The Music !!

The day before I left CT for Cambridge, I thought that maybe I would sing, after all. Maybe. If I got there early enough for the 4 o'clock rehearsal. If that all were to happen - and I was beginning to feel brave - then I needed to print out the music which I hadn't done at home in California when I wasn't feeling brave. I went to Kinkos, who understands about people like me, emailed them the files, and picked them the morning I left Old Saybrook. 85 cents.

I drove to Cambridge, was ushered to Kirkland House where I was to stay for two nights, dropped my bags, and walk through the drizzle to Mem Church. Got lost. I misremembered where Mem Church, or else they moved it during the past 50 years. Damply consulted maps, oriented myself only by Weidner (and was that Sever over there?) I turned a brick corner and found the white spire of Mem Church. Entered, peeked, asked, "Where is the choir rehearsal?" I was a little late, but heard no sound of rehearsal. Mem Church is big - usually you can hear choir rehearsal the minute you walk into the kind of churches I've sung in. Kind directions took me down some stairs marked "Closed to the Public Beyond This Point." I felt like the public! How did I belong here? I passed a room full of students glued to computers - what were they doing? Google to God? Underground CIA training? Even walking the corridors of the basement, it was a long time before I heard music, singing.

I was able to find a seat without creating a disturbance, and take out the music I had not looked at, much less rehearsed. I had glanced at it enough to see that the soprano parts had high notes - they didn't. No one looked at me askance, no one questioned my qualifications. Perhaps my neighboring sopranos came to do so as they heard some mistakes in my sight reading, but they didn't glare at me. Probably they were listening to themselves anyway. More people arrived, and I saw one old friend. In fact, Priscilla had offered via email to bring me a copy of the music, which she did, and it was gratefully accepted by someone who hadn't brought music at all. At least I'd gotten the music printed! Maybe I'm not so bad.

We rehearsed valiantly for a couple of hours - for some of it we did get out of the basement to the church itself. One of the important things in singing in a chorus or choir is how to get on and off stage. We do it badly, often. The rehearsal was a miracle in itself. Like herding cats. Cats who think they know the best way to be herded and want to tell everyone else about it. Director? I'll tell him a thing or two. Meow.

The rehearsal peaked for me when I heard a voice in my head saying, "I can do this!" That voice came back a few times during the next two days. Funny, I'd never heard them while I was actually in college. I wanted to start over as a freshman, I didn't want to leave. I wanted to study, to sing, this time to really learn.

Wet Birkenstocks, damp clothes, head held high, I got lost walking back to Kirkland House. For the rest of the two days I followed my friends. They knew where they were going. I never had.