Jackiehayes’s Weblog

When i was a kid, a man who worked for my dad told me that if i sneezed with my eyes open, they would pop out of my head. I suppose a lot of kids would have thought that was cool and tried to sneeze with their eyes open, hoping to see if it would work. Not me. It struck terror into my heart, and i still remember always making sure that my eyes were closed well in advance of a sneeze.

I needn’t have worried so. It’s very difficult for a human to sneeze with his or her eyes open. And furthermore, i am beginning to realize that a lot of the things this man told me were really just outright lies. I never understood at the time why he was so hard on me, but looking back, i think it may have been some kind of punishment for my obnoxious, pain in the everything attitude.

And yet, i’m still curious about the things he said. Once he told me that his mother had her pinky toe amputated, and for that reason, she had to go to physical therapy to learn how to walk again.

Was that true? Would you need to go to physical therapy to learn how to walk without such an inconsequential body part? I know that each toe is important for balancing. But every time i have to only walk on part of my foot for whatever reason, i usually manage fine. Maybe that’s unhealthy or something, and to learn to walk without harming yourself, you have to go to physical therapy.

Not sure.

It’s just about time Candide to open. I was noticing Cunegonde from the wings tonight, and the way she determines in every situation to make her fortune, each time hoping for the option with least injury possible to her plans of happiness with Candide. And yet every time she tries, everything ends up going awry. In Southern America, she meets a rich Gobernador enticed by her beauty, but in her haste to either marry him or somehow escape from him, she becomes even more entangled in his clutches.

Can you really blame Cunegonde? It’s so nice to have all your ducks in a row. And it’s common to use all of your ideas at once in hopes that at least one will work. Who knew doing them at the same time would make all of them backfire simultaneously?

But then, if she had married the rich Gobernador, she probably wouldn’t have been able to marry Candide. Funny how it worked out anyway.

Cunegonde’s not alone. I really am terrible at getting my ducks in a row as well. There are just too many ducks that don’t respond to the ways i’m used to motivating them. And what about the ducks that don’t like straight lines? I can’t count the times when things i thought would be simple ended up blowing up in my face.

I heard recently about some enzyme from the stomach of a pig that makes human body parts grow back. And after hearing that my eyes would pop out of my head if i sneezed without closing them, i was a little wary of the veracity of the pig enzyme story.

However, if it were true, it would mean a lot to medical science. Even his mother’s toe had to be amputated, maybe it would grow back healthy. And what if entire organs could be regrown? A lizard’s tail growing back after a hawk tried to eat it doesn’t hold a candle to cancer being eradicated from a person’s body.

But it’s worth it to the lizard.

So what do i do while i wait for those smarter than i to work out this purported enzyme into a fantastical cure? There are some parts which can grow back, and some parts which can’t. There are some parts that can be mended. There are some parts for which regeneration simply isn’t an option.

But i don’t think the important thing is whether they’ll grow back, but whether i can learn to walk without them. I may never get all my ducks into a straight line. So why should i worry about mistakes that i’ve already made? Cunegonde certainly was never able to get all her ducks in a row, and things ended out alright for her.

So maybe all my ducks don’t have to be in a row. I don’t have to close my eyes before i sneeze; they will close naturally. And even if i lose a toe or two to my own foolishness, i can learn to walk again, and i can learn to live without all that i have lost.

I don’t know much about Voltaire.

Writer, philosopher, deist. Or so says Wikipedia. Right now i’m in the chorus of the operetta Candide, and i must admit, while the novella has long sat in my bookshelf in Washington unopened, the more i participate in this opera, the more impressed i am with the philosophy which Bernstein presents as Voltaire’s in Candide.

But then, maybe that’s more owing to the experience i’m having, as opposed to the gist of the operetta itself. This is my first opera chorus experience, and while i went into it thinking of it as just something i needed to get started on checking off before i made it onto center stage, i’ve been pleasantly surprised with how much i’ve loved singing in the chorus. It’s been a long time since i’ve sat in the background while doing music, and i’ve forgotten how much i liked it. I remember sitting fourth chair out of four French Horns my Freshman year, and i still look back fondly on a night when i sat in a chapel far too small for a forty piece band and played my heart out. I remember a woman coming up to me afterward and saying that the way i played touched her. Chair didn’t matter then. Neither did the range in which i was playing, or the number of solos i had. None of that was important.

But of course, i forget those things. I think a lot of us do. I grew up. Dan put me in first chair later that same year, and i’ve been playing first ever since.

But i’ve missed fourth. I’ve missed not having that pressure of getting every note and every rhythm right the first time. I’ve missed not having vultures sitting underneath me, waiting for me to make a mistake so they can brag to each other later about how they could play it better.

I’ve missed just playing music. You know.

So receiving a letter from San Diego Lyric Opera inviting me to play the part of Venetian Woman in the company’s production of Candide was a blessing. Venetian Woman is just a fancy way of saying female chorus member, and while i’ve garnered a role in a solo quartet since rehearsals have started, for the most part, i don’t do all that much that puts me in the fore while i’m on stage.

But i do sing a lot. And so does everyone else that’s around me. Instead of sitting, waiting for each other to mess up so we can brag later about how we could sing it better, we give each other dropped lines, read for the people that aren’t there, help each other with forgotten entrances. We trip and fall over our blocking together, and we practice difficult staging together. We’re not individuals with varying levels of skills; we’re musicians who are together committed to making a good performance. So we pick up the slack for each other.

I think it’d be nice if life were like that. Why is it necessary for a group of people to bicker over whose ideas are better? Why is it necessary for two people to spend such a long time putting the other on trial, trying to decide if that person is good enough for them to date? Or hire? Or befriend? Why does it have to be about being good enough? Why can’t it be about people getting together, committed to making good music?

But then, i guess humans have already tried that, and the consensus was that communism doesn’t work. People just aren’t motivated to pick up the slack for others.

Voltaire came up with a different conclusion. He saw the problems with human nature and decided there was little we could do about our faults but acknowledge them and “make our garden grow.”

What in the world do gardens have to do with anything? They aren’t really noticeably present in the show until the very end, but the finale makes a huge deal of them. Are they a more important symbol in the book itself?

I should probably read Candide.

The thing is, though, scholars argue that the image of a garden runs throughout the entire show. Each new place Candide goes, he expects to find an ideal place, where human nature is perfect. Each new place he goes, he expects to find Eden. Needless to say, Candide goes to a plethora of different places, because each place ends up being anything but Eden. Human nature isn’t perfect, and communism doesn’t work, no matter where you go.

So if Eden doesn’t exist, what do i do? If i make it from chorus into principal roles eventually, will the glory of making music together fade into another cutthroat competition, with chorus members whispering behind my back about how they could sing it better? Will the relationships i now cultivate turn out to just be a contest? What will happen when that other person decides i can’t run fast enough, and can’t jump high enough? What happens when i’m not good enough? Does someone pick up the slack, or do i go home alone and out of a job?

Maybe.

But maybe not. Opera is famous for spectacle, and Candide is no exception. The finale takes place with the entire cast on stage, singing together. But instead of some schmaltzy chorus about how happy the main characters are, the entire cast cries that they are neither pure, nor wise, nor good. They acknowledge the faults of human nature, but resolve to do the best they can despite those faults. To do their own part in making their garden grow. Not an ideal Eden, but a garden in which people can walk around and be real humans. And as everyone walks off stage, there is no chorus member or principal. There are only musicians, each more than happy to make music together, and each doing his or her best to make our garden grow.

Last night i had the privilege of attending one of the faculty recitals for the Mark O’Connor Fiddling Camp. It was quite a spectacle. When all was said and done, i think the only person who really fiddled was a cellist who spent most of his time masquerading as an jazz upright bass, but i did enjoy all of the performances. It really had been a long time since i had seen anyone fiddle. I think it goes back to my freshman year, when i saw a group play at the Konzelman home.

I looked at the world very differently then. I had just gotten to college, and was home for the first time since being thrust into a university. I was acutely conscious of the world being bigger than i had thought it was, and was curious about the Konzelmans, of whom i had heard for a long time, but had never met.

They were nice. All very polite. All very preoccupied. Those adjectives continued to describe them as i saw them every now and again over the next two years.

But last night i was hit with my past when i saw a boy who looked like Drew playing guitar. Drew plays guitar too, but i knew him first as a fiddler. He used to play at our church camps and retreats. I remember being more interested in the lead guitar player, but most of the other girls told me repeatedly that the fiddler was their favorite. Of a small camp in Tacoma, Washington, he had our attention.

But of course we all grew up and went away. I went to California. My best friend went to Oklahoma. We still talk, but not as much as i would like.

What happened to Drew? I saw him a few times afterward, even took some portraits for his band. But i don’t know what he’s done with his life since i would call him just to listen to his ringtone, “On the Road Again.” I don’t know what he did today. He probably played music, was preoccupied to his friends and polite to his fans. Or maybe the other way around.

I have a friend who’s just recently fallen in love. He tells her all the time. It’s probably the first time he’s actually been in love. But then, i don’t know that. Love is different with each person, because each person is different. So his experience with her is inherently going to be different than his experience with any other girl with whom he’s been in the past.

After the recital, i stayed to meet one of the performers. He was polite, and we had fun, but in the end, he passed me over for someone more interesting. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but then, i realized i hadn’t grown up thinking of him as the pinnacle of everything i wanted to be. Many of the others in attendance last night had. So why should he want hang out with me? I’m just an opera singer from Tacoma, Washington. I don’t even know how to play a C on any string instrument other than a piano.

But for all that matter, who’s to say i can’t learn? My world has been getting bigger since the day i left home to go to college. And now that i’m here, i’m leaving again soon. Drew was one of the supreme rulers of that first sphere. There are others who hold our attention here, at Point Loma. And goodness knows there will be plenty of self-important supreme rulers when i go to grad school. Who’s to say i can’t surpass the expectations they’ll have for me? Maybe they have a right to be politely preoccupied, but i have a right to do everything within my power to be exceptional.

But of course, after that, i’ll grow up and go away. My best friend will go somewhere else. And at the end of my time there, will i be happy, knowing that the end of one thing is really just the beginning of another?

When i first got to college, i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life. But i worked hard, and i found a way to excel. I don’t think i’m reigning supreme in my department, but i’ve made a niche for myself here, and i’m comfortable. This past summer, that changed when i went to a summer program where i was surrounded by singers considerably more accomplished than myself. It wasn’t a comfortable place to be.

But it was valuable. I was with gods that no one would recognize on the street. Terrified of a man named Graham Johnson, who probably has his name spelled wrong at Starbuck’s sometimes. Enamored of a man named Martin Katz who probably gets called a hobbit from time to time.

Who’s to say i can’t take their place someday?

I used to think he would wait forever to hear her say “I love you,” back. Sometimes i still do. But our days have a funny way of surprising you with a life you weren’t expecting. Maybe instead of being Martin Katz, all he needs is have her tell him those words. If you can just be one person’s world, is that enough? Who’s to say you have to be anybody’s world? Who’s to say you can’t just masquerade as an upright bass when you’re playing a cello? His world has gotten a lot bigger since he was a kid, and he’s done just fine. Why am i concerned about leaving this world for a bigger one? The end of one thing is really just the beginning of another.

I can’t wait to get on the road again.

I keep stubbing my toes. Really, it’s getting obnoxious. I just can’t seem to help it. At least i’m able to do it when relatively no one is around to see it.

Well, i still like to think i’m a fairly smart girl. I just don’t pay attention. I am good at some things. Sometimes. Like music. I really like Dave Matthews Band. I tend to forget about them, but in truth, they’re a very talented group. Cody liked Gravedigger. I have other favorites, but Gravedigger is a good song. Goodness knows i wouldn’t mind my grave being shallow, so i could feel the rain. Rain has always been my favorite, and that’s not about to change any time soon. Regina Spektor has a different take on rain, though; raindrops falling on her head don’t always mean that she is dead.

What a revolutionary concept, that you could feel the rain without having to be buried.

During the plague, parents taught their children Ring around the Rosie to help them recognize the symptoms, so they could avoid the victims. How inconvenient for everyone that the plague was highly contagious. I still remember seeing pictures in my middle school history textbook of doctors with huge ridiculous hats that were somehow supposed to keep them from catching whatever it was that the infected ones had.

What a waste.

There’s something so endearing about “ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” I wonder, if i hadn’t grown up singing it, would i realize there was a very menacing story behind the song? Cody didn’t grow up singing it. I should have asked him while i had the chance what he thought it meant.

The thing is, it actually is endearing in a way. Parents during the Black Death taught their children that song because they wanted them to be able to live. To survive the hard times. And now parents teach it to their children because they want them to remember what the Black Death did to our world.

But things have changed. I don’t have to die to feel the rain anymore.

The funny thing about stubbing your toe is that the pain really doesn’t last all that long. You immediately feel silly about whining. But it did hurt. And so you know not to do it again. Is that the end of it? No. You’ll stub your toe again later. It seems inevitable.

Could we have fixed the plague by initiating a quarantine? Probably not. It was too big. We had to live with our mistakes. But we survived it. And now we have learned how to deal with the problems that caused the plague. Slowly but surely, we are growing up.

Raindrops falling on my head,
But that doesn’t mean that i am dead.

I worry too much about Kierkegaard.

I have for some time now. What kind of an impact would he have had if his parents hadn’t given him such a bleak outlook on life? What kind of great things could he have done if he weren’t convinced he were going to die young? What kind of great things happen to an extraordinary person when the limitations of a deathly self-fulfilling prophecy are removed? Wouldn’t Kierkegaard have had so much more to say if he had lived longer?

Life is never fair, it seems. A genius dies young, and my grandfather lives to a ripe old age, with Alzheimer’s destroying the lives of all those he holds dear.

Destroying is a relative term, though, i suppose. I recently read a letter from a friend whose mother is suffering from cancer and the chemotherapy which seems inherent to that condition these days. Whose life is being destroyed in that situation? Anyone’s? My friend seems so sure that her mother has been promised healing somewhere in the Bible. And maybe she has. My guesses as to where she finds her promise lie around Matthew 9:22, where Jesus tells a bleeding woman that her faith has healed her. But what about First Peter, where Peter quotes the Old Testament saying that by his wounds we are healed? From that standpoint, it sounds like anyone is entitled to healing. Anyone whose life has been destroyed. So everyone.

If everyone is entitled to healing, why are some people sick? I refuse to believe it’s because only some people have enough faith to be healed. What if God meant something else when he offered healing? What if He meant to restore our wholeness? What if He meant to use us, regardless of our lack of wholeness?

I didn’t cry when my grandfather died. I barely knew him when he was himself. But there were those who did. If anything, i was more concerned for my mother, hoping that i would be able to take care of her.

But of course, she didn’t need it. My mother is not indestructible, but time heals hearts. Through God. Of course she cried for a while. I think most people do when their lives are destroyed. I’m sure Regina cried when Kierkegaard died.

And i would be so sure, and i would rant and rave that Kierkegaard’s life had been irreparably destroyed long before that day. After all, he was unsure of all the things we find necessary for life. He was unsure of love, of grace, of salvation.

But without that, i probably would never have learned his name. Maybe he would have written more if he had thought he were going to live, but i don’t know if it would be worth reading. It would probably be exactly the same thing everyone had already been reading for a hundred years. The world needed a Kierkegaard, and while i don’t think God ordained his tragic circumstances, goodness knows He used them. The world recovered from the tragedies contained in World War II, and the church learned valuable lessons which have rearranged the ways in which we view our lives. Kierkegaard had a hand in that.

I spend far too much time worrying over people who don’t need my help. I hope my friend’s mother will be healed, but if she isn’t, maybe she already has been healed in a way i can’t see. All of our lives have been fractured and destroyed many times. But we have a Savior. And by His wounds we are healed.

For years now, i’ve loved to sightread. I’m not really sure why; i know that sightreadng makes for a slight break from the monotoy of working on the same piece over and over again, but then it’s also is nice to just be able to read a piece and not have to worry about hitting all the right notes. Either way, on those days i come into Band or Orchestra, and a new piece is sitting on my stand waiting for me, rehearsal takes an instantaneous turn for the better.

Of late i suppose i’ve thought of my life a lot like perpetual sighreading. The thing with sightreading is that you really don’t have to play it anywhere near perfect. The higher in the musical world you go, the better it has to be, but in most places, it is not crucial that one play too well the first time through. The main task, then, is just not getting lost. One. Always finding one. Always moving. And every time you stop, wait for one and just jump back in. The mistakes that go by are irrelevant, as long as you don’t let them happen again next time.

I don’t remember when Moulin Rouge came out. To be sure, i didn’t watch it immediately; it was far too risque for my parents to approve of me spending money to see it, but i did evntually watch it with Angelica. Through that movie, she taught me more or less the same thing that sightreading did– that mistakes and glitches were inevitable, and the only way to deal with them was to square your shoulders and sing, “The show must go on.” After watching Jim Broadbent sing that song, i changed the way i lived my life. On days when my Power Point was not working for a presentation that needed media, the show must go on. On days when i found myself pulling my foot out of my mouth for what felt like the millionth time, the show must go on. It was a good system.

Until the second time we read the piece. Not ok to keep getting lost anymore. Funny, but it seems that those faults of ours that irritate us the most are the ones which reoccur the most often. Maybe i’m the only one, but i constantly am wishing that i had paid more attention the first time. But then, the first time was the fun time, and now little is left, other than the hard work necessary to make the music into the masterpiece its composer intended it to be. That’s the tiring part, and i fear it is all too often the part i disregard. I tell myself the B is too high, or my tongue just isn’t capable of going that fast. I couldn’t do it the first time, and i certainly can’t do it this time. My brain shuts off, and i play something somewhere in the vicinity of what it was originally intended to be.

How much longer am i entitled to get by, living my life as less than i was originally intended to be? If God made me to be something exceptional, why do i just settle back in my seat and let the notes fly by without doing my utmost to make them outstanding? I may not be the best French Horn player that Point Loma has seen, but i’m sitting principal, and it’s time i acted like it. To say “The show must go on,” does not mean anymore that i can forget the things that went wrong the first time; it means that life doesn’t stop for my mistakes, so i might as well use them to make something good.

My High School Band teacher used to always say, “Dig in,” when we got a new piece. For some reason, it inspired me so much to work hard until i could play anything a composer asked of me. Now it’s time for me to work again. Time to stop waiting for one and just play the piece.

I stumbled across a piano recital today. Some kids were getting together and playing the Steinway in Cooper at the end of a long day. Each of them that i heard played beautifully, and i was happy to do nothing but sit and listen.

I like to think that i know a lot about music. After all, i’ve studied music for as long as i can remember.

Or at least pretended to.

The first piece i heard was Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral. I was very pleased with myself that i remembered the title after a few seconds.

If i looked at my life as the sum of my successes and failures, i wonder whether i would come out in the positive. I recognized Sunken Cathedral today, but was unsure of both the title and composer of Chopin’s Fantasie impromptu. And i tell people what i think all the time, but i seldom convince them that what i have to say is a better way of looking at the world than anything they have to offer. Wouldn’t one rank that among failures?

What is the best way of looking at the world, anyway? If there’s one thing that taking Christian Tradition class has done to me, it’s made me unsure of what i thought i believed. Origen, Athanasius and Barth are all swimming through my head now. And who is to say that Arius was wrong? Pelagius was condemned as a heretic, but how many protestant churches now find their views halfway between Augustine and Pelagius? More than i can count. And of those churches, what congregant even cares that prevenient grace is a point Arminius would have died to defend? I’ve barely even started to look at the things about which these men cared so deeply. With my limited knowledge, how can i assume i know anything?

For goodness’ sake, there are rules in life. I at least know that. No parallel fifths is a fairly set theory rule. But Debussy ignores it in La cathédrale engloutie. The entire song sounds like bells heard through a hundred feet of mud. What makes it alright for him to disobey the rules? Is that a failure?

Today was the last day of my class, and we talked about Kierkegaard. He broke rules too, but i keep thinking that breaking rules is normal for a visionary. What isn’t normal for a visionary is for him to be sad. A visionary should be lost in the goodness of his vision. And he shouldn’t choose to be alone. Right? If Kierkegaard were to add up his successes and failures, would be put being alone in the success side? Or was that a failure?

And how many of us do all the things we want to? Even visionaries disappoint themselves. Kierkegaard died in his 40s, as did Edgar Allen Poe. Mozart died at 35. Was there more pathos in Mozart’s works than Chopin’s Fantasie impromptu?

Maybe. Maybe in the Dies Irae of his Requiem Mass. So is that a success? Since millions of people identify with that mass? Or is it a failure, since he died less than a year after he wrote it?

I don’t know how Mozart would classify that composition. But i know the child that played Fantasie impromptu today worked through the sorrow and the anxiety that Chopin poured into the staves and emerged victorious in the last few moments he had on stage. I would have thought the piece impossibly difficult for him, but he played it with great grace and understanding. And he failed to play a few notes correctly, but when it was over, he got up and smiled.

My classes are winding down. I just took a final today and have another on Monday. I’ve been successful in some of the assignments, but not all of them. And when i look back, what is the value of those successes? And how much am i hurt by those failures? If a failure is like a death, and my life is only an accumulation of a thousand little deaths, how much more valuable will be the moments in which i truly live?