Month: February 2013

I suspect they’re going to tell me to get a new camera, but one of the things I can’t do is decent night shots. Sometimes the imperfect shots I get work, like the one below, I think. That’s looking down 7th Avenue, on my way home from choir rehearsal. But I’d like to feel more in control of the outcome.

I actually majored in photography, undergrad, believe it or not. I’ve forgotten a lot, unfortunately. My step-father, who paid for my college education, is rolling over in his grave.

Walking home after choir one night my friend Barbara and I agreed the hardest piece we’ve ever done was Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

The soprano part in that is so brutal I actually spent time researching whether or not a soprano had pissed Beethoven off to the point where he’d want to punish the soprano section. And, as a matter of fact, I did uncover an ugly side to Beethoven involving a woman.

The year Beethoven started working on the Missa Solemnis he had suffered a temporary setback in a long, drawn-out custody battle with his sister-in-law Johanna for his nephew Karl. It was a fight that got so ugly that Beethoven’s biographers continue to apologize for him to this day. Although Beethoven would ultimately gain custody as a result of his stunning cruelty, in 1819, Johanna was awarded guardianship of Karl.

So he’s working on the Missa Solemnis, he’s enraged about losing Karl to Johanna and perhaps feeling powerless—maybe either consciously or unconsciously he was getting back at Johanna through us. We’re her stand-in. In the piece, he makes the sopranos go up to a high b flat and then he has us stay there for I don’t remember how many measures. A lot. It’s tiring. He also makes us sing it forte (loud) which is even more tiring and, if you’re not careful, painful. He has us do this over and over throughout the piece. It’s like he’s standing there saying, “Take that! And that! And that!”

Beethoven would win Karl back, but the poor kid loved his mother. He visited her in secret, which for some reason did not inspire Beethoven’s pity. Instead, he was so oblivious and unsympathetic and miserable to live with that in 1826 Karl tried to kill himself. When Karl recovered he asked to be taken back to his mother. Beethoven died less than a year later, after receiving a case of wine from his publisher to celebrate the publication of the Missa Solemnis. “Pity—Pity—too late!” were his final words from his deathbed.

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I took this heading into choir practice. Now we’re working on Bach’s Mass in B Minor, an absolutely magnificent but also very challenging piece (not in painful way, though). It’s what got me and Barbara talking about which was the hardest piece we’ve ever done.

I have to run down to the Municipal Archives so this post is going to be brief. Saturday night I saw Robert Wilson’s new opera about the artist Clementine Hunter. (There’s a New York Time’s interview with Wilson here.)

First, thank you Barbara Sacharow. She invited me and gave me the ticket!. Second, I loved it. Probably the best thing I can say to demonstrate how much I loved it is that I went home and spent hours researching Clementine Hunter, Melrose Plantation (the place where she painted) and all the people in her life. Then I came up with a plan to go to Louisiana to start exploring people’s attics and basements in order to find her paintings (haven’t come up with a plan yet for how I’m going to get into people’s attics and basements exactly). Apparently there are at least 4,000 of her paintings out there, though.

This character spent most of the opera either sitting in a rocking chair or walking, but looking like she was slowly gliding around the stage, like the way ghosts move in movies made in the 1950’s. I guessed that she was supposed to represent an older Clementine Hunter but according to the Wilson interview I guessed wrong.

Below is the most recent book they recommended to me (it’s a book I wrote). Thanks, Amazon!

I’ve got Puppy Bowl IX on. I want a hedgehog. Except I won’t get a hedgehog, because I know Bleeck would most certainly … have fun with it. But come on. Hedgehogs, cutest spikey creature in the world. You know, we could finally beat out the Japanese in the Appreciating the Cute category and open a hedgehog cafe, the way they have cat cafes, and people could come in for a cup of coffee and a hedgehog on the side.

Oh wait. My book is a “bargain” book. Doesn’t that mean, ‘no one is buying it so we’re going to try basically giving it away’?

As I was leaving the Municipal Archives the other day they were setting up for a retirement party for a judge. I don’t really get retirement parties, except, I guess if you enjoy your co-workers, any excuse for a party makes sense. Or, if you hated your job.

But if you enjoyed your work, or even if you have had enough, its a weird thing to celebrate. To me a retirement party means: I’m too old to work and I’m going to be dead soon. I guess a better way to look at it is: I’m old so I’m quitting while I’m still ahead in order to have a great time and some adventures before I die.