Part II, The Rant: Why the Internet is bad and you should turn off your computer right now.
I basically forced myself to sit through the first half of a god-awful production of the Magic Flute at the Graz Oper tonight. The Magic Flute is my least favorite Mozart Opera anyway. Give me anything Finta, throw in some Mitridate or Apollo and Hyacynthius but Jesus spare me the Flute. But this production…ugh. No charm, too much stupid, unnecessary business, uninteresting singing. Just nothing.
Anyway, after leaving, I decided to go up to my office (sorry, AN office to which I have a key) to check my email and theoretically do some work. I got an email from Stuttgart announcing a mandatory meeting in Hannover for roughly a week-and-a-half after next month’s skull operation.
Oh Stuttgart. I regard going to Stuttgart with a strange blend of euphoria (yay! Someone wants me other than those geezers in Berlin who originally took me on as a coffee girl and would probably never see me as much else) and dread (another two years of house assisting…ANOTHER TWO YEARS!?!) Then throw in all the shit about moving from Berlin to a lame city, adding another year to my separation from my fiancé, watching any career I might have had in the U.S. slip ever-further away, etc.
So it started. One of my favorite self-destructive activities (that delightful blend of futile, autoagressive and compulsive): E-obsessing.
It started with something innocuous. I searched for off-scene groups in Stuttgart with whom I might be able to get a little side action. That led me to the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes baby (just don’t ask). That led to the Times, where I found and article called “The Bank of Mom and Dad”, which basically could have been written about me. Then it quickly dissolved into googling names of old summer camp buddies, high school friends, acquaintances and rivals within opera. I even signed up for a free trial of Times Select (a.k.a. the spawn of Satan) in order to more effectively stalk former wedding announcements.
Of course, the base, or core, or root (or whatever the fuck you want to call it) of this insidious business is the practice of torturing myself over the electronically quantified achievements of others. I have never been mentioned in the New York Times. My fiancé’s brother, Will, has nine articles. A high school pal/detestee turned fledgling opera singer (oh taste the irony, Lyd) of mine also has a good stack. The mother of a former sleep-away camp crush of mine has two whole NYTimes Select pages of articles. My aunt who dresses up like fucking Mark Twain’s wife even has a healthy bunch.
Then there’s OperaBase. Two less, shall we say, visionary (and much more diplomatically adept) American contemporaries of mine have received listings as producers of opera. More entries are surely to come. Und ich? Nichts.
And on and on. And on.
You know what? I’m afraid. I’m fucking afraid. What I’m doing right now isn’t making me happy. I’m doing it because I think that maybe continuing down this path might eventually avail me to opportunities that will make me happy. But I figure, until then, at least what I’m doing could make me better known…or at least able to pay my bills.
But it isn’t. And it doesn’t. I detest assisting. What I like, is the period after assisting is over, when I inherit the opera and am able to plug holes in the production that the director didn’t catch…because they’re impossible for a director to catch, because it’s all simply to close to the chest, by that point. Like this Le Grand Macabre. When Barrie showed up, he was ecstatic with the state of the show…and now regularly states the strengths of this remount against his original Berlin production. He almost certainly attributes it to happenstance and luck. I know better. Still, it’s his genius that built the entire framework for our current success.
A remount can be a strange and beautiful thing. When I remounted Calixto’s Entfuehrung earlier this season, a scandal gone dusty and tame regained its original glint. People booed and screamed and stormed out just like in the premiere (and not seen since).
When the curtain falls and the applause dies down, a gaping hole becomes evident, in any pride or satisfaction I have with my work: It wasn’t mine.
And “mine” doesn’t seem to be a concept that’s developing with any certainty or expediency.
I won’t bore you with any further details of my professional stagnancy, but when does “mine” come into it? MY mark on things, MY healthy financial outlook, MY sense of home, MY marriage, MY future.
God. Who even cares about MY New York Times article at this point.
And Stuttgart. Am I ready for this? Is this the next step…or am I just stapling myself into an unhappy pattern established by the old step?
Am I slowly, inexorably precipitating the actuality of “mine” or am I just postponing, precluding, or even preventing it?
So, the moral of my story is this: turn off the computer, stop romanticizing who you’re not, grab a decent bottle of vino collapso and whatever you do…
Don’t ask questions.
