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rmI'm really really glad I decided to buy and listen to the Boheme CD before going to see it. As much as everyone has been, "Oh it's really accessible", it really hasn't been to me, largely because it's all about the sopranos, which, as someone with a low voice, isn't something I can relate to well enough to appreciate often times. Also, with an introduction to opera via Acis & Galatea, I have this sense of opera as being more closely related to choral works than I think is really the case.
That said, I've fallen rapturously in love with Act II of Boheme, particularly Chi L'Ha Richiesto which interests me for a number of reasons, including that I can so clearly hear its influences in musicals I have loved, which led me to realize on my walk home from school tonight that the thing I am perhaps best at in all things is linkages. I find them in everything -- art, culture, happenstance, people's faces, weather. Everything is keyed to something else, often dozens of things in my world, which a) explains the things I love (they are also all about finding, making and examinging linkages) and b) explains what causes me to love something new -- when I find a new link, I fall in love (regardless of whether that's with a person, my city, a work of art, a food, whatever), which c) explains why I need to keep the difference between practical and pragmatic very clear in my head, because there's one I deal with well, and one I don't so much.
Anyway, I'm also starting to get a handle on Act III and Act I, but I haven't really gotten into Act IV yet, mainly because I'm always listening to it on the subway, and as such I never really get to hear it clearly, but will hopefully catch up momentarily, as I'm cooking dinner while listening to the disc (at the moment you'd be hard pressed to convince me of a greater pleasure).
Class tonight was interesting, and raised a lot of issues for me, which I can't get into without getting into everyone else's issues as well, so I just won't. But we also discussed actors as "intimate strangers", what being a creative person does to our so-called personal lives, and ultimately the role of love, in any definintion, in performance and interaction. And no, I didn't _start_ any of those convos, but was most glad to be there for them, even if it wasn't news -- it was just a direction my mind needed to be sent off in by someone other than myself for a change.
And because it keeps coming up in bizarrely disparate interactions, I feel the need to mention that the issue of the slang for those white tank top undershirts known both as wifebeaters and guinea tees in the US came up in class tonight as well. What is with this topic, and why is it the issue on everyone's minds of late? I boggle.
Also, the A&G director is a delight. Her summary/cheat sheet she did for the chorus entrances and exits is both useful and one of the funniest things I have ever read.
That said, I've fallen rapturously in love with Act II of Boheme, particularly Chi L'Ha Richiesto which interests me for a number of reasons, including that I can so clearly hear its influences in musicals I have loved, which led me to realize on my walk home from school tonight that the thing I am perhaps best at in all things is linkages. I find them in everything -- art, culture, happenstance, people's faces, weather. Everything is keyed to something else, often dozens of things in my world, which a) explains the things I love (they are also all about finding, making and examinging linkages) and b) explains what causes me to love something new -- when I find a new link, I fall in love (regardless of whether that's with a person, my city, a work of art, a food, whatever), which c) explains why I need to keep the difference between practical and pragmatic very clear in my head, because there's one I deal with well, and one I don't so much.
Anyway, I'm also starting to get a handle on Act III and Act I, but I haven't really gotten into Act IV yet, mainly because I'm always listening to it on the subway, and as such I never really get to hear it clearly, but will hopefully catch up momentarily, as I'm cooking dinner while listening to the disc (at the moment you'd be hard pressed to convince me of a greater pleasure).
Class tonight was interesting, and raised a lot of issues for me, which I can't get into without getting into everyone else's issues as well, so I just won't. But we also discussed actors as "intimate strangers", what being a creative person does to our so-called personal lives, and ultimately the role of love, in any definintion, in performance and interaction. And no, I didn't _start_ any of those convos, but was most glad to be there for them, even if it wasn't news -- it was just a direction my mind needed to be sent off in by someone other than myself for a change.
And because it keeps coming up in bizarrely disparate interactions, I feel the need to mention that the issue of the slang for those white tank top undershirts known both as wifebeaters and guinea tees in the US came up in class tonight as well. What is with this topic, and why is it the issue on everyone's minds of late? I boggle.
Also, the A&G director is a delight. Her summary/cheat sheet she did for the chorus entrances and exits is both useful and one of the funniest things I have ever read.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-14 10:05 pm (UTC)I think that this ability to make patterns is what makes one able to be creative. It's vitally necessary for both occultists and poets, and to an only slightly lesser degree fiction writers. I expect this is also true for composers and visual artists, although I have no real understanding of such endeavors.
which c) explains why I need to keep the difference between practical and pragmatic very clear in my head, because there's one I deal with well, and one I don't so much.
Which do you have trouble with and what distinction do you make between the two? For me they are synonyms unless one is using practical in the sense of relating to praxis.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-14 10:23 pm (UTC)To me practicality, is doing stuff because you're supposed to. Whereas pragmatism is about doing what is necessary. Lots of shit that is practical, isn't actually necessary, it's just codified and habitualized. I place a high value on pragmatism, on doing what you have to when the situation arises -- I like being strong, and efficient and clear in that manner, and I like other people who are also that way. But just being practical -- the very sound of the word is drab. And I find, historically, that I've often presumed pragmatism in others, when they just had that sort of habitualized following of the rules.
I don't want to deal with what's practical. I want to deal with what's necessary and do what's extraordinary. And as long as the necessary stays part of the equation, it's cool.
It's not a "I won't grow up" thing so much as that I've raised myself more or less, and will continue to do so, entirely in my own image, even if that image is comprised of an immense number of borrowed, warped, adjusted, fractured and inspired components.
And yeah, the linkage thing is in everything. Everything everything everything. But I think it's why creative people can be a little nutty. It's like being too smart, but in a very intuitive way, and when you combine those things, of course we live happily and not always so happily somewhat at sea.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-15 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-15 06:29 am (UTC)I'm adjusting, as I'm new to opera anyway, but yeah, that would be awesome.
Also, am I a bad person for giggling every time Mimi does her little cough right before that one aria? Because while the thing can move me to tears and I expect it will live, that cough, is just so dainty as to be absurd.