Flight of the Valkyries

I've been known for my sometimes eccentric musical taste. It's a title I bear with pride and plumes, although it sometimes has gotten me into a little trouble. At college, I received a few noise complaints, not for the quality of the music (Miles Davis' "Bitch's Brew") or even the loudness quotient, but for the unsightly repetition. After taking it home, I must have played that album a week straight, with no breathers, except when I went to class. My fellow dorm neighbors were incensed. I can't really blame them, but I didn't do it out of mischief, repetition is how I get into the middle of the music. This is how I understand it, this is how it eventually lives in my ear for life. It's important for me to know every nook and cranny of the song, the aria, the piece, the movement.

First, the walk-man, CD-man, and now the I-pod have all indulged my wayward fancies of unilateral obsession with the music du jour, they encourage my habit, and their machinery indulges my walk-about-town set to a soundtrack. Lately, I have been listening to a lot of Wagner. I always have, but more recently I've been paying special attention to that gob-smack of sweeping and swelling orchestration - "The Ride of the Valkyries." I have several different versions played by several different orchestras. I like to hear the nuances of the music, and a particular orchestra's take on it. In other words, it has been on repeat. But only in my ear. The "Valkyries" afford me some time out, some perspective, strength, and infuse me with tough-girl appeal, I become a Valkyrie when I listen to this. I am the chooser of the slain. I will decide who will die in battle. It ain't going to be me. No matter how hard the day, no matter how many rejections, or non-answers I get, I am whole when I listen to the ride of my sisterhood. I will preside over Valhalla, it will not preside over me. Over the last two years, I've learned to handle and persevere. "The Ride of the Valkyries" is my battle-cry. A word to the wise: don't get on my black-list. Wagner's on repeat.

Uh-peggio or Ah-peggio?

I sometimes think my life is divided, rather simply, into "uh" and "ah" moments. Uh, do you like me? Uh, do you want to hire me? Ah, you like me! Ah, you want to hire me! They're just a vowel apart, and yet these rudimentary interjections can mean a world of difference between them, and a world of difference, good or bad, to the person on the receiving end of doubt or delight. I for one, not only think my daily life rocks between "uh" and "ah" (I've suffered more "uh" lately), but my "uhs" and "ahs" seem to fashion themselves on something more musical, more dramatic. Operatic. My "uhs" and "ahs" don't come in shrink-wrap, they come big, crashing, swelling, small, cowering. Fortissimo! Forte! Pianissimo. Piano. Crescendo! Diminuendo. So, in other words - singing words, my day is spent in the manner of Maria Callas. Pride and disappointment all wrapped into a series of scales or arpeggios. I wake up with expectations. My expectations go something like this, on a progressive scale up the proverbial piano. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes" AH! Glory is in sight. Eternal sunshine. Then, rather suddenly, right before the curtain, and Act II, things come crashing down, expectations dashed, thunder, rain. "No, no, no, no, no!" UH! I am Madama Butterfly rising and falling one or more octaves a day, played top to bottom. This is a role I didn't sign up for. No bows, no applause, no roses. Just the same scales up and down, my voice is hoarse, my soul is hoarse. I just want "ah" for a while, no hesitation, no doubt, no pause, just "ah." Smooth and fast. And it would only be fitting to respond to an "ah" with an "ah." Smooth and fast.

Going To Church/Cut-Outs/Death By Coleslaw

The guilt is mounting. I haven't written in a week, and three experiences will flit through my fingers, unless I commit them to my blog. So here goes. I will start with the top down, or the most satisfactory experience to the most stinking and dreadful.

I attended the Tony's yesterday, and while I covered them many times in the past before, it was my first time attending the ceremony, and it was a lot of fun. Everyone was in their "Sunday best." It seemed to me that this must be the closest thing to going to church. Blasphemy? Scandalous? No, it's a comparison that works for me. People are dressed nicely, sitting in seats that kind of look like pews, and honoring their own type of God, or Godliness that comes on stage. The theatre is a type of religion that involves a whole lot of faith, reverence and worship, and really, the belief in creating and creation. Radio City was the House of God yesterday, and we were all the participating adherents, because we were honoring our fellow-man, neighbor, colleague. Now, what's more holy than that?

And now not speaking of the good, or the holy, or the even remotely human, let alone Godly, let me let you in on this depraved tale of a man so repugnant and arrogant that he reeked of the Seven Deadly Sins. He was definitely not in attendance yesterday. I will introduce him as "Cut-Outs." C.O. had B.O., boorish and odious. He is called "Cut-Outs" because that's in fact what he was doing, when at his bequest, I arrived at his studio to be interviewed for a possible job that I didn't even want. I was being courteous, he was cutting-out photographs for a collage. I spent the time dressing, transporting, and presenting myself. I had done my research on his company, he, did not even look up from his stack of cut-outs. Fed-up, I finally said: "What are you doing there? An art project? Our appointment was for 3:30pm, no? You asked me to come, now look me in the eye. I deserve, at the very least, your undivided attention, not to look at you divide paper." And then a great Clint Eastwood line from "Dirty Harry" came to mind, and while I didn't say it, I thought it. "So what do you say Punk?" Cut-outs looked at me for a second, almost as if he heard Clint's words behind my unmoving mouth. "How old are you?" he said, almost throwing-up the question. "I'm young, are you?" I said. He ignored the question, and surprise surprise, went back to his crafts. He continued to ask me what I had done, where I'm from, and again how old am I. To which I replied, "Cut-outs, next time don't invite an applicant to come, if you have no intention of knowing anything about them. Obviously, we don't see eye to eye." And then a beat later, as if he were in perfect comedic time, he said, "let me know if you want to do the two-day trial. It's of course unpaid. Tell me something, why did you call me cut-outs?" There was nothing to say. I looked at him blankly and left.


I was walking in the Chelsea Market the other day. It already wasn't such a great day. It was pouring, and I was poring over my non-permanent job status. And then the inevitable happened. I almost cracked my skull open, and then blood would be pouring out, instead of rain, and anger and frustration. I slipped on some coleslaw that some luncher had neglected to clean up after himself. I slipped, fell backwards, and then my mother who was walking next to me, caught me just in time, as mothers tend to do. And while my head was intact, my skirt was not. The violent slip backwards had tried its tender seams, and ripped all the way up; exposing some of my backside. The other lunchers laughed. Again, such schadenfreude! The coleslaw was the deadly kind - mayonnaisey and camouflaged in the imperfections of the Market's floor. What a terrible end, death by coleslaw. It would have been a little more comforting if death was a possibility by a food I actually enjoyed.

The Great Gig In The Sky

I'm looking for that great gig. You know the one. The one that makes you want to break out into song, and croon from the guts, "Ooh-aah, baby, baby - yeah, yeah, yeah" - like in the manner of the hysterical-sounding singer Clare Torry in that strange, haunting track, that bears the same title as this here blog. I can temporarily steal that great set of words from Pink Floyd's unparalleled album "The Dark Side of the Moon" to drive my own narrative - of looking and finding my "perfect" permanent job. I can change around the original intent of the subject of the famous music to fit my needs. I'm selfish when it comes to getting across my singular message. You've heard it before. And now you'll hear it again. My gig is here and it's there. It's busy making itself known to me in fits and starts. I'm starting to get a feel for its shape; its previously ghostly image is becoming more and more apparent, on human terms. And while sometimes it feels like the great gig is still sky-bound, its delicious tangibility is within lip-smacking proximity. This professional engagement, this gig, as pithy as that sounds, for whatever reason has been whirling around and around my head for the last two years; like some naughty God-forsaken butterfly. And here I am, the goof, with the faulty net. I've been close, but no cigar. But it's high-time to sing out, to proclaim, to claim like a pro what I've been searching, and now, what I'm finding. I'm in accordance with Ms. Torry, the great gig only remains in the sky, because its earthly existence is heavenly, and finally within my grasp.