Translations

I feel confident in transcribing his song, because he repeated it about seven times in his joyful little voice while sitting on his mother's lap on the crowded streetcar. The sleepy-eyed commuters and the jittery late-season shoppers shared quiet smiles, and he sang loudly, too young to care about what other people were thinking, with absolute concentration.

Danke Danke lydesstah
Hauauantautschuah!

He was practicing the cool new sounds from kindergarten, probably on the way to his next class to play and sing with friends, have snacks, take a nap, and learn more English. Charlotte, our impossibly beautiful next door neighbor, has already shyly showed me her My First English book, which she puts into her little backpack every day before heading off to class with the other three-year-olds.

Appa bufftau also hai

I can still remember the Christmases of my Lutheran childhood illuminated by a thin chord of magical sounds linking me to the disappearing speech of my grandparents. I can still remember the sounds I didn't really understand: yay air so glawver yulekvel, for dah bre Yesu firt. But I didn't lack understanding either. I was yay, air was being, Yesu will always sound the same. A window only cracked, a sharp lack I feel as on the train as in front of me that little man sings, wide open.

Laika tyment indeskai

In my icecold workplace people walk through the offices with warm smiles and sweet gifts. The world will always be both brutal and generous. Knowing this makes it easier to consider both remaining and leaving. Packing up after the show, I hesitate over my heels and the bouquet from Sunday's recital. I leave those uncomfortable shoes in my office and bury my face in the roses, which are coming home with me.

Thank you, little star.

dkz

Vielleicht...aber vielleicht auch nicht

1. We sit at the back of a balcony box behind and above the front of the stage in the Grosser Saal. The Commendatore is across from us and waves. The Monks from St. Augustine's file into the balcony past us to sing the opening chant. Even the early music bands in this town have a sweetness to their sound. Is that possible? Am I really hearing that hint of Schlag on gut strings? Or is it the wood of the hall itself, still vibrating with a hundred genius ghosts? Or is it the slightly slower tempi of these Vespers that allows slightly longer and more loved tones? Harnoncourt may not be the peppiest Monteverdian, but there he is at 81, in his house, with his band, and the two seraphim cry out to each other and time turns back on itself. Omnes, omnes generationes.

2. I walk through the thickly falling snow under the white and red Christmas lights, past the Stephensdom covered in white, past drunk crowds of friends laughing loudly and slipping on the ice. My glasses fog over when I step into the pub. He has fans, a table of young people who want to talk about guitars and take his picture. People throw their money into the upturned Stetson. I'm on a black elevator goin' down/Little Joe from Kokomo it rattles to the ground/The dice is laughing at the man that he throwed/You're goin' over to the lowside of the road. 


3. "I find it driven."
I play it again, the soprano waits, he stops me.
"Am I too fast?"
"No, it's not a tempo question - I just think each eighth note needs to be more suspended, not leading into the next. Otherwise it sounds too casual."
I smile. "Maybe that's my American Oberflächlichkeit."
He laughs. "No, no, it's not superficial! It's just too...directed, somehow. Maybe that's what's American about the way you play it, you have a goal. Beloved, hurry up!" Now all three of us laugh. He smiles, just barely: "For Americans, or for most people today, a love song is just, JA. But in this aria we need to hear, well, maybe...but also, maybe not."
Sylvia breathes and begins. Vieni ove amore per goder t'appella.


dkz

blues

So MtMn has been practicing a lot, but I was still surprised when he announced he was playing a solo gig at a local English-speaking hangout. a solo guitar gig. With singing. See. all of that is stuff he can do and has done throughout a long musical life of playing every style imaginable, but two hours of solo singing and strumming is something new. Saturday night was his debut, and it felt like another huge step in our current reinvention of our life. It was absolutely new to watch him singing the blues, Robert Johnson and Taj Mahal and the occasional Soundgarden, in a crowded cafe packed with people escaping the frigid night. At the same time, it was life as it always has been (or at least as it has been since 1983), me in a dark and crowded bar with friends watching him perform across the room. As I have a thousand times before, I settled into a chair and listened, watched strangers listen to him, let the detritus of a long and frustrating day wash away to the strains of "La Grange".

At 11:30 we walked, MtMn and MSMB and me, from that pub to the Stefansdom, ready to experience a real moment of Vienna weirdness, a performance of the Mozart Requiem that would end precisely at the moment of the composer's death. The performance of the piece was excellent, actually, good soloists and orchestra and a superb choir (check them out here - different performance but it will hook you on this group). I won't lie, I was dozing during part of it (it was late and freezing!). But here was the great Requiem happening in this beautiful space at the insane hour of midnight plus, and when at the end the priests came out with the bells and the incense and the cross to solemnly process through the church followed by all of the musicians...well, it was crazy, solemn and sincere yet kitschy and hilarious. 

Vienna in December is dark and damp and yet glowing with Christmas lights and the roasted chestnuts sold on every corner, and it greets me every morning with a tight little smile. Is it a movie set or a mirror? Half a world away my baby brother turns forty and my grandmother sleeps at Fort Snelling next to her veteran husband, and my heart runs back in that direction with every second beat. Yet here we are this morning in Glasergasse 3 (not at the opera house thanks to Immaculate Mary) with the window open to the sun-warmed winter air, drinking coffee and hanging out, making plans.

The pub gig might be regular. so he's practicing.

Jesus left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans.
Workin' from one end to the other and all points in between.

Took a jump through Mississippi, well, muddy water turned to wine.
Then out to California through the forests and the pines.

You might not see him in person but he'll see you just the same.
You don't have to worry 'cause takin' care of business is his name.

dkz

Passing through

The last five days have redefined my whole idea of being "unterwegs", on a journey. I'm on one wild ride, unsure from moment to moment of time, day, temperature, century - of location in general. I'm either nailed to the spot or unmoored, and sometimes I experience both conditions simultaneously. It started on Friday when I got the news of my grandmother's passing. On Facebook. I hadn't heard any news in the morning, but there was my brother's status update casually glanced at the rehearsal break. I had half of my mother's number dialed when I realized it was the middle of the night in Minnesota. I called my bro, who had since gone back to bed, and so I returned to rehearsal. The next days were a frustrating mixture of poorly timed attempts to connect to my funeral-planning family (that seven hour gap is a nasty beeyotch when your heart is aching and everyone involved has a big to-do list) and extremely taxing rehearsals (it happens, art can be hard. Stop laughing.). It was exhausting, disheartening, and lonely.

But that's only part of the story. I was also filled with gratitude and joy because at home a few weeks ago, Grandma gave me the gift of two good days, great conversations, a special burst of energy. I could talk to my sisters and brother and mom and dad on my phone, on my computer, practically for free and for as long as we pleased (I'm old enough to remember precious, painfully rationed long-distance calls). And miraculously, I was there in the church briefly on Sunday when the funeral took place, thanks to Skype. I saw the beautiful faces of my family, their faces were in my home and my face was there at Vision of Glory Lutheran. I saw one nephew's nervous smile before he went to prepare for playing the piano during the service, and as he turned to go I thought, my goodness...at every family event up till now, I've been sitting at the keyboard.

We'd had a pianist as our dinner guest that evening with his flautist wife and their brilliant daughter, new friends that lit up a heavyhearted weekend with laughter and conversation. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast, ate with abandon, and did the dishes together. Normally I'm the kind of person who refuses help with washing up in my kitchen (control freak, duh), but this night I didn't. Earlier in the day, my sister had called about her eulogy; she was taking ideas from everyone in the family. One story she mentioned was about how Grandma and Mom did the dishes together and sang, as Grandma had once done with her sister. So I let my new friends help me with my dishes (albeit no singing), and there was something deeply moving about that, although I'm glad I didn't have to try and explain it. After they went home and my static-y Skype call was over, I opened both sets of windows to the snowy Viennese night and took a long breath of cold winter air.

Clarity and collaboration, there may be something to this pairing. It will be a while before I can write about this week with any of the former. The orchestra is finally here in our Giovanni rehearsals, along with our music director, and finally the piece begins to take shape. I'm playing the recitatives with two stunning partners, cellists who are splitting the performances. So there are three of us collaborating on this project, and of course the work is faster and light years better with the addition of two sets of ears, minds, and hearts. I rehearsed with one of the two gentlemen this morning, and that was ninety minutes of grace. Not only am I challenged to a new level of elegance by his musicianship, I was given the gift of his total engagement with and enjoyment of our work, of his profession. I asked him how many times he had played Don Giovanni. He smiled and mentioned that next season would be his last before retirement, and as we talked he spoke of his grandfather, who joined the Vienna Philharmonic in 1892, who played under Mahler and Strauss and who collaborated with Brahms. 

A quick email check before rehearsal contained glowing reports of the eulogy and the piano solo. Outside my windows it was snowing hard, and I had to hurry downstairs. Behind me my boss gave the downbeat, and the orchestra thundered on all sides the music that will outlive us all. 

dkz

Prunksaal

It means "Hall of Splendor", or if you are translating in haste for someone in the Kantine, "fancy room". I played a gig there last night, in the room of splendor of the Austrian National Library. The Nationalbibliothek is part of the Hofberg complex, the spectacular lodgings of emperors past, and it turns out that in addition to the great furniture and tracts of land, the Habsburgs also collected the occasional Buch.

80 meters long and 30 meters high, cathedral-like in dimension and jaw-droppingly beautiful, this is the former great hall of the Imperial library. Marble floors and pillars support the frescoed dome and the walls lined with centuries of thought written down in all languages. The first display case I saw upon entering the hall contained a 5th century parchment illustrating the mail routes of the Roman empire. It's like a pretend fantasy library from some great yet-unmade movie, Harry Potter meets the DaVinci Code.

See old Karl VI in the center there? Last night he was surrounded by life-size images of some very beloved Alfred Roller designs:

My colleagues and I were the entertainment for "100 years of Rosenkavalier". That wonderful piece is having a big anniversary in 2011, and a small, fascinating group of supporters had a preview of the installation last night. The Roller designs were just a taste. I stared for many minutes at some of von Hofmannsthal's original notes for the first scene between the Marschallin and Oktavian. He brought them to Strauss for an initial meeting, and as they talked together (no doubt over coffee), Strauss came up with a few melodic ideas. There they were, the opera's initial ascending horn call and the sighing violin answer, born as doodles in the margins of some hastily sketched dialogue. 

We performed in the unheated hall and then repaired to the comfort of a reception. I talked to a former Austrian Supreme Court justice, a diplomat, a professor of literature, opera lovers all. I was moved by the connection of this audience to this piece, and by their grateful connection to the performers. I walked back to the streetcar with the mezzo, a woman experienced in this opera but buzzing with anticipation over her first Oktavian at the Staatsoper, coming in just a few weeks (especially after talking to our audience members about who they've heard in that house!). 

And then at home, the messages were waiting for me. I found my brother-in-law on Skype. He was drying the big pot for the mashed potatoes that may or may not get made, waiting to hear if he should take my nephew on to choir practice or to the hospital where my mom and siblings had already gathered. My grandmother was admitted about a week ago, and Mom's gut feeling was that she wasn't coming home. Still, she had rallied in the last 48 hours, enough so that my uncle was planning to bring her home for the holiday. Yesterday things changed quickly, and now it seems that the liver cancer she's been fighting since the summer will take her soon, most likely during this holiday weekend. 

Some of the people who read this have met Alice. I wish you all knew her. She has lived a great life, an epic life. It started with immigrant parents, a mother who couldn't ever communicate well in English, two siblings who died young, the wish for education squelched by her father, a marriage ended after just five years with her beloved young husband's death, and the decision to leave her baby daughter behind in New Ulm and travel to Minneapolis for work. She was a single mother during the war, was terrifyingly poor, tough, and resourceful. She had a disastrous second marriage and a troubled third to a sad and loyal WWII veteran. She was a working woman until retirement, she took care of her grandchildren; she completed her GED at the age of 70 and nursed her husband through a long, relentless illness. She traveled the world and learned line dancing, she chopped her own ice out of her gutters, she was a terrible driver and has always been an avid card player. She came to Houston to visit me a few years ago, refused the airline's wheelchair and walked through Intercontinental, and insisted on going to Lakewood Chapel to see Joel Osteen. She's Rosenkavalier's younger sister by five years. She hasn't ever heard the piece, but I imagine she'd enjoy the music while recognizing exactly none of its privileged characters. 

It's Thanksgiving Day. My family's in a splendid room in Minnesota.

Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding

Wenn man so hinlebt, ist sie rein gar nichts,

Aber dann auf einmal, man spürt doch nichts als sie.

Sie ist in uns herum, sie ist auch in uns drinnen.

In den Gesichtern rieselt sie. Im Spiegel da rieselt sie,

In meinen Schläfern fliesst sie,

Und zwischen mir und dir da fliesst sie wieder, lautlos...

Allein, man muss sich auch vor ihr nicht fürchten.

Auch sie ist ein Geschöpf des Vaters, 

Der uns alle erschaffen hat.

Time, that's a strange thing.

When you're absorbed in your life, it's nothing,

But then, all at once, you're aware of nothing else.

It's all around us, it's inside us too,

It's flowing through our faces, in the mirror,

In my veins, and silently between the two of us...

Only, we shouldn't be afraid of it.

It's another creation of the Father who created us all. 

dkz

the wit and wisdom of Rock 92

I always forget that the radio station in my home town is no longer classical, a serious fault when you consider that the changeover is at least five years old. One of the colleges here was home to a great classical music and NPR station, and now it's one of those corporate "college" channels, The Man embarrassing in a Che Guevara T-shirt. I flipped it on reflexively in my rented Chevy Aveo and heard something about a young man seriously lacking in vocal energy having a dyslexic heart. It's because he can't read his girl's signals, see? Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh. This from the same place on the dial where I first found music that bonded to every molecule in my body. I cursed quietly but with inappropriate passion and pressed "scan" twice, seeking public radio, but this was a few days before the election and the lyrics there were even sadder. No more Beethoven, no more Democratic Farmer Labor party, my hopeful early Minnesota life lost forever and the airwaves full of twaddle.

Scan, scan. If it had to be lame, let it be the lame I remember, the tinny lame from the transistor radio out in the yard on the hot summer days that Annie and I laid out together covered in pre-Live Strong baby oil. Let it be the lame I heard my uncle striving for in the garage with his shirtless friends. Summer of the late seventies, I summoned you to my car, calling up days whose enormous frustration held enormous promise.

somewhere along the lonley road I had tried ta find ya

The old house is one of the few old bungalows from the twenties, shakily standing in a neighborhood full of lot-straining new construction. I climb in bed with her, spooning as the TV preacher bellows. She likes him because he is so intelligent. I have learned so much about the old testament! she tells me. My uncle brings soup. He's set up high-speed so he can work from the house, and when she decides she wants to get dressed, I go set up Skype. Her green sweater is a beautiful color for her. She tells me stories from her trip to Sweden and she dozes off on my shoulder. I look at a picture of her just after the war on the steps of the house, strong and tan in a halter top, smiling at whatever lover holds the camera.

we gotta get outta this place
if it's the last thing we evah do yeah yeah

He watches me put up pictures in the new room. This OK? Nails in my mouth as I re-center the framed photograph. Sure, honey, whatever you think. But I ask with each picture, still expecting exactitude, criticism, disappointment. They never come. He watches the Vikings and thinks Favre should have retired. Since August he's lost half of his hair and his teeth hurt him, so he falls asleep without them. His mouth is tiny between steroid-swollen cheeks.

I'll just sit tight through the shadows of the night
Let it ring forever more

The difference between the fifth grade band and the sixth grade band is huge! Half the town is in the bleachers of the high school auditorium to hear all the middle and high school bands play. Fifth grade is all a Dudamel-inspired version of Twinkle Twinkle, no music, with different sections standing and sitting to take their turn in the spotlight. By sixth they're all white-shirted behind their stands, the conductor has a baton, the pitch has begun its long process of detente. My nephew is cool in the enormous sax section, true to his Scandinavian roots, no swaying in response to the percussion of Fiesta Time! or counting unconsciously with his head.

they say the sea turns so dark
you know it's time, you read the signs

My retired choir director sits behind me. I remember the night in 1979, right before we moved to Arizona, when we did the best choir concert ever in that auditorium, when I cried at the thought of leaving that choir because I couldn't imagine one finer, couldn't imagine music outside of the college on the hill with its amazing radio station, couldn't imagine a better piano teacher than mine. My heart was full of sorrow as we headed away from town. How I wanted to stay, how I wanted to flee. How music lifted me, carried me away, keeps bringing me back.

My sister-in-law (also standing in a fateful place, having blown out her knee in Lady Raiders basketball a few feet from where the band now sits) holds her youngest up to the rail to see his brother. My niece slips her hand into mine.

'scuse me while I kiss the sky.

dkz

Morning

MtMn has been felled by his first Austrian cold virus. He sleeps as I start my day perfectly thanks to his Naschmarkt trip and mad cooking skillz: homemade bread, cheese from Cheese Land, cafe au lait with cinnamon. It's a beautiful morning on a day of somber memory. Nine years ago, MtMn drove off to his stressful law office while I stretched out my morning in similar fashion. Even as I think on the large events, results, and meanings of that day, I also think of breakfast, the simple beginning of every morning, the way we help each other through that and then through the days and nights.

Yesterday was a day of simple but meaningful triumph; work got done, results were obvious, no drama was attached. If every day contains this, something wonderful will be underway, something definitely worth a certain level of exhaustion.

Maybe because today is today, maybe because of the small steps forward, but probably just because of Mozart (and the mad skillz of the Wiener Sängerknaben), this is what brought unexpected tears to my eyes at work last night:


Bald prangt, den Morgen zu verkünden,
Die Sonn' auf goldner Bahn,
Bald muß die Nacht, die düstre, schwinden,
Der Tag der Weisheit nahn.-
O holder Friede, steig hernieder,
Kehr in der Menschen Herzen wieder,
Dann ist die Erd ein Himmelreich,-
Und Sterbliche sind Göttern gleich.

Soon the resplendent sun on its golden path will announce morning's arrival.
Soon black night must disappear and the day of wisdom draw near.
Oh beloved peace, come down and return to the hearts of men.
Then earth will be a heavenly place, and humans like the gods.

dkz

Nick's tips for enjoying the Tigers game

8:00 AM is not too early to begin dressing for the game. Nothing says "Tiger fan" like wearing your cap while eating your cereal.

If your aunt says she is a Twins fan, do not take her seriously. She has not so much as a towel with a "T" on it. However, when you sit behind an entire row of people from Minnesota, you are allowed to die a little inside. Boredom is the best choice when choosing your outer attitude. Close second: get very involved with eating your ice.

 Your team is winning, and the game is a little boring, so point out your dad's office building to the visitors. Don't act too interested when they ask questions about what you want to do in high school next year. Enthusiasm is for the lame. Save it up for when you kick their butts at both hearts and Rock Band later in the evening.

You can allow yourself a smile or two during the day, as long as you're not like totally obvious about it.

dkz

Maggie Rose's Guide to Beginning Photography

You have to ask first. You say, "Oh please may I use the camera please? Thank you!" Don't say it loud because you should ask like a lady. I promise to be very very careful. If you drop the camera it's bad because it can break and then all the pictures will fall out.

I'm gonna take picture!

(careful aiming, pressing of button)

Gooooood picture!

.

Tell everybody, "Say tscheeeee I'm gonna take a picture!" If they don't listen you can say it again real loud.

                                                  Charlie is too little to take pictures.

The lake is really really good! I drived the boat all! Bahmah! Seff! (spreads hands wide)

Can you take my picture?

dkz

this couldn't wait

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

(by David Whyte - thanks to JW for this gift.)
dkz

Is Chicago, is not Chicago

Suitcases for the car, for the closet, for the shipping company. Grilled meat, pot luck, three era's worth of love. Sweat, coffee, sleepy friends in the humid dark.

(Time stopped, flowed, and twisted in a beloved's kitchen, around friends I've known since we were younger than the beloved's son.)

Breakfast tacos, gas, and slow trucks in Nacogdoches. Roots radio, short naps, and language lessons in the car. Conversation, silence, and joy on the road.

(We were taken in for the night and hosted generously by musician friends we are just beginning to know well, given a glimpse into their rich shared lives)

The laughter, the embraces, the stories. The new house, the surprising mariachi, the patio breeze.
The city in sunlight, the crowd in the park, the chocolate on the train.

(Our brother and his family, still adjusting to their new home, offer their shoulders to us in transition, and we lean as we so often have before)

Sportscenter, Johnny Cash, liar's poker. Thunderstorm, ceiling fan, couch. Sorrow, elation, peace.

dkz

Close call

Yesterday evening, the end of a long week, was a weird salad of satisfaction and sorrow. Wonderful conversations with husband (who is finishing an important stonework goal on our house) and with sister and nephew (who reported on a new piano and their plans to visit Vienna) brought me joy even as they underlined the distance I'm choosing to put between myself and home. When will I see that beautiful Texas house again? What about the growing nieces and nephews, my siblings, my parents, my friends?

I went out to the Internet cafe, watched some World Cup, made a blog entry and answered mail, and went back to the hotel. Celebrating football fans sang far into the night. This morning, underslept and sad, I thought about canceling the two appointments I had made. One was a professional thing which could easily be handled over the phone, and one was a lovely new acquaintance, an expat who would have totally understood the situation.

But I didn't.

I didn't, and so I didn't miss the train ride into the bucolic small town, and I didn't miss watching the blue-green foothills getting taller. I didn't miss the great homemade coffee or the friendly Weimaraner. I didn't miss the mind-blowing room with more than two dozen harpischords and fortepianos in various states of restoration, and I didn't miss the chance to play them, and I didn't miss looking at the beautiful antique furniture and finding out where to hunt for it. I didn't miss the adorable restaurant (that opened in a former butcher's whose name was Tomasch and so the new owners simply changed the letters around on the sign and named their place "Stomach") and I didn't miss the yellow gazpacho and the asparagus torte and the brilliant conversation. I didn't miss the gelato or the several miles of walking through the cooler but still sunny streets.

There is so much that I do miss, and will. But I'm so, so glad that I got up this morning and opened the door.

dkz

mezzo (o soprano) del cammin

We  picked the single cheesiest place to sit on the Kaerntnerstrasse today, right at the edge of the Hotel Sacher outdoor tables where every camera-toting tourist and opera-bound Wiener/in could watch us eating things mit Schlagobers (Mom, if you're reading this? Vienna is where people who love whipped cream like you do go when they die). We only had an hour before her rehearsal began, so the intake of both dessert and information began in earnest. It was wonderful to catch up with a long-time friend at the top of her game in the central city of our profession. It was even more wonderful to see her happy and settled at this point in her life.

Friends have written me in the last week to give me props for the big transition, and I do appreciate the support. However, although nothing probably equals (emotionally) the thrilling and terrifying bungee jump from adolescence into adulthood, isn't middle age nothing but big transition? Now our own kids are doing the bungee jump - and our parents are doing acrobatics toward territory even more mysterious. Those of us not yet frail but no longer cluelessly vital are finding our bodies and minds shifting, not imperceptibly at all. Usually we don't say much, because of the kids and the parents, but also because of the friends who are free-falling through illness or job loss or job change or divorce or something they could/could not imagine. The big transitions that we get to choose are privileges. Sogni, lampi, giuochi.

I took big unabashed spoonfuls of cream and talked with my friend as we remembered some hard roads and relished this beautiful and easy time. Then I followed her to her rehearsal where she sang in perfect octaves with the mezzo, and the chorus answered in a slightly Viennese-accented whisper, and I walked out into the waning sunlight blessed by every single part of my life.

dkz

under the rocks and stones

Stop #1 on the OMG Look At The Blessings tour was reached yesterday after travel that begged to be a metaphor in this entry but was probably just travel. I had to check my beautifully packed carry-on bag because there was no room left in the overheads (because no one wants to pay for checking their bags and IT'S LIKE THE GODDAMN GRAPES OF WRATH...um, anyway). We started late in bad weather, enjoying turbulence all the way from IAH to PHI that halted beverage service and made it impossible to read. I massaged my thumb and tried to stay with the discomfort. We landed late, 15 minutes before my connecting flight, which was in a turboprop, which I hate, and I ran all the way there. However! The short hop to LGA featured a spectacular sunset through the calming yet still dramatic clouds. There were Germans sitting next to me and we had a fun, shouty (hello, turboprop) Unterhaltung. And at the airport, there was my bag!

On to the Astoria apartment of TR, Cookbook editor and webgoddess. TR sang in the first opera I ever played. Arizona State, the Reagan years: she was a talented undergraduate and I was accidentally playing rehearsals out of a need for cash. I had to learn Cosi fan tutte in some crazy short amount of time, and after locking myself in a small room to be ravished by Wolfgang and Lorenzo, I was forever changed. TR and I lost touch with each other after school, but life in NY brought us back together (like it does). We have a great serendipitous/random/surprising web of connecting artist friends (like you do), and we checked up on most of them as I devoured a plate of her signature roast lamb with a salt potato, perfect salad, and a cucumber soup shooter. Extra bonus surprise friend MS was there too, as was TR's superhero husband when he came home late from his cool job making bad television. That, my friends, is a bona fide travel day.

Six hours of dead sleep later, I was wide awake on my Aerobed, wishing for more shuteye but knowing there'd be none since, oh, I'm flying to Austria today. So I'm up drinking TR's heavenly coffee and writing out at another serendipitous/random/surprising web of connecting friends. Good morning/Gruess' Gott. It's a beautiful sunny morning in Astoria, and it was beautiful to see the Manhattan skyline come into view last night, and it is heart-opening to sit in my friend's living room surrounded by all the parts of a New York life.


time isn't holding us
time isn't after us
same as it ever was
same as it ever was

dkz

Orpheus/Rilke/Hunter

Gods are able. Tell how a man, though,
could possibly thread the lyre's narrow modes?
Vacillating at the heart's dark crossroads,
he beholds no temple of Apollo.

Song, you teach us, is beyond achievable desire,
it is rather the sheer reality of immanent being:
simplicity itself for deity,
but how may we partake? When will you inspire

our being, bestowing earth and stars by turn?
This has no relation, youth, to your enamored care:
mouth forced wide by the thrust of your voice - learn

to set aside impassioned music. It will end.
True singing breaths a different air.
Air without object. A gust within God. A wind.

chain, chain, chain

I'm leaving Facebook at the end of the week. Let me admit up front that I know this might be temporary. All I know is that, after months of digging on my big, far-flung, loose community of FB friends (and after urging loads of people to join!), I'm suddenly struck to the heart by how it all encourages and supports my laziest self.

Am I truly "keeping in touch"? Is it really enough just to log on, make random ironic or loving comments, occasionally send a message? Am I not simply turning FB on as though it's the 24-hour AllMyFriends channel, accepting whatever happens to be on at the time?

Then again, is now the right time to promise myself that I will work harder at keeping contact with my friends? Should I not be thankful for the FB hub and for how much it fills in for me, for real human effort?

I have no answers. Maybe the passive nature of it is only bugging me because I am contemplating losing my dad and am at the front of a huge relocation - in other words, maybe I just need to get over myself. Maybe I'm just sticking my head in the sand, overwhelmed by how big life is and how much love has come my way in the last weeks.

Or maybe I'm hungry for something that's really missing, squinting my eyes after what's vanishing.

dkz

front porch

front porch
Originally uploaded by wienerkz

To Let

Today while Paul records one last time with the reggae band and plays one last gig with AG, I'm in my office with a soy latte, my "Northfield Townie" T-shirt, and fifteen book boxes. Five already sealed stand stacked against one wall, bound for Vienna. The others take shape and slowly fill with books, music, pictures, mementos, significant and trivial pieces of the last four years. There are the scores I've touched so often (Figaro, Flute, Elixir, Lohengrin) and ones I have neglected (all of my Bach). Books testify to my ridiculously inconsistent taste in literature (If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, The Nanny Diaries). There is the small green ornament that fell off the H&G gingerbread house and rolled into the pit in the Cullen, and there's the drawing of Texas that Roland made (our backyard has a sign in it: "WE LOVE NATURE!"). There's the prompter made of Legos from the MET Rodelinda and several stuffed animals from HGO opening nights (parrot:Boheme; elephant:Aida). There are cards to save (for me), documents to save (for FG), a billion files to delete and reorganize, and quite a bit of trash.

There's the door that has stood open most of the time. It has framed friends and frenemies, and welcomed jokes, information, and lunch invitations. It's been my window on the busy pace of RB and the traffic at the hall computer, and on any day I could see most of my colleagues walk by it, their steps speaking. That door has also been shut for commiseration, tantrums (usually mine), tears, confidences, laughter, counsel, yoga, and naps.

This is the room I couldn't unpack in for a year, where I contemplated giving up and then decided to try, where I learned to do my job, where I got the first real taste of the absent-minded professor I have always been.

In a week this space will be anonymous again, shorn of me, ready to accept the next person and help him learn whatever it is he has coming. How a little corporate container makes this possible I am not certain, but part of moving is the experience of how powerfully we bleed into our possessions. My scores are filled with the people who have sung them, and it's remarkable to find out what's easy to toss and what's essential to keep.

But these walls, window, and door are something else, mine until the minute I leave, and then never mine again.

dkz

Back to the future.

Home after months away.
Overgrown garden, weedchoked pond, surprising oregano. A friend's unexpected gift: six neatly tied bags of yard waste.
My husband's saxophone practice, veggies and hummus on the table, good wine, old mail. An approaching hurricane.
In our wake: concerts, recitals, an opera, great work with dear friends, the end of an era, dreams and plans.
Life on earth measurably better, palpably shorter.
I still don't know what this page is for.
dkz

In with the good air...

My mom saved someone's life in church last week. When Pastor Tim paused in the sermon to say kindly, "is there a doctor or other medical professional with us today?" and Mom looked around hoping for someone else's raised hand, there was only enough time for most people to put the situation together before she was moving away, calm white head floating down the aisle above the seated congregants (old neighbors, new residents, denizens of my hometown strange and familiar). The elderly lady was slumped back in the first pew, unresponsive, and the church staff was looking for the defibrillator and realizing that no one really knew how to use it. Mom bent over the still woman and gently (no preamble, no announcement) sighed two quick breaths into her open, slack mouth. She told me later that these are called "rescue breaths", and that she was glad that if it had to be someone that it was this prim, neat woman. The eyelids of that lady's sweet, fragile face fluttered open, and suddenly she was sitting up. "I'm OK," she whispered, and soon the EMTs were there and the pastor resumed talking, and everyone sat with what had just happened (not happened) as easily as possible in church, at home, in the place I knew as my first theater.

People (have/will always) come together to try and explain this life to themselves and each other. They listen and breathe together in various spaces, at various times, with varying degrees of agreement and intention. Sometimes they save each other's lives, or at least wake each other up. Sometimes they change the course of what seems inevitable. It doesn't always happen in a way that seems very theatrical. When technique is beautifully at an actor's disposal, what she does can be so simple that you can almost forget about it a few minutes later, as though a dead woman has not just opened her eyes.

The thing I should admit from the start is that I believe in theater, in theaters, and in the miracles that happen there. I believe that, attending, we can save each other's lives.

dkz