Month: May 2013

I can’t take it. I love this show. Quit torturing us and give it another shot. It makes me happy, damnit. How many shows make me happy without boring me? Actually, I wonder how many. There’s Bones, Warehouse 13, So You Think You Can Dance, thinking … The Mindy Project! I was very “eh” at first but now I ADORE that show. Going on … New Girl, Project Runway.

Okay, there’s a lot of shows, but nothing like Bunheads. Bunheads gets me. It completes me. I’m grasping at straws here because I can’t put my finger on why I feel so strongly. There’s that Gilmore Girls/Northern Exposure magic, the smart dialogue, incredible and real dancing, hope. I love the mostly all-girl cast which ranges in age from the students to the ever-amazing Kelly Bishop. Kelly Bishop is my grow-older hero, by the way. I love Betty White, but it always feels like she’s doing shtick. Which is great, but that’s not me. I hope to follow the always sharp, smart, adult, dignified, imperious Kelly Bishop path. Oh WOW. Here is Kelly Bishop playing Sheila on A Chorus Line!!

But I love the girls, I love Sutton Foster. I love Bunheads. It’s sweet without being sugary, it’s light but dark, it’s enchanting and endearing, and I NEED IT. Gods of the tv universe, I’m begging you, throw me a bone. Renew Bunheads.

A couple of dances from the show: Istanbul and Paper or Plastic.

I took this in Union Square last weekend. There was a parade that I’d missed. The woman on the left was one of the people in the parade.

A singer and an astronaut! Where did he come from?? (Canada.) He is an international treasure!! His voice is beautiful. And here’s a link of him singing, while in space, with a bunch of children … sweet Jesus, none of the children were given space suits. For the love of god, they’re … someone save them!! (Kidding.)

Seriously, music and science, the best combination there is. Canada, I apologize in advance. Because we have to steal him.

An old friend of mine has co-written a book, The Big Divide: A Travel Guide to Historic and Civil War Sites in the Missouri-Kansas Border Region. According to their Amazon page, inside they cover “the African-American soldiers who were the first to die for their freedom (months before the 54th Massachusetts of Glory fame took up arms) and “how the Civil War shaped future outlaw Jesse James—and future president Harry Truman.”

Here they are, on public radio, to tell you about it themselves!

Actually, I’m mostly sad because I’m leaving for a wake soon. But I wanted to mention that after our concert last night, I passed by a sign on my way out of the church. It was a picture of Greg Niclas, a member of the choir who died on Christmas morning last year. I should have taken a picture, (I have no short term memory anymore, it seems) I just remember that along with his Greg’s handsome, smiling face were words that said something nice.

Greg’s family continues to blow my mind. Here they are, they’ve lost Greg, but while they grieve they also donated to our choir and encouraged others to do so, and for one of our rehearsals this semester they brought us wine (and also brownies I believe) and then came to hear us practice.

Where does such strength and heart come from? How are amazing people like this made? If I lost someone like Greg I probably wouldn’t be able to function for a long time. I’d lie down, curl up in a ball, and I wouldn’t get up for months. Here I am, feeling sad because our concert is over, but Greg’s family must be feeling so much worse. Greg will never get to sing anything ever again. His family will never get to go to one of his concerts ever again. One can only imagine what they must be feeling and yet they thought of us. In the midst of their grief they are also bursting with kindness, generosity and love to an extent I really can’t fathom. I can only hope for a fraction of this same strength for my oldest and dearest friend, who will be saying goodbye to her youngest son today.

Here are a couple of screenshots from the brief movies I shot at the end of our concert last night.

Our concert is sold out, so last night when we had our dress rehearsal with the orchestra people were allowed to attend. It felt like we were giving a concert, which was great. When you work so long and hard on a piece, one concert never feels like enough. (Especially when you are doing the magnificent Bach Mass in B Minor.)

I know that reactions vary to a piece of music, and everyone has their own associations, but I can’t help feeling that when we all listen to a piece of music there is something about our response to it that is universal. There’s evidence that this might be true. From a press release about a recent study:

“Do the brains of different people listening to the same piece of music actually respond in the same way? An imaging study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists says the answer is yes, which may in part explain why music plays such a big role in our social existence.

“The investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify a distributed network of several brain structures whose activity levels waxed and waned in a strikingly similar pattern among study participants as they listened to classical music they’d never heard before.” Full press release here.

I took this picture during a break, while our brains were taking a rest. In my book I describe how the altar is so white and bright it seems to vibrate. In all my pictures from last night I had to use the filter that tones down highlights full blast.