Life Lesson #642

(probably should be rated higher, but it took me this long to get to it )

“What doesn’t bend breaks” Ani Difranco American singer , song writer and guitarist 1970

Scottish proverb:  better to bend than break

I have loved reading for my book reviews this summer.   In terms of goal setting skill it was tremendous to have a Monday deadline to finish the book of the week and have something legible up for you to read.  Especially when I received notes from people who actually read the reviews.

Knowing that you are out there reading and knowing that I didn’t write a new review this past Monday, I come to you today, bending so I don’t break.  My life in the last month has flowered so powerfully in opportunities and work that I have to say I feel like if I’m any more creative I will explode.  As a creative person reading this blog you know that creativity goes in waves.   Sensing the ebb and flow of the creative tide I prepared to fill my summer with a self created reading and writing project.

Little did I know that I was about to ride the crest of a wave that is in danger of becoming a tsunami and wiping me out.

If you read last week, you will know I’m currently in Vancouver finishing up my second week at CBC radio 2 where I have been guest hosting for a vacationing Bill Richardson.   I have been writing at a feverish pace.  The scripts for the opera are intense and summarizing an opera in 7 minutes turned out to be much more tricky than I realized!  I’m grateful that I could write my rough draft an a producer would come and clean up and mold my clay into a presentable radio product.  (Thanks Denise, Matt and Matthew and Rosemary)

On Monday past I got a call from The Belfry theatre in Victoria where I had auditioned earlier in May for their musical that debuts in November.  It is called The Life Inside.  It is a new musical drama and I was offered the workshop for next week and the show that starts rehearsals in October.  I am already learning a script (no kidding, I ,an opera singer, am learning a script)  for another new musical that debuts at the Victoria Fringe Festival and at a theatre festival on Gabriola Island during the last two weeks of August.  That one is called Smalltown: A Pick-Up Musical.

(On a side note-I will later write about the voice of fear that I had to slay before I managed to go and do my first audition with a monologue in my entire professional career. )

I have to bend or I will break.  I have to take a brief hiatus from the weekly book review posting.  The good news is I’m not abandoning the list because I am really enjoying the reading and writing.  The bad news is that it will take into September to finish now.  Sort of my way of extending the summer!

I hope you can forgive me for this, but as a life coach I know that life must be lived in suppleness.  And as I encourage you to keep questioning the choices in how you live your daily life, I too, must to it.

In the meantime I will be posting about my summer of creative fire!  It has been full of lessons and learnings that I want to share.

Thanks for reading and please let me know if you like or hate what you read here.  What do you need some tools for?  Let me know and I’ll incorporate into the blog.

What I learned at the CBC

This week for the very first time ever in my life, I worked at the CBC and began to learn what it takes to be part of a team that makes radio.  I am the guest host for Bill Richardson on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera for July 31 and August 7^th.

The producers taught me many things this week about radio and how to create really good radio.

It’s all about the story.  Everything.  Not just the opera, which has a story obviously.  The interviews are all about story.  The other features that I scripted are also about story.  What’s your story?

Yeah.  You.  Reading this.  What’s your story?  Don’t get all wound up in your head analyzing, just tell me a story.  All the meaning will unfold from a good story.  Don’t believe me?  Try it out.  The next person you meet get them to tell you a story and see what happens.

Here is a story.  You will know me better at the end of it.

I was living in New York City and developing my singing career.  Or so I thought.  But at the very least, I was living in New York.  I had a passion for Wagner and the Metropolitan was offering Die Meistersinger.  I had never seen it and I didn’t really know the plot, but off I went and sat way up, about as high as you can go, at the back of the Metropolitan Opera.

I read the synopsis in the program and physically blanched.  The premise that the opera starts with is that someone in this opera is going to be a master singer by writing the prize-winning song.  The best song ever.  Talk about a set up for disappointment.   I remember thinking “That Wagner!  I mean, what is he thinking?  He is going to write the best song ever?  I can’t believe it”

First of all, the act two finale with Beckmesser serenading in the street with his out of tune lute and the noise in the street over top ruining the serenade and then the whole chorus in a street fight was one of the most amazing moments I have ever experienced.  It struck me as if I had a present in my hands and as I unwrapped it there was another fabulous layer, and then another and then another.  The Act 2 finale in Meistersinger was like the best Christmas present one could ever get. The musical finale was so cleverly conceived and executed that I was actually somewhat stunned at intermission and overwhelmed with the magic of it.  Then the prize winning song comes.  It was Ben Heppner I heard sing it in the early nineties and I have to say that I couldn’t believe how the song got more and more beautiful as it progressed.  It was hypnotic.  I knew at that moment I had never heard anything so beautiful in my whole life and I would never hear anything that beautiful again.  By this point when they are competing for the prize as master singer even the realistic grass in the field on stage is filling me with wonder.

Ah, wonder.  There isn’t enough of it in life.  Moments when we feel small and insignificant.  But only because the world has such incredible gifts in it.  And that performance of that piece was one of them to me.