O_O
Okays. It was an interesting Saturday to be sure.
Before I go anywhere of any importance in which anything of note is required of me, I like to mull over a mental image of what it will be like. Imagining myself at MT class almost always results in something intervening that weekend in which I picture it the clearest. Very odd indeed. Anyways, I noticed I held in my mind a clear picture of myself during my different classes, hoping to continue upwards in my spiral of confidence in class. People are starting to actually recognize me. ^_^ You see, I emanate confidence quite a lot of the time, but in a group of combined 'class clowns' I stand little chance. Because I hold that giddiness in, you see. I can be confident without necessarily being notably pompous for the masses. ;)
Okay, so my father drove us to class, as he normally does, and my sister and I clung to each other as we slowly and cautiously crossed the large patch of ice between us and the front door. Upon entering, I noticed that everyone in the three separate classes appeared to be grouped together in the dance room. This wasn't too odd, since we were actually a bit early, and I know that at exactly 10:00 there is usually a small pep talk to all the students given by our Vocal teacher, Mrs. J(that's what we'll call her, wife to our other Vocal teacher that we'll call Mike. Hahaha. Vocals, Mike..eh..forget it). But the strange thing was, that everyone seemed to be a big blur of only select colors. As though they had all planned on wearing the same thing, or that my eyes were getting worse than I'd earlier anticipated. Mrs. J saw us and explained to us that since we haven't been to class in FOREVER (we missed the last two weeks. We ended up grounded for spending too much time on the compy. And I forgot to vacuum.) that we had missed an announcement: Our class was giving a small performance at a local professional theatre to show off MT Class' work. We're going on-stage in an hour and a half.
My reaction: O_O Um...okay!
So I barely have time to call dad and let him know we're all grouping up in everybody else's cars to ride to the local theater, and he's pretty amiable about it(amiable is my new favorite word, along with alacrity. Of my 'word of the day' thing, alacrity has struck me the most). We all line up in the dance room and we run through the songs we'll be doing. Let me see if I can remember which we sang:
"Another Day"(RENT, obviously),
"The One"(A Chorus Line),
"Sabbath Prayer"(Fiddler On The Roof),
"525,600 Minutes(RENT)
"What I Did For Love"(A Chorus Line..? Yeah)
Gosh, I'm SURE there was another one. Anyways, our group had only started work on 525,600 Minutes and Sabbath Prayer recently. The former had been added (oh so fortunately) in the two weeks my sister and I had not gone. Brilliant. Lucky for me, I knew the song. Unlucky for me, they changed the system, yo. The parts with the bitty solos were made into chorus stuffles, so they ascends were altered. At, "in times that he cried/in bridges he burned/or the way that SHE DIED-" that last 'died' was instead of going up and the rest flowing in underneath, was turned into a 'go lower then a bit up, then jazz it down' type of a thing. Hard to explain. Sure it SOUNDED good, but..yeah..I had no clue, so I did what I normally do "fake it". That part of theater has always made so much sense to me.
We were warned to wear red and black to the performance(I started getting a serious Les Mis earworm upon hearing this). Turns out that the color thing was just a hope, and that it was no big deal.I happened to have brought a burgundy shirt in my bag, and changed into that and my jeans. No biggie there.
Anyways, we also ran once through a shortened version of Thriller. We changed a few things apparently, but it was easy enough to keep up with. I hope I can remember that dance well enough to dance it on my dying day, you know. *grin* It's something special to me now, being my first officially-learned dance. That's very odd, I know. But still.
Later we heard from Mrs. J that our class has an entire hour full of whatever we want to do, and all our songs and Thriller put together don't quite fill the entirety of our hour, so she says, "Hold up your hand if you want to do a solo." Several people raise their hands, but I'm still deciding which song I would do, etc. because Snuffles is bound and determined to continue to sing all the songs *I* write. Leaving only Heather's song for me to sing. The rest *she* sings. Anyways. I'm still editing Heather's song, so before I was able to decide, she had everyone put their hands down, and said, "Those of you who raised your hands are doing a solo today. Come to me with your CDs." Several backup tracks were handed to her. I wandered into another room, where Snuffles was tinkering at the piano. We had been given fifteen minutes for a break before setting off to the cars and everything. I walk up to Snuffles and she smiles quietly at me, telling me that she has finally taken initiative in class. She had told Mrs. J that she wants to do a solo today. I tell her I'm happy for her to finally stand up.
Her song? Dream Maker. Brilliant. She wants me to accompany her. Yet another thing I was thrown into that day. This isn't a big deal to you my friends, who are so accustomed to new and unwarned happenings in your daily lives. But little changes in my house, and I hardly ever leave it. So this is something I'm proud to have taken in stride. We ran through the song once, and I felt confident in it. I've added a bridge and two stanzas, but we decided to take one out because she couldn't well remember the words at the drop of a hat. (I might have taken this as a bit of a warning. Also that my sister has had some squabbles with me about 'changing my songs too much'. I like to continue to edit them slowly for months, she likes me to leave them how she learns them. Feh.)
We end up going in another girl's van, who talked animately in the front seat with one of her best friends. The girl who sat next to us during the radio show was in the car, as well as my sister and me. A quick ride, and despite the dangers of the ice, we got there on-time with no troubles. Once I saw the large fountain/sculpture type lake that we passed on the way to the auditorium, something clicked. The name of the Center sounded familiar.
It was the same exact auditorium I had performed Operation Christmas Child, my maiden voyage of stage at the age of nine, on. It was the same stage I had gone to my mother to a couple years later, where she was the photographer for the Women's Conference, and had me come along to keep her company.
Heh. Such an odd thing for me. I was very proud of being there before. Again, this may seem nothing to some people, but you have to remember that I've never lived anywhere longer than three years at a time. We used to move every year. EVERY YEAR. I never got to join in musical theater classes or productions. I joined Girl Scouts twice and moved soon after joining. I joined a ballet class and was late/missed most classes, and barely was able to learn how to get the shoes ON before we moved. To have come back to the same auditorium not TWICE, but THREE times by chance is something superior and ethereal for me. And it's a GORGEOUS auditorium, too. Rather small in comparison to some, rather large in comparison to others. Probably could seat...oh, I dunno. I'm bad at estimations. There were approx 30+ rows besides the balcony, and there were about twenty seats to a row. Just a rough guess. The stage was large and roomy, the style of the building classy, not too empty, not too cluttered with design features. Classy. That's the word for it. Small or big, that place looks and feels CLASSY. Not uptight and formal classy. Classy as in it's an enjoyment to hover around the place. A very beautiful auditorium.
Then we got to the stage left wing(dunno what you would call it) and I saw something very large covered in a protective blanket. Upon sight I recognized it, and a grin came to my face. A large grand piano. Upon removal I found it to be just like the auditorium - sleek and beautiful, but not extravagant. It was black and verah shiny. The seat was pretty awesome, too. A mix of 19th century puffy comfy padding and colored black for purdiness. I turned to Mike and tugged lightly on his arm. I probably shouldn't have bothered him, since he was busy getting everybody ready for the performance, but I couldn't help but ask in my most abashed tone, "I get to play THAT?"
He answered in the affirmative, and I murmured to Snuffles, "I'm going to die playing that piano. I'm seriously going to die." I kept repeating this for some minutes. I'm a die-hard piano addict. I touch pianos. It makes me happy. Touching light ivory keys makes me feel content, however stressed I may be once I move away from the instrument. I sat in the left wing area, glancing at it every few minutes, and began to consider something for the first time. What if I'm not meant for center-stage, but accompaniment? I've never formally learned any instrument, but how can a girl be destined to even hope to shine in the chorus at the back of the stage when she feels so drawn to the instruments just off stage?
Which reminds me. I've always wanted to explore an orchestra pit....
Back on tangent. The songs went well, with a slight prob with Sabbath Prayer. With the accompaniment, there's a period where it FEELS like it's about to start, but you have to wait for the tiny flute doing the melody line to play for a few bars before you start, and a few people started too early. Anyways, it just sounded like a few of us were adding a little emphasis on the first line. No big deal. Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave. Right?
A couple of the soloist were REALLY amazing. The first girl sounded - as Snuffles commented so cleverly - as if she was coming right off Broadway. She performed "Your Daddy's Son", I believe. There was also a little girl in the younger class singing "Fabulous" from HSM2. Her belt was a bit odd, but not necessarily strained, and she was clearly having a blast. The girl has a neat vibrato, too. Nice acting. Another girl did "I Could've Danced All Night", too. With some kicker vibrato, but her voice sounded a bit weak. Then again, I might be over-analyzing. *shrug* Does anybody care? No? Okie then.
Snuffles and I did Dream Maker near the end. We had to push the piano out onto the stage just before going on, and I was all *smiley at the crowd* Snuffles was obviously a bit nervous, but she kept trooping. I momentarily looked up at the crowd and felt my limbs begin to quiver the way they do when I'm nervous. And you know what? I did the cliche thing for once. I looked down at the keys(that look, hey, whaddya know, remarkably like the keys on my piano at home. Kinda. These are nicer) and imagined that I was just at home playing directly for pleasure. And that was easy. I MAYBE pressed half the wrong key once. I say half because I hit the right key, but accidentally touched another, creating a bit of an odd sound in teh background for a meeeelisecond. No one noticed, I'm sure. The song came out beautifully sounding on that exquisite piano.
The problem? The bridge. We play stanza/stanza/chorus/bridge/chorus/stanza/chorus to finish. She skipped the bridge and began singing the ending stanza, and I got lost. At one point she turned around and offered me a glare as if to say, "What the heck are you doing?!" I kept moving to try and keep up with her, and she kept trying to find out what stanza we were doing. Anyways. I spoke up and said, "Go to the bridge." And after that, we were fine. I finished with a flair. That piano ROCKS! It has all the light touch of my pianoforte(the keys felt FINE) and a pretty tone all its own. Not to mention my song is pretty great, if I do say so myself. We got applause at the end, and I was momentarily hurt to have to leave that piano on the stage. I wanted to pull it off with me, but Snuffles commanded me off the stage, and no one else moved to help me(as people often do. I could have moved it myself, buuuut) so I just skeetered off stage, now grinning like a Chesire Cat. Snuffles was sore afterwards, looking solemn and unappreciative of such an event. She gets easily hurt when she messes up, you know. Ever since we were wee kids, she's been like that. When she started school she got straight As. She CRIED the first time she got a B, because she felt like she had totally failed and screwed it up. She doesn't like to lose, and she doesn't like to think she didn't do her best. I told her quietly that she did FINE, that things like that happen all the time, and no one would think anything of it. We're amateur. Sure, we probably shouldn't have shown it like that, but we'll learn. I know we will.
We finished with "What I Did For Love". Did I mention how many attended? Yeah, probably not. Anyways, our program coincided with other art exhibit-type things going on, and people could enter for free whenever they wanted. Mrs. J said not to feel bad if people enter or exit or walk around while we're on. It was a pretty casual event. And at the most about twenty to thirty people were actually there at one time. Hence, I wasn't TOO worried about messing up. These were people who had just come in from playing with the freaky-looking clowns and looking at 'design your own t-shirts'. They weren't looking for Broadway. We just gave them a glimpse of our own talents, and showed the world that our MT class is a prime way to build on that love for theater/music. I'm proud to be a part of that program. ^_^
Afterwards we all headed back to the Academy, though most of the people there went straight on home or dropped each other off. I called dad and apologized for not being able to warn him and mom sooner(I really wish they could have come), and he was fine with it. He likes it when we take initiative and take part in these kinds of things. He just likes to know about it. Over-protective but still understanding that sometimes he has to let go. I love my dad.
Then I called my mom, who happened to be heading to the yarn shop and said she was on her way to pick us up. When I hung up my phone, Mrs. J was coming by. She said she was glad to see we were still there because she wanted to talk to us about our 'solo'.
My first thought: But...it was fine...!
Basically, she said that it was a very beautiful song, that she had never heard it before, and that she was proud of us to get up there and take that chance. She then mentioned that besides that fluke in the middle, we did excellently. Then she begins to tell Snuffles that as a singer, she needs to keep going and get ME to follow HER if we get lost. She said that as an accompanist, it's my job to ACCOMPANY her, and no matter what, that she should just keep going. She also said that she 'sees more confidence' in me than my sister(something to which we shared a smile. Snuffles has received several confidence lectures from the Vocal teachers so far. I've just never felt the need to not go do my best, despite any reasons my critical mind can come up with) but that she should 'just let that come'. That she should feel confidence in herself. Then she said that we should really do solo nights in the future because she feels we could really use that experience. Then she looked at me real odd and said(though I might have imagined the level of emotion with which she spoke it) that there was 'so much potential...' I couldn't agree more. Every one of us has our own talents, and despite my reluctance to count the day off as perfect, I have to declare that it was definitely a success. I did what I expected to do. I expected to mess up somehow, and I expected to keep going. I expected to have a grand time, a few laughs and smiles, and to gain experience from the encounter. I expected to learn, and have fun. And all those things I did.
Though I did have a headache later. It started in the last few minutes of the show, and gradually increased. At first I thought I was being a wuss about pain(since I know my mother, father, and Snuffles all have migraines quite often. I know how disabled one can be when under excruciating pain like that), but my dad assured me that 'when people who don't get sick often do, it's bad'. It made me feel a bit better, though I still refused to take an ibuprofen until six or seven hours later. I hate medicines taken unnecessarily with a passion. When it comes to drugs, my view is; why recreate a high with drugs when you can do the same thing with sugared substances? They're not illegal, you very seldom have hangovers from them, and they produce the same effect! And they TASTE good!'
You won't likely see ME as the druggie. Anyways...
Spent the weekend at Gramma's thereafter, reading aloud Pride and Prejudice between her watching the entirety of the Janette Oak series. "Love Comes Softly" "Love's Abiding Joy" "Love's Enduring Promise". You get the idea. This is the series my cousin Ally is obsessed with. (Mostly because it's been declared 'safe' enough for her to read without going to hell. *rolls eyes*) They're romance. What better way to open a young impressionable girl's eyes to the romantic perfectionism of love than to swarm her with only romance novels that are 90% fluff? Don't get me wrong - I think Janette Oak has some fine plot-lines. They are twice(sometimes three times) better than many of the junk in the world today. I just wonder at it being the ONLY thing my cousin can read. She's not allowed to read Narnia Chronicles, thinks Lord of the Rings is "disgusting" and "creepy" and can't even go within a mile of Harry Potter. Most of my readings involve magic or sci-fi. My belief is that God is in himself a form of 'magic', hence my love for all things Narnia. My cousin and her family believe that to involve one's self with anything 'magical' is to call upon the devil himself. *sigh* I worry for her. Ally carries already a heavy resentment to her father and her younger brothers. Those boys are WILD. They have kicked and screamed at me, they play guilt trips and Ally's younger sister, though being a bright, inquisitive girl, is very manipulative. Very. Despite so very nearly shunning us, my mother declares that this girl has lied directly to her. Directly LIED. So much for keeping them sheltered from the world's evils.
(Ugh. I can rant on this until the day after tomorrow, if I'm allowed. Let me go a bit longer, then I will cease, and go to bed. For my fingers are already stiff with cold - Gramma's fireplace hasn't given out any heat for the past twelve hours. I'm sure it hates me.)
Mother has always said that when she tells people about Ally and her situation, they always tell her they expect this child to wind up on our front door pregnant and alone. I find no grounds to wholeheartedly agree with this, but neither can I outright deny its possibility. She hates the situation she's in. She's always hopeful for more, but her optimism is waning with her father's persistence. She is never allowed to stay the night at our house, unless we throw out our television set(even though those kids watch Disney Channel shows on the computer. I have to wonder, "Why THAT stuff?!" But I am fully convinced that their father has no idea about them watching these shows. See the hypocrisy here?) and she is always commanded to take care of these rowdy boys who almost always get exactly what they want. Ally is a pleaser. She likes to make people happy. Her mother works on the phone a lot, so she's automatically learned to give the boys what they want to keep them quiet. BAD combo, in my opinion. But then again, I cannot blame ALLY. Ally is not wholly blameless in my eyes, but she isn't very easily blamed, either. She has grown unnecessarily into a situation she never should have been put into. But I digress. She loathes those boys with a passion, and her sister's manipulative ways(there are dark family secrets that have somehow led to the younger sister being the favored one, and she has learned to use this unknowingly) always leave the two spatting and shouting at each other. Ally cannot get along with her father much either, and she is forever muttering about his faults. All in all, I can't see it as a very comely home-life, but I have tried to blind my eyes to this and remain indifferent. I am going to assume that, although I would never be content in such a situation, that everyone is different, therefore, it is back to the saying, 'different strokes for different folks'.
But I still constantly worry about Ally. I want to pull her under my wing. I KNOW how it is being the eldest sister. I KNOW how it is to go through that stage of your life where nothing seems to be as it should. But I must finish. How much longer can I muse on something that at this moment I have no control over?
Basically what I wanted to do was let you all know that I personally had a blast on Saturday, though it was quite an interesting afternoon. If only most weekends could be like that.
Before I go anywhere of any importance in which anything of note is required of me, I like to mull over a mental image of what it will be like. Imagining myself at MT class almost always results in something intervening that weekend in which I picture it the clearest. Very odd indeed. Anyways, I noticed I held in my mind a clear picture of myself during my different classes, hoping to continue upwards in my spiral of confidence in class. People are starting to actually recognize me. ^_^ You see, I emanate confidence quite a lot of the time, but in a group of combined 'class clowns' I stand little chance. Because I hold that giddiness in, you see. I can be confident without necessarily being notably pompous for the masses. ;)
Okay, so my father drove us to class, as he normally does, and my sister and I clung to each other as we slowly and cautiously crossed the large patch of ice between us and the front door. Upon entering, I noticed that everyone in the three separate classes appeared to be grouped together in the dance room. This wasn't too odd, since we were actually a bit early, and I know that at exactly 10:00 there is usually a small pep talk to all the students given by our Vocal teacher, Mrs. J(that's what we'll call her, wife to our other Vocal teacher that we'll call Mike. Hahaha. Vocals, Mike..eh..forget it). But the strange thing was, that everyone seemed to be a big blur of only select colors. As though they had all planned on wearing the same thing, or that my eyes were getting worse than I'd earlier anticipated. Mrs. J saw us and explained to us that since we haven't been to class in FOREVER (we missed the last two weeks. We ended up grounded for spending too much time on the compy. And I forgot to vacuum.) that we had missed an announcement: Our class was giving a small performance at a local professional theatre to show off MT Class' work. We're going on-stage in an hour and a half.
My reaction: O_O Um...okay!
So I barely have time to call dad and let him know we're all grouping up in everybody else's cars to ride to the local theater, and he's pretty amiable about it(amiable is my new favorite word, along with alacrity. Of my 'word of the day' thing, alacrity has struck me the most). We all line up in the dance room and we run through the songs we'll be doing. Let me see if I can remember which we sang:
"Another Day"(RENT, obviously),
"The One"(A Chorus Line),
"Sabbath Prayer"(Fiddler On The Roof),
"525,600 Minutes(RENT)
"What I Did For Love"(A Chorus Line..? Yeah)
Gosh, I'm SURE there was another one. Anyways, our group had only started work on 525,600 Minutes and Sabbath Prayer recently. The former had been added (oh so fortunately) in the two weeks my sister and I had not gone. Brilliant. Lucky for me, I knew the song. Unlucky for me, they changed the system, yo. The parts with the bitty solos were made into chorus stuffles, so they ascends were altered. At, "in times that he cried/in bridges he burned/or the way that SHE DIED-" that last 'died' was instead of going up and the rest flowing in underneath, was turned into a 'go lower then a bit up, then jazz it down' type of a thing. Hard to explain. Sure it SOUNDED good, but..yeah..I had no clue, so I did what I normally do "fake it". That part of theater has always made so much sense to me.
We were warned to wear red and black to the performance(I started getting a serious Les Mis earworm upon hearing this). Turns out that the color thing was just a hope, and that it was no big deal.I happened to have brought a burgundy shirt in my bag, and changed into that and my jeans. No biggie there.
Anyways, we also ran once through a shortened version of Thriller. We changed a few things apparently, but it was easy enough to keep up with. I hope I can remember that dance well enough to dance it on my dying day, you know. *grin* It's something special to me now, being my first officially-learned dance. That's very odd, I know. But still.
Later we heard from Mrs. J that our class has an entire hour full of whatever we want to do, and all our songs and Thriller put together don't quite fill the entirety of our hour, so she says, "Hold up your hand if you want to do a solo." Several people raise their hands, but I'm still deciding which song I would do, etc. because Snuffles is bound and determined to continue to sing all the songs *I* write. Leaving only Heather's song for me to sing. The rest *she* sings. Anyways. I'm still editing Heather's song, so before I was able to decide, she had everyone put their hands down, and said, "Those of you who raised your hands are doing a solo today. Come to me with your CDs." Several backup tracks were handed to her. I wandered into another room, where Snuffles was tinkering at the piano. We had been given fifteen minutes for a break before setting off to the cars and everything. I walk up to Snuffles and she smiles quietly at me, telling me that she has finally taken initiative in class. She had told Mrs. J that she wants to do a solo today. I tell her I'm happy for her to finally stand up.
Her song? Dream Maker. Brilliant. She wants me to accompany her. Yet another thing I was thrown into that day. This isn't a big deal to you my friends, who are so accustomed to new and unwarned happenings in your daily lives. But little changes in my house, and I hardly ever leave it. So this is something I'm proud to have taken in stride. We ran through the song once, and I felt confident in it. I've added a bridge and two stanzas, but we decided to take one out because she couldn't well remember the words at the drop of a hat. (I might have taken this as a bit of a warning. Also that my sister has had some squabbles with me about 'changing my songs too much'. I like to continue to edit them slowly for months, she likes me to leave them how she learns them. Feh.)
We end up going in another girl's van, who talked animately in the front seat with one of her best friends. The girl who sat next to us during the radio show was in the car, as well as my sister and me. A quick ride, and despite the dangers of the ice, we got there on-time with no troubles. Once I saw the large fountain/sculpture type lake that we passed on the way to the auditorium, something clicked. The name of the Center sounded familiar.
It was the same exact auditorium I had performed Operation Christmas Child, my maiden voyage of stage at the age of nine, on. It was the same stage I had gone to my mother to a couple years later, where she was the photographer for the Women's Conference, and had me come along to keep her company.
Heh. Such an odd thing for me. I was very proud of being there before. Again, this may seem nothing to some people, but you have to remember that I've never lived anywhere longer than three years at a time. We used to move every year. EVERY YEAR. I never got to join in musical theater classes or productions. I joined Girl Scouts twice and moved soon after joining. I joined a ballet class and was late/missed most classes, and barely was able to learn how to get the shoes ON before we moved. To have come back to the same auditorium not TWICE, but THREE times by chance is something superior and ethereal for me. And it's a GORGEOUS auditorium, too. Rather small in comparison to some, rather large in comparison to others. Probably could seat...oh, I dunno. I'm bad at estimations. There were approx 30+ rows besides the balcony, and there were about twenty seats to a row. Just a rough guess. The stage was large and roomy, the style of the building classy, not too empty, not too cluttered with design features. Classy. That's the word for it. Small or big, that place looks and feels CLASSY. Not uptight and formal classy. Classy as in it's an enjoyment to hover around the place. A very beautiful auditorium.
Then we got to the stage left wing(dunno what you would call it) and I saw something very large covered in a protective blanket. Upon sight I recognized it, and a grin came to my face. A large grand piano. Upon removal I found it to be just like the auditorium - sleek and beautiful, but not extravagant. It was black and verah shiny. The seat was pretty awesome, too. A mix of 19th century puffy comfy padding and colored black for purdiness. I turned to Mike and tugged lightly on his arm. I probably shouldn't have bothered him, since he was busy getting everybody ready for the performance, but I couldn't help but ask in my most abashed tone, "I get to play THAT?"
He answered in the affirmative, and I murmured to Snuffles, "I'm going to die playing that piano. I'm seriously going to die." I kept repeating this for some minutes. I'm a die-hard piano addict. I touch pianos. It makes me happy. Touching light ivory keys makes me feel content, however stressed I may be once I move away from the instrument. I sat in the left wing area, glancing at it every few minutes, and began to consider something for the first time. What if I'm not meant for center-stage, but accompaniment? I've never formally learned any instrument, but how can a girl be destined to even hope to shine in the chorus at the back of the stage when she feels so drawn to the instruments just off stage?
Which reminds me. I've always wanted to explore an orchestra pit....
Back on tangent. The songs went well, with a slight prob with Sabbath Prayer. With the accompaniment, there's a period where it FEELS like it's about to start, but you have to wait for the tiny flute doing the melody line to play for a few bars before you start, and a few people started too early. Anyways, it just sounded like a few of us were adding a little emphasis on the first line. No big deal. Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave. Right?
A couple of the soloist were REALLY amazing. The first girl sounded - as Snuffles commented so cleverly - as if she was coming right off Broadway. She performed "Your Daddy's Son", I believe. There was also a little girl in the younger class singing "Fabulous" from HSM2. Her belt was a bit odd, but not necessarily strained, and she was clearly having a blast. The girl has a neat vibrato, too. Nice acting. Another girl did "I Could've Danced All Night", too. With some kicker vibrato, but her voice sounded a bit weak. Then again, I might be over-analyzing. *shrug* Does anybody care? No? Okie then.
Snuffles and I did Dream Maker near the end. We had to push the piano out onto the stage just before going on, and I was all *smiley at the crowd* Snuffles was obviously a bit nervous, but she kept trooping. I momentarily looked up at the crowd and felt my limbs begin to quiver the way they do when I'm nervous. And you know what? I did the cliche thing for once. I looked down at the keys(that look, hey, whaddya know, remarkably like the keys on my piano at home. Kinda. These are nicer) and imagined that I was just at home playing directly for pleasure. And that was easy. I MAYBE pressed half the wrong key once. I say half because I hit the right key, but accidentally touched another, creating a bit of an odd sound in teh background for a meeeelisecond. No one noticed, I'm sure. The song came out beautifully sounding on that exquisite piano.
The problem? The bridge. We play stanza/stanza/chorus/bridge/chorus/stanza/chorus to finish. She skipped the bridge and began singing the ending stanza, and I got lost. At one point she turned around and offered me a glare as if to say, "What the heck are you doing?!" I kept moving to try and keep up with her, and she kept trying to find out what stanza we were doing. Anyways. I spoke up and said, "Go to the bridge." And after that, we were fine. I finished with a flair. That piano ROCKS! It has all the light touch of my pianoforte(the keys felt FINE) and a pretty tone all its own. Not to mention my song is pretty great, if I do say so myself. We got applause at the end, and I was momentarily hurt to have to leave that piano on the stage. I wanted to pull it off with me, but Snuffles commanded me off the stage, and no one else moved to help me(as people often do. I could have moved it myself, buuuut) so I just skeetered off stage, now grinning like a Chesire Cat. Snuffles was sore afterwards, looking solemn and unappreciative of such an event. She gets easily hurt when she messes up, you know. Ever since we were wee kids, she's been like that. When she started school she got straight As. She CRIED the first time she got a B, because she felt like she had totally failed and screwed it up. She doesn't like to lose, and she doesn't like to think she didn't do her best. I told her quietly that she did FINE, that things like that happen all the time, and no one would think anything of it. We're amateur. Sure, we probably shouldn't have shown it like that, but we'll learn. I know we will.
We finished with "What I Did For Love". Did I mention how many attended? Yeah, probably not. Anyways, our program coincided with other art exhibit-type things going on, and people could enter for free whenever they wanted. Mrs. J said not to feel bad if people enter or exit or walk around while we're on. It was a pretty casual event. And at the most about twenty to thirty people were actually there at one time. Hence, I wasn't TOO worried about messing up. These were people who had just come in from playing with the freaky-looking clowns and looking at 'design your own t-shirts'. They weren't looking for Broadway. We just gave them a glimpse of our own talents, and showed the world that our MT class is a prime way to build on that love for theater/music. I'm proud to be a part of that program. ^_^
Afterwards we all headed back to the Academy, though most of the people there went straight on home or dropped each other off. I called dad and apologized for not being able to warn him and mom sooner(I really wish they could have come), and he was fine with it. He likes it when we take initiative and take part in these kinds of things. He just likes to know about it. Over-protective but still understanding that sometimes he has to let go. I love my dad.
Then I called my mom, who happened to be heading to the yarn shop and said she was on her way to pick us up. When I hung up my phone, Mrs. J was coming by. She said she was glad to see we were still there because she wanted to talk to us about our 'solo'.
My first thought: But...it was fine...!
Basically, she said that it was a very beautiful song, that she had never heard it before, and that she was proud of us to get up there and take that chance. She then mentioned that besides that fluke in the middle, we did excellently. Then she begins to tell Snuffles that as a singer, she needs to keep going and get ME to follow HER if we get lost. She said that as an accompanist, it's my job to ACCOMPANY her, and no matter what, that she should just keep going. She also said that she 'sees more confidence' in me than my sister(something to which we shared a smile. Snuffles has received several confidence lectures from the Vocal teachers so far. I've just never felt the need to not go do my best, despite any reasons my critical mind can come up with) but that she should 'just let that come'. That she should feel confidence in herself. Then she said that we should really do solo nights in the future because she feels we could really use that experience. Then she looked at me real odd and said(though I might have imagined the level of emotion with which she spoke it) that there was 'so much potential...' I couldn't agree more. Every one of us has our own talents, and despite my reluctance to count the day off as perfect, I have to declare that it was definitely a success. I did what I expected to do. I expected to mess up somehow, and I expected to keep going. I expected to have a grand time, a few laughs and smiles, and to gain experience from the encounter. I expected to learn, and have fun. And all those things I did.
Though I did have a headache later. It started in the last few minutes of the show, and gradually increased. At first I thought I was being a wuss about pain(since I know my mother, father, and Snuffles all have migraines quite often. I know how disabled one can be when under excruciating pain like that), but my dad assured me that 'when people who don't get sick often do, it's bad'. It made me feel a bit better, though I still refused to take an ibuprofen until six or seven hours later. I hate medicines taken unnecessarily with a passion. When it comes to drugs, my view is; why recreate a high with drugs when you can do the same thing with sugared substances? They're not illegal, you very seldom have hangovers from them, and they produce the same effect! And they TASTE good!'
You won't likely see ME as the druggie. Anyways...
Spent the weekend at Gramma's thereafter, reading aloud Pride and Prejudice between her watching the entirety of the Janette Oak series. "Love Comes Softly" "Love's Abiding Joy" "Love's Enduring Promise". You get the idea. This is the series my cousin Ally is obsessed with. (Mostly because it's been declared 'safe' enough for her to read without going to hell. *rolls eyes*) They're romance. What better way to open a young impressionable girl's eyes to the romantic perfectionism of love than to swarm her with only romance novels that are 90% fluff? Don't get me wrong - I think Janette Oak has some fine plot-lines. They are twice(sometimes three times) better than many of the junk in the world today. I just wonder at it being the ONLY thing my cousin can read. She's not allowed to read Narnia Chronicles, thinks Lord of the Rings is "disgusting" and "creepy" and can't even go within a mile of Harry Potter. Most of my readings involve magic or sci-fi. My belief is that God is in himself a form of 'magic', hence my love for all things Narnia. My cousin and her family believe that to involve one's self with anything 'magical' is to call upon the devil himself. *sigh* I worry for her. Ally carries already a heavy resentment to her father and her younger brothers. Those boys are WILD. They have kicked and screamed at me, they play guilt trips and Ally's younger sister, though being a bright, inquisitive girl, is very manipulative. Very. Despite so very nearly shunning us, my mother declares that this girl has lied directly to her. Directly LIED. So much for keeping them sheltered from the world's evils.
(Ugh. I can rant on this until the day after tomorrow, if I'm allowed. Let me go a bit longer, then I will cease, and go to bed. For my fingers are already stiff with cold - Gramma's fireplace hasn't given out any heat for the past twelve hours. I'm sure it hates me.)
Mother has always said that when she tells people about Ally and her situation, they always tell her they expect this child to wind up on our front door pregnant and alone. I find no grounds to wholeheartedly agree with this, but neither can I outright deny its possibility. She hates the situation she's in. She's always hopeful for more, but her optimism is waning with her father's persistence. She is never allowed to stay the night at our house, unless we throw out our television set(even though those kids watch Disney Channel shows on the computer. I have to wonder, "Why THAT stuff?!" But I am fully convinced that their father has no idea about them watching these shows. See the hypocrisy here?) and she is always commanded to take care of these rowdy boys who almost always get exactly what they want. Ally is a pleaser. She likes to make people happy. Her mother works on the phone a lot, so she's automatically learned to give the boys what they want to keep them quiet. BAD combo, in my opinion. But then again, I cannot blame ALLY. Ally is not wholly blameless in my eyes, but she isn't very easily blamed, either. She has grown unnecessarily into a situation she never should have been put into. But I digress. She loathes those boys with a passion, and her sister's manipulative ways(there are dark family secrets that have somehow led to the younger sister being the favored one, and she has learned to use this unknowingly) always leave the two spatting and shouting at each other. Ally cannot get along with her father much either, and she is forever muttering about his faults. All in all, I can't see it as a very comely home-life, but I have tried to blind my eyes to this and remain indifferent. I am going to assume that, although I would never be content in such a situation, that everyone is different, therefore, it is back to the saying, 'different strokes for different folks'.
But I still constantly worry about Ally. I want to pull her under my wing. I KNOW how it is being the eldest sister. I KNOW how it is to go through that stage of your life where nothing seems to be as it should. But I must finish. How much longer can I muse on something that at this moment I have no control over?
Basically what I wanted to do was let you all know that I personally had a blast on Saturday, though it was quite an interesting afternoon. If only most weekends could be like that.