurant on a space station. I like it a lot, but it’s really weird. And then Brat by Andrew McCarthy. I know why I wanted to read it, I don’t know why I put it on my gift list to get it in hardback… anyway, it’s a standard memoir. His description of St. Elmo’s Fire reminded me that I’ve only seen that movie once, and I found it disconcerting. And the reason I found it disconcerting is all these actors were presenting characters graduating from college (and were the right age for that), but they were all identified in our minds as high school kids. So it was like, wait, what are they doing in college, let alone graduating? Then Andrew McCarthy made Pretty in Pink (a high school movie) after that. Good lord, how confusing.
(speaking of Brat Pack, I’m watching two different TV series that feature Anthony Michael Hall in older-guy roles, and that’s disconcerting too, although he looks nothing like his ‘geek’ days.)
On Kindle, I’m enjoying some oddities. Way back about the time I moved to town, I remember reading Robertson Davies’s The Lyre of Orpheus and finding it completely charming. It’s the third book of a series, the Cornish trilogy, but I never went back and read the others, or any other Davies, until now. I’m reading the complete trilogy and it’s completely odd and, yes, as charming as I remember.
Also, as a lifelong Travis McGee fan, it’s always a treat to somehow come up with another John D. MacDonald novel I haven’t read, and I’m currently reading A Key to the Suite, not a crime novel exactly, but a potboiler set at a convention in Florida. Published in 1962, it’s really intriguing, particularly since I’m familiar with the convention setting.
And I read Lucy Score’s latest, Story of My Life, a (hetero) romance, hysterically funny and sweet. Highly recommended.
Yeah, so, Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ve said before, Sam and I inhaled both the JCS and Godspell albums in our early childhood. There was much to love in JCS, although I don’t adore it like I do Godspell, and I figured out years later that it had trained me aurally in such a way that weird time signatures don’t bother me very much. But I’d never seen it on stage and it never occurred to me that I’d get to be part of a production.
But my buddy, impresario Will Remmers, decided that his company, Utopia Opera, was gonna do JCS and what’s more, do it in the huge symphonic arrangement that no one ever does. I raised my hand to be in the horn section – there are actually 4 horns in this arrangement, although we only have 3. The orchestra is fully stocked, including oboes, bassoons and tuba, plus your standard rock rhythm section (with which I have little to no experience) and a raft of percussion. We’re not only flooding the stage, but have flowed back into the room behind.
It’s a semi-staged concert, and is quite deliberately, um, gender-fluid. Lots of male roles are played by women, and our Jesus is a trans lady of color – all really talented. The cast is miked, so we don’t really have to worry about balance, and thank goodness for that.
I realized, as we had our first rehearsal, I am pretty much twice the age of 95% of the cast and orchestra members. I guess I gotta get used to that sort of thing happening more and more. I’m amused that this score to these kids is ancient, but they are getting into it like no one’s business. And then I think about how much time I spend delightedly performing shows that were written the century before I was born. So, yeah, guess it’s all good if the material is good.
There is much of this score I think is fun fun fun. I remembered as a kid there were definite parts of the album that I thought were boring – and yeah, it turns out at 60, I still think they’re boring, so I guess my palate hasn’t matured at all. But what a great opportunity it’s been to really learn this score (again) as an adult, from the inside. The horn parts are fun, too!
So… one more weekend, come see our show!
More soon, including a trip at the end of the month and more performing once JCS is over.
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