Review: Sweeney Todd

Gosh forgive me, I left A.C.T.'s production of Sweeney Todd at intermission. It was not entirely their fault. There were slightly extenuating circumstances and various biologies. The production held exciting promise: the cast itself doubles as the orchestra. One imagines (if one did not see) Patti LuPone lugging a tuba, doing double duty as character and oom-pah.

What I saw last night was a beautifully lighted but stagnant set, the character-musicians sitting in chairs along the side playing (from memory and well) while whichever characters took center stage and sang (well and faithfully). The plot, reality, and drama were distilled. This was essentially a concert performance of Sweeney Todd, and after being disappointed by my favorite song (the judge's dark "Joanna"), I knew there was nothing in the second act I needed to see.

I (we) left, allowed a stranger laden with tennis rackets and yoga mats to share a cab, and went to a (his favorite) bar to continue building this passionate (dare I say violent?) friendship. Men -- real men -- real men still exist. They are staunch. They are swirling galactic gases trapped in crystal. They are for loving, hating, fearing, learning. Oh, heavenly Guinness!

We great friends walked our thirty and forty blocks home, in love with this town. "What the fuck's wrong with this place? We're walking block after block at midnight, the streets are completely peaceful, the fog is full of kisses. There's not a soul to harass and attack us or rob and take from us what we never deserved anyway. We must be in heaven."

Night -- damn -- alone!

I'm sitting alone in my apartment, possibly a little tipsy. It's been a rough day. That friend I mentioned two posts ago -- (no, not Alberto) -- he decided to read my blog for the first time in a long time, and it affected him. We exchanged inconclusive emails today. And I instant-messaged with a darling ex, flirted with a blog friend (hello, S..! Let's by bloggyweds!), and chatted long and hard with an extremely eligible coworker who has arranged a goodbye lunch with a ray-of-sunshine (and possibly Baptist, based on his dashing khakis) temp who is returning to (gulp!) college next week.

But I digress: I'm sitting here somewhat late at night, possibly tipsy under the influence of a delicious drink-meal called Spaten Optimator, watching Joan Sutherland sing with Gerald Moore on a DVD from the BBC called World Singers. It is 1961, and she has never been more mannish, never sung with looser diction, and never been more divine. Holy sweet child of Jesus's illegitimate child john Jr.! Trills in "Care selve" to restore the Acropolis to its former glory, and pearls? Joan, let's talk about pearls.

Good god, now Elizabeth Schwarzkopf is singing "Drink to Me Only." Maybe I'll stay with you all night. She's got wild vowels. "Dreeenk tooo mih ohnly weeth thiiine iiiyes." I've always been bothered by her slight lisp. But she does have a substantial gap between her front teeth, which according to popular urban legend means she is oversexed, which is always good. And now she is saying "Zank you, Gee-rald. Auf Wiedersehen!"

Oh, sweet Jeezlebub. Now it's Christa Ludwig, presented as a "young singer." Oh, Christa, you are forever my love for Das Lied von der Erde. Gerald says this is your first appearance on English television. Let me listen to your Brahms . . . (Alas, you look old already, already the lady with one buttock from Candide.) Note also that Gerald has just defined mezzo-soprano as if it is an unknown thing -- a combination of the richness of the true contralto with the brightness of the true soprano. Oh, heavens, she's singing Mahler. "Rheinlegendchen." My first hearing was Janet Baker. This is serious . . . Perfect. And followed by Christa's "Tod und das Mädchen." The perfect nightcap.

I love you all. Night, night.

Political

Pardon my politics, but . . . So long, Gonzales! What a fucking sleaze.

Fun party

I went to a party last night where there were four blond men with beards (and I was one of them). Two of us I couldn't tell apart. The third was fairly different from the rest. And I was the only one doing the same things as me in the mirror.

It was a sad party -- most things are sad. It was in a house with furniture and decorations. "Little comforts," these things, and little comfort against the infinite open space around us. Small buffer against the final snuffing. There were many rings on fingers. There were many married people.

And my friend, my friend, let me describe him, God help me: But when is he himself? During the day? In the few evening hours when he is not drunk? Or when he is drunk? During the day he stands in opposition to himself and the world. When he is drunk, he loves and needs love, and in a flash sees his vulnerability and turns violent.

Sweet weekend scene

That was a bit of a sour weekend scene. Before moving on to something sweeter, I should mention that the recital in Berkeley was followed by two of the most grueling hours of my adult life. Sure, I was able to listen to an entire episode of "Prairie Home Companion" on my drive back to San Francisco -- but that means that the 25 miles between Berkeley and my house took over two full hours. There were moments when I wanted to bite my legs off.

Now for a sweet weekend scene:

Picture your faithful narrator leaving his apartment on his own two feet, turning left, and heading straight toward the ocean. Picture him greeting the ocean and turning right, walking past the Cliff House, Louis', the Sutro Bath ruins, through Land's End, out to the labyrinth (pictured here, in an earlier visit), and on out of Land's End into Seacliff, past Robin Williams's house, past China Beach, and into Baker Beach, where your narrator takes off his socks and shoes and walks in the wet sand past clothed people, past naked people, then back into the city, through the neighborhoods, past Geary, past his own little Balboa town (picking up a Richmond burrito, strange thing), and back to his apartment. Now that is how two hours ought to be spent.

Don't crack your knuckles.

Weekend scene:

We were eating cheese and brownies after the recital. An older man was talking to a younger boy. "Did you like the music?" the man asked.

The boy nodded his head.

"Really?" the man asked with adult skepticism. "You didn't think it was boring?"

I felt like I needed to intervene. The boy had been to one of our recitals before and had survived the full forty minutes of our attempts at Mendelssohn. "You play an instrument, don't you?" I asked, thinking that he had started learning the violin.

Suddenly, from the man, a stranger: "Don't crack your knuckles." I hadn't heard that tone in quite a while. It was adult disdain. A look of fright passed over the boy's face, and he dropped his hands to his sides. Then the boy began answering my question, used to the abuses of his elders.

Questions went through my head: Did I hear you correctly? Did you just tell this boy, a stranger, what to do? I looked the man in the eye. He knew he had been caught in a moment of evil.

Confession

God, I love you two!

Mr. Vale

I say that one of my biggest problems with Mr. Vale was not that he was a dirty old man. He was dirty -- oh, so dirty. He used to call the restroom on the fifth floor of the journalism building his board room, because that's where he went to "take care of business." The bulbous graffiti and pen-scrawled invitations and phone numbers were recovered in gray paint from time to time but always returned. So did Mr. Vale.

I remember the first time he shocked me, that old man. "Oooh, I haven't been to the board room in AGES," he said. And I pictured the young Mr. Vale, still a college student, or maybe in his first years as a school teacher, nervously pushing open the door that read MEN. "Must be -- what -- three weeks now!" he exclaimed, slapping his knee.

Mr. Vale was a gentleman. A southern gentleman. He visited his mother every weekend. He served peppermint schnaps, which he pronounced "snops." He came from a different time. The vulgarity, the earthiness, the animal nature of his attractions were undeniable, and he followed them with little remorse.

But that he might be this thing, rather than just do it -- that was the difference between his generation and mine. He did not believe what he was, and that made his outsides impenetrable. My simplest question about who he was would be brushed off with a flirt or an anecdote. What's your middle name, Mr. Vale? "Down your snops, Ricky." What about this Chet that Bear and Flo mentioned? "Hooo boy, back then that alley was crawling!"

Friends said Mr. Vale was in love with me. But I couldn't understand Mr. Vale's love. Mr. Vale's love was an action, an event with beginning and end. The love I wanted was a state, an overwhelming presence requiring that two people be men who love men -- call it being gay.

Recitals in the future

The world premiere of Paul the Flutist is tomorrow!

The flute choir that my flute teacher leads is performing at the Noe Valley Farmers' Market tomorrow morning, August 4. We'll be playing a wide range of light classics and an especially nice arrangement of "The Shadow of Your Smile." Discovering this group has been wonderful for me; I felt extremely isolated with my last teacher, because I was her only adult student. It's nice to be around a group of adults who are doing the same thing I'm doing: playing around with a hollow metal stick just for kicks.

The nameless trio -- perhaps the Berkeley Hills Trio, the Fog Hills Trio, the Craigslist Three, GDP Trio -- is also preparing a recital. We will be performing Mozart's Trio No. 6 and Beethoven's Trio No. 1 on Saturday, August 18. I haven't yet mentioned it to G and D, but I think I'd like to try out a couple solo pieces as well: a Rachmaninoff prelude and the Liszt Liebestraum. I'll post more specific information and send out email reminders within the week.

And if you'd like to be included in email invites/alerts for recitals, or if you would like to be on my email list for recordings featuring my brand new piano (Fiorenza Piano, as Stephen helped me name her), please let me know at pgmccurdy at yahoo!

My relationship to the world

Originally uploaded by lostheadfactory.

Status

I look forward to health and happiness, but this is the first time I've been alone, or single, since around May 2004. Not so long ago, really, but much has happened. I definitely was a broken bird before S., and definitely became much more of a living, breathing person through S. But after S. I was broken again. Who knows what might have happened if I'd been left on my own, and B. hadn't appeared to help me? Do you remember that night right after I had moved into my new place out by the ocean? I could hardly dress myself. Sure, I would have uncurled from my fetal ball eventually; but I was broken.

I'm alone now but less broken. I'm less see-through and go-through than ever. Why? So many of us cling to something to make ourselves stronger. I've even clung to my job to get through rough times: The job, the coworkers, the pay check, the accruing vacation -- these give a sense of reality and life. But I hope now I'm clinging to creativity, which is not so different from having a family and raising children.

For the most part, my days are not the days of a sad sack of bones. My Thursday and Friday evenings are taken up learning and making music with friends. When the new season begins, I'll spend many evenings at symphonies, ballets, operas, and plays. My Monday through Wednesday evenings are open for other social events, but I enjoy filling them with flute and piano practice. The hours from 6 to 8 whiz by while I strive to achieve a consistent tone on the flute or master Rachmaninovian and Lisztian jumps on the piano.

It is the rest of the time, the later time, that is dangerous. Despite the health and creativity and despite the obvious joy and beauty in the world, there are moments of hopelessness. What is this? This is the grand view. This is the infinite smallness of even the largest galaxy. It is as magnificent as it is torturous. Destruction and creation on this little planet are cosmic wonders and mistakes. This is the damn glass half-full and half-empty. The damn glass is infinitely beautiful and infinitely unimportant.

Balance. Moderation? It is not so wrong that two hours of concentration might be followed by hours of escape, however achieved. Balance? Moderation. Infinite boths.