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

I'm back, goodbye.

It's been a good long time since I wrote here. Hurricane Ike blew more than one thing out of line, except it wasn't really Ike...that blessed wind was a long time coming. If you're reading this, you know that we are about to leave Texas for some extended travels - or maybe it's better to say that our four-year rest in Houston is about to be over, and it's time to put on the walking Schuhe once again.

I've been giving a lot of thought to how I use my computer to connect to the people I care about - and I how I use it to hold them at arm's length. Undecided about how I want to continue, I'll be directing people to this page for a while. If you're reading this for the first time, welcome. Don't expect to understand how we get from the older posts to here.

The name of this blog has changed for several reasons. Rescued, I am on my way.

Komm mit, wenn Du Lust hast.

dkz

Gotcha

Wait...I do know what this page is for.

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

garden state

Family connections left behind, for now, in favor of professional ones. What a blessed, infuriating, bittersweet and sweet time we had, joined to all of these intimate strangers, faces giving away the blood family, the rest of us volunteers hanging around the edges. Different people standing before different doors, several journeys already begun privately. Confidences shared, grievances aired, breeze shot. Leaving just in time. In an ivy-covered town now for a few teaching days, helping people string breath, words, and tone together as though the universe could be held fast by such connections. But that's a crazy idea...

dkz

home on the range

I am near several Great Lakes, celebrating holiday and family milestones with an extended group of inlaws. Last night saw (as does every night involving a reunion of these far-flung brothers) a massive poker game, which featured home-brewed beer, fierce competition, and several iPods on shuffle. I was struck by the wide-ranging tastes of this group (five men ages seventeen through forty-nine, varying levels of education, one professional musician, two former high school band members, one church choir singer, and one who proclaims himself tone deaf). We heard the Mozart Requiem, Esperanza Spalding, Hank Williams, Mars Volta, Radiohead, Soundgarden, Chris Whitley, Lucinda Williams, Frank Sinatra, Maria Callas, on and on. Today we'll gather for a completely typical Independence Day celebration, brats and beens and sparklers, which is to say that there's nothing particularly spectacular about the general musical taste of this family.

People are smart! People are interested in many kinds of musical expression and are touched by many things! Why does there seem to be a disconnect between this obvious truth and the workings of the music business?

Often I find myself frustrated by a culture that seems too lazy to leave its own house, divorced from the magic of gathering in a special place for a special purpose. Last night I found myself blind on the other side of the elephant, wondering how it is possible to underestimate ourselves so deeply.

ps...if you have not heard the above mentioned Ms. Spalding, "run", do not "walk", to the nearest "place" where you can get your hands on her music.

dkz