Slightly Sampled

( BEHIND THE CUT )

Just got back from seeing Bottle Shock in New Haven.

( MILDLY SPOILERIFIC POST BEHIND THE CUT )

At about this time last year, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, as it eventually came to be titled, was being filmed in the city where I work and where I went to graduate school. Filming took place in the city streets and also within the university campus. I could look down from my office window on the nineteenth floor onto the tops of the actors' trailers. Harrison Ford's was huge and was enclosed by big privacy screens, but I saw the top of his head a few times. I also got to watch some of the chase scenes being filmed along the city streets, although these were all done with stunt doubles.

Mr. Reedpipe and I finally got to see the finished product last weekend. It was so neat seeing our fair city on the big screen, even if it was only in about five minutes of the movie. There is a motorcycle chase scene that goes down one of the main streets in the city and past the university's School of Music, and then the motorcycle veers onto one of the university quadrangles and you see the bike (with Mutt and Indy riding it) actually enter the front doors of the famous main library. Because the university didn't want motorcycle exhaust messing up its precious books, the interior shots of the "library" were actually filmed in the dining hall where I used to have lunch with my organ professor after my lesson every Tuesday.


( MILD SPOILERS AHOY )

My younger son, E., turned three yesterday. For the past three years, his impish smile has lit up my life. The feel of him running into my arms, often pajama-clad, as I walk into the front door at the end of the day is what keeps me going. For all the effort, time and expense put toward therapy and treatment of his older brother's condition, and for all that his brother is in a very good place now (more about that in another post), I think E. has often been left on his own as the "normal" child needing less attention.

So it was wonderful yesterday, seeing him realize that the tiny party we threw for him was all about him. It was the first time, I think, that he was aware of being the center of attention, and the look of surprised joy on his face when we sang his name in the Happy Birthday song was something I will never forget. The two families who came to the little party were so gracious to have shared their Father's Day with us (I didn't realize that the 15th was Father's Day this year until after I had sent out the invitations), and even though E. shared the limelight again, I was glad to have given him, finally, a day he could think of as his own.

Text, audio and video of Jo Rowling's commencement address, extolling the benefits of failure and the power of imagination, available here.

"We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

Inspiring and unsentimental, infused with humility and splashed with humor, it's an address I wouldn't have minded hearing on my graduation day fourteen years ago.

Although, truth be told, Al Gore was totally hot in 1994.

I apologize for all the navel examination of late, but I was moved by the baccalaureate address at my alma mater this year, given by the by the College's newly-minted first female president.

Regret is horrible thing, but I suspect we all live with a certain amount of it on a fairly daily basis. "No regrets" is a phrase uttered by undergraduates who are too young to know what regret is and old lovers who are either too optimistic or too vulnerable at the time they say the words. So I am giving up my pretense of invulnerability, and am hereby acknowledging that I harbor certain regrets. And as horrible as regret may be, it's actually somewhat liberating to recognize it for what it is.

During their baccalaureate service yesterday, this year's College graduates heard about the "parking-space theory" of life: "Don't park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you'll never find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be." In other words, "if you don't pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. There is always time for Plan B. But don't begin with it."

But what happens if you do circle back to where you have to be, and you find that Plan B isn't where you want to be either? If there is always time for Plan B, is there time for Plan C as well? Plan D? When is it that you have to stop planning and just get on with it? Is it when you get married? When you have children?

Regret is part of growing up. This past year was a year of retirements, not only of the phenomenal JS, but of my first organ teacher as well. The retirement of two beloved mentors -- mentors who saw me through the sometimes painful process of becoming an adult -- has gone a long way toward making me realize that it's time for me to deal with my regret, and perhaps even to turn my regret into a positive catalyst.

"Every decision means a loss as well as gain -- possibilities forgone as well as possibilities embraced." It's the "loss of roads not taken" that I regret, I suppose. And perhaps it's not such a bad thing to regret them.

Regretting makes us remember.

And sometimes, remembering just might make us try again.

So I'm going to make up for my long absence from LJ with this Long and Rambling Post, in which I attempt to work through some Issues.

On Monday evening, May 12, Mr. Reedpipe and I made the three-hour drive back to my alma mater to attend a tribute concert for my former music theory professor, JS, who is retiring.

We've probably all had at least one teacher who's had a particularly significant role in shaping who we are. Even though I'm no longer a professional musician, hardly a day goes by that I'm not reminded of a lesson I learned from JS, or a turn of phrase, musical or otherwise, that he somehow inspired. Among all of the wonderful teachers I have ever had in music, English, divinity, and law, he is unparalleled both in the amount of knowledge I gained from him and the profound effect he has had on my life.

Although I wouldn't have missed the concert for the world (I even endured the ire of a judge to move a trial that had been scheduled for the next day), I wasn't sure how I'd feel being back at my alma mater, among so many musicians. Two years ago, JS had called me at my previous firm, and during the course of the conversation asked me, very simply, whether I was happy with my decision to leave music behind in favor of law.

I couldn't give him an answer. I still can't.

For reasons that I'm still trying to process, going to the tribute concert was a huge step for me. I have long acknowledged that my personality is profoundly unsuited to my career as a commercial litigator. I hate conflict. I despise public speaking. I suck at negotiating. While I find a vague satisfaction in meeting the intellectual challenges of being a member of the bar, my only real reason for remaining a lawyer at a large international firm is the fact that I'm able to provide for my family so that they want for nothing.

With the possible exceptions of my parents and my wonderful husband, JS believed in me like no one ever has. He knew just how much to push, and exactly when and how to encourage. He trusted me with showcasing other students' keyboard compositions and even with performing one of his own choral works with the student choir I co-directed. The one time I remember him ever expressing true disappointment in me was after I had performed a rather difficult composition by a classmate with whom I didn't particularly get along. I can still feel the sting of hearing JS tell me that I had effectively ruined the piece by playing it too slowly.

He was my theory professor in my freshman year, my musicianship professor in my sophomore year, and my thesis advisor in my senior year. He took me on as a teaching assistant during my junior and senior years. He introduced me, with wonderment, to the glory of the Bach chorales. He taught me how to use an augmented sixth and how to play a five-part fugue in open score. He gave me my first choral conducting lessons and taught me jazz harmony. He also taught me to use freshly-grated Pecorino and that raw oysters can cure a headache. He taught me how to slice a bell pepper.

Most of all, JS taught me how to listen -- and live -- with open ears and an open heart. He taught me to listen to the music in other people. By example, he taught me how to be a compassionate person. While I don't always live up to his example, I am both proud and humbled to have been his student.

The tribute concert last Monday evening was put together by JS' current undergraduate students, many of whom were visibly feeling his loss already. There was so much death imagery in the program, which included a Stravinsky song lamenting the death of JFK and the Bach chorale Jesu, Leiden, Pein und Tod, that I briefly wondered whether the reason JS was retiring (he is only a very young 62) was ill health. But he was looking as robust as ever -- in fact, with the exception of a little more gray around JS' temples, he and his wife haven't changed at all since the last time I saw them, which was at our wedding almost eleven years ago.

The performances were given by both current and former students and were, as expected, astonishing in the depth of feeling they portrayed. The endearing sadness of the undergraduates (it's they who will be deprived the most from JS' retirement, after all) and the gratitude of the alumni were almost palpable in the performances. The program included works by Bach, Stravinsky, and JS himself. The best and most moving piece on the program, by far, was a piece written by JS in memory of his own predecessor in the music department. That, at least, should have been comforting to the undergrads: as gifted and compassionate a teacher as JS is, he is equally gifted and passionate as a composer. He'll have more time to compose now, and share his prodigious gifts with a wider audience.

But being with the undergrads was comforting to me in completely unexpected ways. They will get by without JS -- partly because he will have prepared them well, partly by virtue of their own considerable gifts (as was evidenced in the uplifting concentration of talent on display that Monday night), and partly because the things they learned from JS will never leave them. And the things I learned from JS -- compassion, generosity, curiosity, loyalty, the value of hard work -- will never leave me either.

JS once said that when you study something for the first time, you inevitably lose a certain amount of your innocence. What he didn't have to say, because he lived it all the time, was that to the intellectually curious, the wisdom that can replace that innocence never lets the wonder fade. While my music studies and my professional career as a musician are both over, I am still the same person I was when JS was my teacher: a little less innocent, perhaps, but wiser. Seeing JS again, talking to him in the brief moments we had that Monday night, I realized I've never left his class: he's with me every day, whether I'm listening to Bach, singing nursery songs with my little ones, or battling it out in a courtroom. I'm quite sure I'll never be completely at peace with being a lawyer. But in the midst of my next trial, I'll know that he's there, and I'll remember the wonder I'd forgotten for a while.

Here's to a great man, a hero in every sense of the word, from whom I suspect I will never stop learning.

This post is especially for adaveen, to whom it's been owed forever, and for deeindiana, who held my hand (online if not in RL!) during my solo trip to London last March. Smooches, ladies!

The day I left for London, which was a Wednesday, while I was waiting to get picked up and driven to the airport, I hopped online figuring, what the heck, I'd see if there were any tickets left for Saturday night's show. I called the number on the website (there were no tix left for online purchase), and lo and behold, there was a SINGLE ticket left in the entire house, and it was a STAGE seat, FRONT ROW CENTER. Wheee!

So I ended up seeing Equus on Saturday, March 17, and managed to find the theater amid the throngs of St. Paddy's Day revelers in Piccadilly Circus. "Stage seating" for this production apparently meant sitting in the back of the stage on an elevated, mezzanine-like platform, facing the stage and the rest of the audience. Most of the action was directed to the "house" audience, but there were a few lines directed toward us in the gallery as well.

Daniel Radcliffe, as the disturbed teenager Alan Strang, was fantastic. I admit I had been worried that I wouldn't be able to get past his HP persona, but very soon after he walked onto the stage singing the Milkybone jingle I had forgotten all about Harry. Which in itself is testimony to the fact that the boy can act. I have no idea how hard it is to play a weird kid with a thing for pretty horsies, but DanRad definitely pulled it off. At times your heart just broke for him; at others he was electrifying.

I'm not going to get into what happens in the play, but it's one of those strange commentaries on life that probably speaks to different people in different ways. To me, Equus is about why we worship whomever/whatever it is we worship, why worshipping is more about ourselves than whomever/whatever we worship, and what happens when that need to worship is denied.

DanRad spends most of the second half of the play in the buff, as does the fine young actress Joanna Christie who plays Jill. The nude scenes are tastefully done even though the scenes themselves, as written, are meant to be overwrought and disturbing. The props and "horses" were apparently very similar to the original production and were extremely effective.

Richard Griffiths was riveting as the psychiatrist charged with curing young Alan of his horsie problem. I'd heard he'd been ill and couldn't do the early performances, so I'm glad I got to see him.

I remember seeing the Richard Burton film version with Peter Firth (later of AABA "Bunny" fame) as Alan many years ago, but I don't remember being as affected by it. Seeing Equus on stage in March, however, left me exhilarated and devastated at the same time, as only great art can do. Rumor has it that the play is transferring to Broadway next year; I'd see it again in a heartbeat.

NOTE: If you have no interest in The Police or Sting or *gasp* don't know who they are, just skip this post.

Tomorrow is my tenth wedding anniversary, but since Mr. Reedpipe is speaking at a conference abroad this week we celebrated by going to The Police concert at Fenway with a couple of dear friends last Saturday . . . and holy CRAP did we have an amazing time!

The concert was phenomenal -- just the thing for the Snape-induced melancholic funk I'd been in all last week. I've always been a Police/Sting fan but that concert made me wish I'd followed them more closely when I was younger and they were still together. Christ, can Sting sing!!! And Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland were fantastic!!

I'd read some reviews of earlier concerts on this tour that said they were a bit off, but they seemed to have gotten their shit together by the time they got to Boston. They opened with "Message in a Bottle," which was terrific. Things really got going, though, at the concert's midpoint, with "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." Woo-hoo, was that fun, and it looked like the band really started having a good time at that point, and seemed genuinely happy to be there. The familiar tunes all had a fresh twist, and I think all three of these guys are better musicians today than they were at the breakup.

But I was genuinely surprised at what an amazing musician Sting is. He has a fine sense of phrasing and an innate musicality that doesn't necessarily come through in the recordings. I don't know if he was classically trained but judging from Saturday's performance he could well have been. The improvised vocal lines in "Bed's Too Big," for instance, were hair-raisingly beautiful. Like AR, Sting knows what his voice can do, and he does it to great and powerful effect. And he's a magnificent showman too -- his easy interaction with the crowd was both natural and masterful. Nothing like echoing "Io, io yo yo" at the top of your lungs back at the man himself.






As a child of the eighties one of my favorite songs of all time is, rather unoriginally, "Every Breath You Take." It was what I had really been looking forward to hearing, but when the song finally came up as an encore I realized that I had thoroughly enjoyed each and every minute sitting (and standing and bouncing and singing) with my loving husband of ten years and two good friends on that hot, sticky night in the Fenway grandstands.

And honey, if you're reading this -- the bed's too big without you. Be safe and hurry home.

( Sappy catharsis behind the cut )

I've decided to make most of this LJ friends only.

I was actually thinking of going FO for various reasons even before the recent unpleasantness. The latter just cemented my decision.

It's not going to affect a lot of people since I don't get a lot of traffic anyway, but if I've somehow missed you on my F-list feel free to let me know here.

Sorry.

A very, very quick post:

Just got finished watching Snow Cake on pay-per-view. Regarding the discussion about the sunglasses Alan was wearing at the Nobel Son premiere, I THINK THEY'RE THE SAME SUNGLASSES HE WAS WEARING IN THE "DAZLIOUS" SCENE AT THE END OF SNOW CAKE. Check it out. (And if anyone has any caps of that scene, I definitely wouldn't mind if you posted one here for comparison -- if you don't mind either, that is!)

Shots of Alan being interviewed on the red carpet, Nobel Son premiere. All taken by the wonderful Mr. Reedpipe. Clickety click for larger versions.


















Final few tomorrow, starring Alan Rickman and the Tribeca hens (and a couple of roosters)!

I know my Equus report is more than a month overdue, but I hope these will make up for the lack . . . Nobel Son premiere, Tribeca Film Festival, Saturday, April 28, 2007 . . . OMG!!! My tall, handsome hubby took all of these. Just a few of the grand arrival to start, more later. Click pics for larger versions and enjoy!




Get outta my dreams, and into my car. No, wait . . . get outta the car.





If we get separated, meet me right here.





Rima giving Alan the spotlight. This woman is a saint, truly.





Alan with Randall Miller

From Enyafreak's review of the early screening of OotP, posted on Mugglenet:

"Alan Rickman is again great as Snape but has so little screen time it's hard to appreciate."

Crap.

"Sneak peek at Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" on Google Video
From HPANA.com

I am so jazzed about the reports on the Order of the Phoenix trailer being shown before Happy Feet, the new tap-dancing penguin flick opening this weekend. TLC has posted a transcript of the trailer here:

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/#article:9219

Hopefully, lots of Snape in the trailer will translate into lots of Snape in the actual film! Yeah!

Apparently Happy Feet is only eighty-nine minutes long, so I am taking Thing 1, who's five, to see it. Even if he doesn't last the whole movie (loud noises bother him), at least we'll get to see the OotP trailer!

And in keeping with my better-late-than-never postings, I'm quite proud of my jack-o-lantern this year:



I used the HP stencil from http://www.zombiepumpkins.com. The talented guy who came up with the stencil says that he hasn't done a Snape stencil because he wouldn't be able to create one that would capture AR's voice.

I’m appalled at myself that it’s taken me this long to get this post up. By now it’s old news and will probably be pretty anticlimactic and not as AR-centric, but here goes anyway. Not nearly as fangirly this time around, but somehow just as long . . . .

A saintly friend with whom I used to work (hereinafter “Saintly Friend 1”) agreed to watch the kids so that hubby and I could see the October 17 My Name Is Rachel Corrie show and talkback. I have very cool friends, you see, and I also have a very cool boss at the new place, so I got out of work early and ran (literally) to meet hubby at the train station. We got to Grand Central at 6:30, plenty of time, I thought, to get to the Village and have a quick bite at Bellavitae, the restaurant next to the theater. (What? We were genuinely hungry this time. Honest.)

Of course it was taking forever to get a cab, so we decided to take the subway instead, and of course we went one stop too far and got completely lost. Again. (This time, somehow, we ended up at the river. Not like I didn’t grow up right outside of NYC or anything.) So, again, I had to call the same friend (hereinafter “Saintly Friend 2”) who had talked us to the theater the first time. Saintly Friend 2 stayed on the phone with me while we ran, panicked, through the streets of the Village. Again.

We were rain-soaked by the time we got to Minetta Lane at 7:40, but they didn’t seem to be letting anyone into the theater yet. There was a bunch of people standing under some scaffolding across the street, sheltering themselves from the crappy weather. It was too late for Bellavitae (although I did hang around the front door for a minute, looking for, erm, the posted menu) and hubby was famished, so we decided to make a dash to the McDonald’s around the corner.

And this was when Embarrassing Moment #1 happened: while we were scurrying by the people under the scaffolding, I accidentally hit an older gentleman, in the face, no less, with my open umbrella. Why I kept my umbrella open under the scaffolding, I’ll never know. Unfortunately, I’m fairly certain that the older gentleman was none other than Craig Corrie, Rachel’s father, whom I didn’t recognize until I turned to apologize. As if the poor man hasn’t suffered enough. Geez.

After scarfing down our Big Macs we ran back to the theater to find the Corries talking to AR and RH in the theater lobby, in exactly the same place I had first set eyes on AR on Oct. 5. (For those of you non-hen types, RH is Rima Horton, retired economics professor and politician and AR’s partner of about forty years.) He looked great. Even though I’m pretty sure he was wearing a navy blue jacket and navy blue trousers with a black T-shirt. And brown shoes. (Even if I were to give him the benefit of the doubt and say the jacket and trousers were a questionable shade of black, there’s still the issue of the brown shoes . . . but I digress. He really did look great.)

I hung out in the lobby just taking in AR’s presence while hubby ran to the men’s room. AR was smiling and laughing a lot. A couple of times RH, who is a very lovely woman, looked up at him adoringly or amusedly – couldn’t tell for certain. At one point Mr. Corrie gave him a hug. (Maybe Mr. Corrie needed a hug after getting hit the face with an umbrella.)

Eventually we made our way into the theater and took our seats behind a tall guy with a very large head (no, it wasn’t AR, not by a long shot) that completely obstructed my view of center stage. I could see Rachel’s “bedroom” fine at the beginning, and I also had a clear view of Megan Dodds when she climbed the wall in the middle and when she did the Dairy Queen poem on our side of the stage near the end, but a lot of the play was blocked from my view. I could hear what sounded like a lot more genuine emotion from Megan Dodds than I remembered from the first preview night, and I could hear that the audience seemed much more affected this time too. Hubby, who is 6’1” and didn’t have any visibility issues, also seemed more involved in the play. For some reason I was struck this time by Rachel’s statement that her mother hadn’t wanted to impose a religious belief system on her until she was able to choose one for herself. But unfortunately, all I could see most of the time were the extreme ends of the stage. Guess I’ll need to go see the play yet again. *grin*

Since I couldn’t see what was happening on stage, I paid attention to the Corries, who were watching from their seats right in the middle of the theater. Throughout the play I was wondering how it was possible for them to sit through it. At the end they gave Megan Dodds a standing ovation from which most of the rest of the audience followed suit. Then they went back into the lobby and people starting milling around for the short break between the play and the talkback.

Embarrassing Moment #2: a few people left after the play and didn’t stay for the talkback, so there were some empty seats around us (Big Head Guy stayed in front of us, and so did the other people in our row so I couldn’t move). Before the start of the talkback, RH came and sat in a vacated seat across the aisle from us, one row back, directly in my sight line if I turned my head just a little. Hubby and I started a very, very quiet debate about whether she is taller than I am (I maintain that she is not). Unfortunately, I was fantastically unsuccessful in trying to be covert about my glances over at her, and she caught me looking and grinned right at me while I gaped in deer-in-the-headlights fashion. *facepalm* That woman must have the patience of Job.

The talkback was very interesting. Thank God AR was the first one on stage and sat in the spot where Megan Dodds had done the Dairy Queen bit, so I had a clear view. He did that adorable squinting thing that everyone always talks about, but he really didn’t say very many words during the entire talkback.

The few words he did say were very . . . effective. Like when a young woman asked whether Rachel’s mention of Mel Gibson in her diary was deliberately omitted from the play, and AR gazed up from under his brow, held the microphone very close to his lips, and answered her darkly, “Whaddoyou think?” Or when someone asked him how it was that Megan Dodds came to be cast, and AR responded that he had done a reading with her a while back. “And at one point,” he said quietly, “I looked up at her across the table and thought, This is the real thing.”

*sigh*

But it was clear that for AR, this was the Corries’ night, and the talkback made me realize that for them, allowing this play to go forward and taking up Rachel’s cause was, to a large extent, part of their grieving process. Both Mr. and Mrs. Corrie, as well as Rachel’s sister Sarah, were thoughtful, emotional, even funny at times. They said that while it took them a while after Rachel’s death, in the end it was an easy decision to give their permission for Rachel’s diaries and e-mails to be used for the play, because they felt that Rachel’s story needed to be told. They have gone to the Middle East and have met the family whose home Rachel was trying to protect when she was killed. They have taken up her cause because they believe Rachel was trying to make life better in the way she best knew how, even though they admitted they didn’t know a whole lot about Palestine before their daughter went there. Theirs is the most selfless and productive grieving I have ever seen, and they are as much an inspiration as Rachel was in her short lifetime.

In the lobby after the talkback, AR was still hanging back and letting the Corries have the limelight. He politely refused to sign autographs or take photos with the few people who asked. I should mention here that throughout the evening he was very sweet to RH, always looking around to see where she was and making sure she wasn’t falling behind (not that it seemed like she needed looking after). Hubby had a conversation with Katharine Viner (who co-edited the play with AR), during which AR and RH walked past me. AR took my outstretched hand and shook it in that soft, soft palm of his. I stammered something stupid and he thanked me for coming. No spark of recognition for Calamari Girl, thank God.

Somehow we ended up walking out of the theater right behind AR and RH and right in front of Katharine Viner and her companion. When they got to the front door they stopped and I think AR helped RH get her coat on or something, so we were waiting behind them. When we got outside hubby and I quickly crossed to the other side of the street so we wouldn’t be walking in the midst of the theater-folk. RH’s umbrella got whipped inside-out by the wind and I heard AR tease her about it, laughing, “Now what the hell have you got going on there?” I think she managed not to whack anyone in the face with the thing. The group went into the now-infamous Minetta Tavern, and although it was tempting to follow them, we didn’t want to hold up Saintly Friend 1 at our house any longer than we already had.

As our near-empty train rumbled its way back to Connecticut in the dark, I got to thinking. My Name Is Rachel Corrie has been criticized because it allegedly shows only one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were also protesters handing out flyers in front of the theater about “The Other Rachels” who have been killed by Palestinian terrorists. These kinds of criticism completely miss the point.

The point is that Rachel Corrie was an American girl born into a loving family. She went to school and worked at different jobs, and was constantly questioning what she wanted to do with her life. She might have had at least one very cool boss who let her spread her wings. She had true friends who supported her and lent her hand when she needed one. She probably got lost in the rain more than once, and scarfed down fast food at Dairy Queen or McDonald’s more times than she would have cared to remember. Maybe, at some point in her life, she might have crushed on AR or Mel Gibson or some other celebrity. She was more than a little naïve, and her view of the middle ground was probably obscured by youthful zeal for a cause she had decided to undertake. She probably had her share of embarrassing moments. She had a boyfriend in whose arms she might have ridden on an empty train at midnight. And at the end of her short life, she made the ultimate sacrifice in hopes of making the world a little bit better for her fellow human beings. In my own Judeo-Christian belief system, there’s no higher calling.

The point is, we all have good intentions. We’ve all wished for world peace and an end to hunger. As poignant as the film clip of the ten-year-old Rachel at the end of the play was, she was no different from any other child, Muslim, Jew or Christian, raised in the knowledge that world peace is something to strive for. We all want the hostilities in the Middle East to end. Rachel Corrie, with no better pedigree and no other tools than those possessed by the rest of us, went and tried to do something to help achieve the vague hopes and dreams we all have for our world, and paid the price most of us would not be willing to pay. In her ordinariness, she was extraordinary.

My name is Rachel too. I also call myself a Christian. But the point is, Rachel Corrie was the real thing.