Lydia’s Blog

Maybe I’m making these titles too specific. Oh, fickle search engine Gods!

There are two phrases that I simply cannot bear to hear anymore in Graz. The weird Austrianisms, I can deal with, it’s really more work related.

The first is Boulevard Solitude. It was Graz’s modern opera in the 2004-2005 season (if they do one every season, the can support the claim that they champion new music, and then they get more monay monay monay…or something). Apparently Boulevard Solitude’s composer, Hinze, categorized it as one of the shitties operas ever written.

Now THAT’s self-awareness, tell you what.

Anyway, it comes up at leat four times in every conversation, which I could pretty much do without, at this point (and those using the phrase do so with SUCH pride…).

The second term is, well, any variation of "Well, Mr. Ligeti wanted it to sound this way…"

I worked on a show earlier this season, with a conductor who loved to intimate that he sat down for a glass of Port with Giacomo Puccini everynight, before making sweet, sweet love to him and then drifting off to sleep entwined in his burly arms.

Ligeti, like the late Puccini, is a composer for the stage (at least in the case of Le Grand Macabre). He would certainly wish for a certain flexibility, with which to create the appropriate spectacle for this fabulous, monstrous opera.

And furthermore, I am not in a position to directly give a shit what Ligeti wanted. The only shit I am obligated to give in this job, is for Barrie Kosky (wow, that didn’t sound right). HIS decisions and HIS ideas have been SOLD to this opera house.

Therefore, I am not like some sort of tyrannical parent of the above mentioned decisions and ideas…

I’m more like a pimp. Sort of. Oh, who knows.

My absolute favorite phrase of the last week came earlier today, from my hag crush (see the last post). "Shove a book up her vagina."

As in "Oh, this terrible German woman had obviously just come back from England, and was bellowing about her drunken experience to a pile of equally useless slags…ugh, I just wanted to shove a book up her vagina."

Genius.

Well, I figured since "Tight Virgin Asshole" is still the major hit-getter on this dumb blog, I’d try for a second lightning strike. Fuck it, from now on, all of my most innocuous posts will be given nasty titles. To hell with eloquent self-deprication and irony.

I have a little hag crush. A hag crush is what happens when a career fag hag like myself meets a new gay man under totally casual circumstances, finding him badass enough to want him as more than just colleague, associate, etc. Hag love at first sight is different, and usually concerns alcohol, matchmaking (for the benefit of the gay man) or both.

The gay man in question is a (relatively well-known) British countertenor, who’s singing in my cast.

As with a normal crush, there are the fantasies. Rather than fantasize about our wedding, future children, and hour-long simultaneous multiple orgasms…I think about us shoplifting at Prada, cackling together over cocktails in some fabulous city, rating mens’ asses together in public, watching reruns of the Golden Girls together, etc.

Right now, he’s really only a nice acquaintance…but I am determined to aquire this new bauble…and am also, for that matter, extremely accustomed to the hunt.

Besides, it’ll give me more to do with my free time than just drinking and blowing wads of cash on (and then eating) artisinal Steirian cheeses.

I don’t have a television in Berlin. In the artist residence where I’m living now, in Graz…there is, in fact, a TV.

Every day, I wake up to Full House or Dawson’s place. Full House, while principally unwatchable, is somehow strangely refreshing first thing in the morning, dubbed into German. Stephanie Tanner is far less grating that way. This morning, I was pleased to find Ally McBeal and That 70’s Show…which is a particular delight in German and, to my knowledge, generally comes on in the afternoons here.

The afternoon block features, as I mentioned, That 70’s Show, The Nanny, King of Queens (is it also that shitty in English?), Judging Amy, and a few other longer episodics that I can’t identify. Over the weekend, I even caught ER!

All dubbed.

There’s also the "Heimat Station", which broadcasts pictures of green, snow-capped mountains, quaint lodges and sheep for hours on end in the morning (apparently Austrians love that). This same station also broadcasts "Du bist was du isst" on Monday nights (you are what you eat), dedicating specifically to humiliating fat people.

On Friday night, after going out for a hot, yet solitary night on the town (that town being, remember, Graz…), I came home to wait out my buzz, and managed to catch some huge TV event for "Volksmusik" …or, the absolute shittiest form of music ever conceived by the human mind. (Look it up, you’ll be stunned). It ended in a glittering tribute to Roger Whittaker. (Even now, I begin to heave).

This television of mine…it only has three channels. Not bad, eh?

I spent the first seven hours of spring in Germany…an uninspiring town called Essen, to be exact.

Seven hours and five minutes into spring, my plane left Duesseldorf for Zurich, where my luggage would remain for several hours more. Me, however, I went straight on to Graz, Austria.

Eight minutes after registering the lost bags, and twenty-five after exiting the plane, I received a phone call from my boss back in Berlin.

And that’s how I quit my job.

Actually, I supppose I was technically headhunted. I had received an offer (better more in context than content, to be honest) from Stuttgart that I’d been mulling over for weeks. Prompted by a series of noteworthy disappointments in Berlin (of many literarily uninteresting sorts), I decided (after much nausea and sleepnessness) to take the plunge.

I am equal parts resolved and heartbroken. I feel like that stereotypical southern wife who won’t leave her drunkard, battering husband. I was prepared to forgive and forget every tiny indignity both Berlin and the Komische Oper presented…thinking that one day, things would change and that big things would happen for me there.

Who knows. They just might’ve. No use thinking about that now, though. I’m going.

In the meantime, I’m in Graz, remounting the Komische Oper production of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre.

Graz is very beautiful. It looks even more like a birthday cake than Vienna. I can see not one, but four crosses perched on steeples from my apartment window.

Whenever I come to Austria, I in some ways expect to see a race of people who look like my family…even though it’s long since been proven that I look far more like my mother’s Ukrainian/Russian side of the family (as reinforced by the numerous people who approach me on the street and subway in Berlin, gesticulating excitedly and dribbling out rapid Russian.)

I’m never prepared for how wierd Austrians look. Austria is immediately north of Italy, and south of Germany. They tend to be a swarthier race that the hairless, "ol’ squinty with the cheekbones" northern Germans…who tend to look like Scandinavians, only way uglier (although to their credit, prettier than the Dutch). Austrian swarthiness isn’t the dirty-hot kind you get in Spain or Italy, all olive skin and smoldering coal eyes. No, it’s mixed in with a petite, rosy pudginess that would be rather sweet, were it not paired with an accent that brings to mind a down’s syndrome child reciting Gertrude Stein.

I spent yesterday poodling around Graz (I bought a shitbag bike with which to facilitate the poodling). Apparently, the two things you can do really well in Graz are:

A: Get your hair done

and

B: Die

I have never seen a more thriving funereal industry than right here in Graz. Gravestones, mausoleums, services, flowers, catering, multi-media tributes. At least three "Bestattung" stores on every street. Shit. Why bother going to the opera when laying someone to rest is obviously more entertaining? And apparently much more profitable.

My apartment here is quite nice. Right on a busy corner where I can hear street noise all night (which I love…no hint of sarcasm, where are you, sweet helipad right across from my Pittsburgh flat?) The opera is fucking gorgeous. The people seem very nice…also quite willing, despite the fact they’d seem to rather leave half of my opera unstaged rather than impinge upon their daily six-hour siesta.

Springtime in Graz. I’m so lucky. I’m so fucking lucky. Sometimes I look at my life and think: who else gets to have adventures like these? Other times, it kind of just makes me want to vomit.

Not like we even remotely needed another language post, but here goes:

Last night I hung out with my beloved Toby. (He’s my 6′7″ gay linebacker siamese-twin). He basically got to play psychiatrist/drinks server while I stewed in wretched professional indecision.

He had developed a strange verbal tick, however…every so often he would percussively use the phrase “stop shaving my balls” (in English) for emphasis.

Now, the last set of balls I shaved (my then-main homo, when we were about age 18, in preparation for our first Oberlin drag ball) are probably attached to a happily married midwestern man by now. I don’t believe I’ve even so much as grazed Toby’s balls while jockeying for position on a full tram. You can understand my confusion.

After I while (and at least five repetitions), I had to ask what the deal was: “Toby, darling….I would never shave your…” etc.

It turns out that he was trying to employ the Cartman line: “Aw man, you’re busting my balls”, which he’d only seen in translation on German TV…where the line is somehow bizarrely converted into “Hoere auf, meine Eier zu rasieren” (Quit shaving my balls (literally, eggs)).

It was a classic moment. Too bad I had to break the magic by asking, eh? He’d have gone on for months.

I tried on my first 38 today, after swimming around in a 40.

Millicent, my hypothetical tapeworm, was very proud of herself.

Me, however, I remain confused.

I guess I feel like it’s just something I should have noticed.

Ah well. Next time.

I had dinner with Tommy tonight. It was great.

On the way, I encountered a ranter. A drunken, raving jackass screaming his way through Berlin’s public transportation system.

He made his way slowly, laboriously onto the train platform, where he quickly dropped his trousers enough to be able to whip his willy out and pee on the handicapped call button on the BVG information kiosk.

Thinking it was all too entertaining, I took a picture of the event on my cell phone. The ranter caught me gawking and spun around, piss spraying, in my direction.

He ranted at me (albeit soundlessly, thanks to my almost-never-used Ipod) for a while before stumbling onto the train (not my car, I made sure of that).

I watched him through the train window as he ranted at the poor schmucks on his car.

One looks at such a specimen with as much pity as envy…

I mean, at least he manages to say it out loud.

Naja.

I was six years old when I first saw the movie Amadeus. From that moment, I knew I wanted to work in opera.

I started as a conductor…mimicking Karajan and Solti in my bedroom as a child…

I played piano, accompanying those same recordings, Figaro, Zauberfloete, Idomeneo…

I studied singing…got a degree…performed…

Quit that, and became a stage director, Entfuehrung, Giovanni, Tito…

Then I realized…

It’s not art. It’s never been art. It’s politics.

G’night, y’all. Mama’s got ta get her ass to Rosenkavalier rehearsals in the mornin’…

I’m growing horns. At least that’s what it looks like.

I’ve got two huge underground pimples growing on either side of my forehead. For those of you who remember how prominent my forehead is, you can imagine the effect two identical red, pointy peaks might have, when placed at approximately horn height.

First of all, I was a bit nervous that what they say about jews was coming true…and that soon I’d begin craving the blood of gentile babies. Then again, poor dermal hygeine is certainly not an ethnic trait…and God help me, as much as I’ve tried to find (and beg money off) the evil Jewish financial empire, I’ve come up unsuccessful. Where are you people anyway? (CALL ME)

Then I got to thinking about karma (or if you want to stick to my first theory, mitzvot, and the opposite).

My generation is morosely self-absorbed…particularly those in my line of work. Not in the cokey 70s way. For us, today, if it even exists, is barly a passing thought. Where will I be in five years? Are my professional contemporaries advancing more quickly than I? Who will recognize me? Who will remember me?

Virtues like compassion, loyalty, and selflessness are used only when they can be employed harmoniously into the “master plan”, otherwise they are scuttled completely and replaced with a charming agreeableness.

Cynicism is rampant, except in our relationships to ourselves, which seem to remain pristinely idealistic, despite a total lack of justification.

Will we have to pay for these years of admiring our own reflections? Will we ever know that person we’re sure we’ll become…that person who lives at the center of the universe, smiling benevolently at the planets circling around her? Will we ever regret the fact that we hated ourselves while waiting for the arrival of that “someday” self? Will we remember the people who loved us while we were waiting, hating…

And what’s the point of having anything at all if we’ll never be able to have enough?

Perhaps my resentment, pettiness, envy, self-protection, greed, and vanity are calcifying into horn-like protrusions for all to see, betraying the mouth that drools platitudes and false praise, and the eyes that have been trained to sparkle and cajole on command.

Two little spires of moral and spiritual bankruptcy made manifest, if you will.

Or maybe they’re just zits.

Today I had another rehearsal with the childrens’ chorus. I really like working with the kids. They tend to be a really lively and well-disciplined bunch…and the admission process into the KO children’s chorus is pretty stringent. Little pros.

They also tend to be more forgiving…even bemused by my little language faux pas’.

Last week, at our first rehearsal, I started out by explaining a bit about the plot of Rosenkavalier. Like Marriage of Figaro and Falstaff, the opera ends with the public humiliation of an overblown asshole. As with the former, Rosenkavalier incorporates the use of a woman playing a male character dressed up as a female, in order to complete the deception.

As I told the story of Octavian dressing up as Mariandel to entrap Baron Ochs, a little boy named Hugo raised his hand.

“Frau Steier, auf deutsch heisst’s eine Tunte” (Ms. Steier, in German that’s called a trannie).

No…I sputtered, it’s not really like a trannie, because trannies really didn’t exist in mid-18th century Vienna, and besides it’s really a girl playing a boy playing a girl, and it’s not really Octavian’s life choice in that sense of the term…

The kids wouldn’t hear it. They’d made up their minds. So fuck it. They seem to be pretty stoked to be in an opera about a trannie.