Fashion

OK, I'm ready for my Businessboy Fashion Show. Got to get this thing done so I can enjoy my evening.

Loading Dark Pants Number 1 . . . Interfacing with big blue shirt and belt. Sheesh. Apparently I'm a little bigger in the middle. Let's see: move around a bit. Go look in the mirror. Not bad. A bit of a kid playing grownup, but passable. Testing out charcoal blazer. Um, somehow not with these pants.

Testing Brown Shirt Number 1, a fairly ugly thing by Calvin Klein. OK. Jumping around. Pretending like I'm doing business, business, business. Reaching here, reaching there. Moving papers. Not bad. Let's try a tie just for kicks. Feels like something to wear under a graduation gown, but serviceable.

Let's switch to Dark Pants Number 2. (But first: I just remembered that I have a scale. Let's see how gravity's pulling these days. Ha! I can blame the pants! I'm still floating between 140 and 145. I can live a good two weeks into Armageddon with that mild amount of stored food.) OK, with these nice pants we'll try our funky shirt with a bit of peach in it. Um . . . this is definitely a last-day, going-back-to-California ensemble.

Now for the Grand Finale: a faithful old Ben Sherman shirt followed rapidly by Brown Shirt Number 2. . . . And we're good.

With a little help from a hotel iron, I'm ready to go. Go Businessboy, Go!

Ungkaharla

K., darling: nothing cut and pasted here!

. . . and watch me blog despite all. It's 10:30. Frankly, I've had a coffee cup full of oat and honey cereal and half a glass of partly frozen Gatorade. And this is an improvement over the heaviest ten-dime bag of BBQ corn chips and the darkest Guinness I can find. And my armpits smell like stale onions -- both of them!

But I tease you: I've been rawkin' out! What you do, see, is hop on that F-line and get off at Van Ness, stroll into that Conservatory, say hiya to Manny, and cruise on up to the fifth floor. Just for kicks, let those window seats go -- those grand pianos with a view of the setting sun -- and take the Schimmel in the practice room with the support pillar.

Take out your Ravel and try out that third movement you started Saturday morning. Damn, girl, those notes are setting up house in your fingers! A month ago there was no Ravel. Then there was a Modéré. Then there was a Menuet. Then there was an Animé. Voilà: une sonatine.

Last night in a dream I fell upon my piano teacher: "This is my piano teacher," I explained. "I love him!" and I hugged him like a tree. After my lesson (in the recital hall) I found a large classroom with a beautiful piano and worked some of the new ideas into the Ravel, then tried out the complete Beethoven sonata (Op. 10, No. 3) and the two Rachmaninoff preludes.

I also awaited a reply from the East:

East: "Have you made right by the master of might today?"
Me: "Love is sharing."
East: " . . . "

Did I break the pattern? Was there a specific answer to the East's question? Certainly there is a response to my statement . . . but where is the East's reply? Tomorrow perhaps.

Review: Ariodante

I may occasionally resort to trickery to keep my blog alive. The following lists come from an email I wrote to a dear friend this morning, and they qualify as a dying blogger's review of San Francisco Opera's production of Handel's Ariodante, which I saw last night after spending the day at home in a malaise tragique:

Ariodante was fabulous! And that's despite several bad things:

1. It lasted from 7:30 to 11:00.
2. The dress circle was its usual 80 degrees and stuffy. One woman near me said, "What's that smell? Someone needs to bathe. It smells skunky." The man next to her said, "It's probably Italians." Ah, the opera.
3. The opera takes place in Scotland, but everything was Roman. Lots of columns.
4. There was MUCH MUCH swishing of very large capes -- not nearly as bad as Giulio Cesare at the Met, but still: stop the capes!
5. All the men were pretty weak, especially the bass. He chose to perform his role in a warbly Sprechstimme. I don't think he ever landed on a pitch, especially when he aimed for those impressive low ones.
6. Ruth Ann or Susan may have forgotten a line at the end of Act I. There was a strange silence, some half-hearted singing, and then the full voices got back on. (The lukewarm village dancing behind them may have caused the kerfluffle.)

In other Ariodante news:

1. The audience clapped when Ruth Ann walked on, but not when Susan did.
2. Ruth Ann blew us away with her fast, high arias and da capo ornaments.
3. The audience went WILD WILD WILD after Susan's slow aria in Act II. The B section emotionally drained her Ariodante, and she performed the repeat lying on the floor. One of her ornaments took her to the very bottom of her voice (I'm guessing F or E?) and then leapt up to her very top (B?). A man who sounded like Harvey Fierstein screamed out "BRAVA!"
4. I still felt like Ruth Ann stole the show, but the audience was most excited about Susan in the final bows. (But then Susan was also last.) They were both great.
5. I have a renewed admiration for Handel and for singers of Handel. I found myself nestling happily into each new aria, listening for that B section, and looking forward to the virtuosity in the repeat.

Dying blog

My blog is dying! I don't want it to die! There are still beautiful things to write about:

San Francisco for Chicago

It's vacation time! Time to leave the eternal vacation of San Francisco for the temporary vacation of Chicago.

And I've been sent off well. Last night I explored San Francisco in new ways with a new friend. We had planned for a walking adventure, but I doubted there were places we could walk that would be truly new to me. Wrong I was! Only take to the streets, my child, and you will find secret glimpses of heaven just when you stop looking.

Around Coit Tower, for example. Amble aimlessly, or stumble a little down the hill, and you may find yourself on a brick path leading through secluded, cute, and obscenely expensive homes. Or in a wild tropical garden clinging terrace-wise to a daring incline. A more leaned adventurer may tell you the names of the fragrances and blooms surrounding you -- purple things, yellow things, heavy-drooping orange things, frondy things, big-leafed things, jasmine, sure, and birds of paradise.

After sunset, you may be drawn to civilization and find yourself on a raised plaza decorated with glass and metal moons and stars. This would be just after the virus rages through the planet's meat but before the mechanisms shut down, so there would be silence and six tall buildings glowing down on you.

* * *

Update! I've arrived in Chicago, met up with my dear old friend M., seen a long-form improv show at ImprovOlympics, had late-night breakfast at a diner with M. and her boyfriend, and am now getting ready to climb into bed in my large, luxurious, corner room at the Amalfi.

Showgirls

Whee!

I'm playing two little pieces -- Debussy's second Arabesque and a Moszkowski etude (Op. 72, No. 2) -- in a student recital at the San Francisco Conservatory's beautiful recital hall at 2:00 on Saturday, April 26.

Every stranger, heck yeah!

Umm, okay. No one likes a sloppy drunk.

But I've earned this drunk fair and square, and I bet the friends who helped me earn this drunk would even attest that I was only slightly drunk.

Ah, well. Today I was only in love with the much older known, the much younger underwearing unknown, the same old sweet wild standby, and the beautiful exie who left me a phone message (well, the first beautiful exie who left me one!). This raises the question: Am I in shape to love only one? Did I not just admit (over margaritas) that it is my own fault that I was unable to love the last two?

For example: right now -- yes, at this very second -- I'm flirting in another window. Well, actually I'm waiting for the results of my last pathetic flirt. And I'm flirting with disaster and uselessness. Because I can't help it. Because a few words and a small picture and -- well, I mean you know how people are? They have two legs and two arms (usually), and they're just stunning. How can you not love four limbs? I mean, really?

* * *

I'll be earning a drunk tomorrow, too, with my new friend (hi!) who has visited Zauberwelt and actually seems to enjoy it. We're having dinner at Fior d'Italia and then catching Richard Lewis in his late show at Cobb's. (Stalkers: I'll be signing MUNI transfers. Please form a zero-file line just outside the club.)

In drunken rhapsody I scribbled this in my little black book on the way home (after stumbling into the Gap in search of a black blazer for tomorrow):

"O lovers past and future! Tonight I sit [illegible] writing to a music so divine -- and [illegible] when I feel it [illegible] from me [illegible] a finale [female?] form so divine -- Ah! I would kiss every stranger."

And I couldn't agree more.

Louis

Historically, I’ve been driven to write when I’m feeling most sorry for myself. I’m beginning to break out of that -- sometimes by patently censoring the negative feelings (which comes in the form of typing a paragraph, selecting it with the mouse, and pressing delete -- followed by retyping a slightly different version of the paragraph, selecting it again, and pressing delete again) and sometimes by distracting myself with one of those things we ought to be grateful for.

For example: Sure, I may be completely ungrateful that I seem to be a reverse black hole pushing everything in the universe away. I may be completely ungrateful that I’m attracted to such a wide range of beauty while the only thing attracted to me is ex-boyfriends (as I texted someone during a solo dinner last night). I may be ungrateful that a recital I give is a long-grown redwood falling soundlessly in a peopleless forest. I may be ungrateful, in fact, that I’m perfectly mediocre in every way.

BUT! I am grateful for the concert series put on by San Francisco Performances, which allows me to sit in the second row just feet from incredible performers and all for cheapies. Last night I saw pianist Louis Lortie (whom I’ve marveled over since I first got his CD of Ravel over a decade ago, and which I gave to C.B. in an unusual display of selflessness) in a program of some admittedly unenjoyable Liszt. But he began the recital by talking a little about the relation between Liszt and Wagner and the music he would be performing, and he was so charming and human and informative . . . Well, naturally I fell in love. And then his octaves beat Liszt into submission.

The program mentioned his website, and THIS is what I am grateful for. LouisLortie.com is the best musical artist’s website I’ve come across. Speaking and playing for us intimately and casually from his own piano, he is a god putting on a divine Punch and Judy show amidst the muddy filth of Web Street.