Tales of Tuesday

There are so many wonderful things about life that it is hard to be down for long, even on Monday.  I really didn't feel great when I got home last night, and was starting to go to that place where all I wanted to to was lay in the recliner with a bag of chips, but Joe wanted to go swimming, and I thought seriously about saying no, because I was wallowing.  Then I thought to myself, wow, Jess, you are being really a huge dummy.  Get over yourself and go to the pool with your husband despite the one million degree heat and your splitting headache.

I did.  And by the time I left the pool to come home, I was as relaxed and thrilled to be alive as could be.  I then ate dinner and went on a three mile walk, and treated myself to a spectacular new nail polish that is really bright blue.

Making that decision to do something because he wanted me to, and not give in to my own silliness really pulled me out of my Monday funk.

The score for a gig I have coming up with a chamber group finally arrived and I have started working on it.  What a thrill to perform a new piece I have never even heard before being asked to sing it!  And it is really fab, in a hot summer languorous way.  What a comfort to know that no matter how bored we could possibly ever get, there is always a new fantastic piece of music lurking out there that we haven't yet discovered.   This one is de Falla's Psyché  and it doesn't get performed a lot, from what I can tell.  It's probably because there aren't a lot of vocal fireworks, or even anything really high or low for the singer.  I'm always shocked when chamber groups choose to do a piece with a singer instead of the usual thing where the singer has to round up six people and bribe them to play the piece with her.   Because there's really so much wonderful literature for them without us in it-- and let's face it, we can be touch and go.  I mean god forbid we turn up with horrifying allergies, or hungover, or too sick to perform altogether.  It really can mess things up.  So I'm very flattered they would ask me, and I always think about ways I can help to overturn stereotypes we have created for ourselves, and work toward making we singers a respected breed once again.  But at any rate, it's refreshing to sing something where you can forget about your voice and sing the words and focus on the ensemble aspects of the piece.  


So my lesson from yesterday was that sometimes it's best to do something for someone else (albeit it wasn't really a sacrifice because it consisted of going to a pool.  But I really didn't feel like it, so there) when we are feeling down, and the results can be very pleasant indeed.