The Reluctant Receptionist

as of two hours ago, phong is officially on his way to nippon. “where in japan is nippon?” i asked phong—in front of people—last week. “um, nippon means japan in japanese,” he said. what? i suddenly speak japanese all of a sudden? so i couldn’t find iran on a map and i thought that japan was the size of texas. i’m amurrican. anyway, phong’s off to japan for twelve days starting today. i haven’t been away from him for that long since he moved to nyc, and i’m not exactly relishing the idea of him being gone so long. i mean, not to get all schmoopy, but i miss him when he’s not around. and what the hell am i going to do while he’s gone? it’s bad enough when he’s on call—literally twelve hours after he leaves the house our apartment looks like a tornado hit it (too soon?) and i have to spend upwards of twenty minutes putting away clothes, doing dishes, moving bodies into the hallway.

at least i’m kind of busy while he’s gone. tonight i have another of scott and tim’s cabarets (hopefully this time i’ll sing more than 5 correct words. let’s go 7!); tomorrow night church choir; thursday night i have to pick up HBX again. friday and saturday are unaccounted for, but then i have church sunday morning and my usual sunday things (you know, tina binge; the usual), then we’re already into next week. i leave a week from thursday for our east-coast tour, at which time i have to have we two boys down colder than cold and be able to sing hbx while twirling fire batons and wearing a dolly parton wig. ok, so there are no batons or dolly wig, but that’s seriously how well i need to know it. i do not want any reason to screw this up. it’s not every day you get an opera written for you—much less an opera about a gay dolly parton superfan.

and so i’m going to leave work in a little over an hour, stuff a sandwich into my face, put on my tight t-shirt (this cabaret is at the duplex, after all), and go try to be a musical theater star again. my voice isn’t really cooperating today, and that’s quite possibly due to nerves. why does singing in front of strangers and friends at scott’s cabaret make me so goddamned nervous? when i wasn’t even this nervous during B&B? good question. but i’m thinking it’s probably the uppers.

first off, a little music news. for the second time in a row, trent reznor has surprised all of us with a new, downloadable album. following up his two-cd, four-chapter ghosts: I-IV instrumental cd, he today released the slip. say what you will about NIN. the fact that a major artist not only released an album as a surprise, but released it digitally and (this time) completely for free—and not a shitty, watered-down version, but with high-quality files that are completely tagged with lyrics and album art—is mind-blowing. that it’s the most adventurous, interesting work that he’s made in ten years, that he keeps pushing the envelope and what it means to “be” nine inch nails and that it still makes me, an extremely cynical, aging pop music addict, excited to hear it is just icing on the cake. so go to nin.com and get the slip. then put on your high-quality headphones (or your boyfriend’s, since you don’t have any) and rock out like it’s 1996.

in other crazy music news, we open beatrice et benedict on thursday. crazy because this has been a major whirlwind. yes, we’ve been working on it for a couple of months, but it’s only the last week that we’ve been going really hard-core. rehearsals have become a little intense, as we all buckle down and try to really pull this together into an impressive show (or, if you prefer, a beautiful, nicely-wrapped, sweet-smelling show. not a stinky product.), and as we’re confronted with the places in the script and the score where our memory or our blocking is shaky. i know that i’ve had a hell of a time trying to memorize the final chorus (which just seems to go ON AND ON AND ON), but that could just be because my attention has been so drawn to the next thing i’m doing, george’s heartbreak express.

phong is playing in the pit for B&B; i’m dorkily excited to have him there, as we’ve never done a gig before, unless you count his friend’s wedding, at which we played a string trio (me on a 3/4 size student cello, as if my poor playing skills weren’t enough of a hindrance). we have the sitzprobe tonight, and i can’t wait to look over from my place with the singers to see him in the violin section, sawing away. my only hope is that people actually come to this performance. i’m a pretty typical new yorker, in that if you told me i had to go to newark for an opera i’d probably stifle a laugh. but please, if you’re in the new york area, come see the show. it’s at the newark public library (take nj transit to broad street/newark) this thursday at 6 or saturday at 3. you won’t be disappointed.

dolly parton’s concert last night was just terrible. such an incredible disappointment that i don’t even know where to begin. oh my god obviously i’m kidding. the word i’ve been using to describe her live performance last night has been “spectacular.” also, obviously, “powerhouse,” “juggernaut,” and “transcendent.” wonderful doesn’t quite seem emphatic enough, you see.

the marquee outside radio city music hall (see the picture i posted to facebook) read “an evening with dolly parton,” and that’s exactly what it was. there wasn’t any fucking around with opening acts (god, i was so worried that we’d have to sit through some glossy nashville start-up, biting our nails and waiting for dolly)—she came onstage at 8:07, blaming us for the delay since it was raining and we couldn’t be seated on time. from then on, it was hit after hit, mixed with extended stage banter, dirty jokes, stories from her childhood. in other words, everything you love about dolly parton. she sang “here you come again,” “9 to 5,” “coat of many colors,” “jolene,” “island in the stream,” i won’t bore you with the entire list, but suffice to say that it was every song you could imagine wanting to hear from every stage in her career (except, interestingly, her snoozefest early-mid-90s). to top it all off, she was in incredible voice, clear as a bell.

so robin and i had a wild time. we called our mom at intermission (yes, there was an intermission: this evening with dolly parton was a full two hours of stage time) because we so wished that she was there. it’s because of her that we were raised loving dolly so much, and if there’s one person on the planet that i knew would’ve enjoyed it as much as we did, it was her. she reminded me of the story of when she was pregnant with my sister and feeling her lowest. she felt like shit physically, felt fat, ugly. she dreamed that she and dolly were hanging out, and dolly patted her stomach and said, in her way, “i like that.” from that moment on, our mother says, she felt better about herself during the pregnancy. so you see? we’re practically dolly fans from the womb.

afterward, we agreed that we had some post-performance sadness. we’d built up this show so much since before christmas, and now it was over. and holy shit it didn’t disappoint.

in seven hours (which, i’m sure, will end up being the longest seven hours of my life, if you don’t count the seven hours a day i sit here at this desk, maniacally hitting refresh on the facebook homepage), robin and i will be watching dolly parton take the stage at radio city music hall. it has been a long wait, my friends—we got these tickets before christmas, her first concert being canceled due to back problems (shut up, this is a very serious issue). robin’s coming up from philadelphia for the night just for this event; i’m missing B&B rehearsal during production week. can you tell that seeing dolly is kind of a big deal for us? i’ve talked about this before, of course.

we were raised on dolly, sat down by our mothers with 9 to 5 the way that some kids are sat down with elmo (or, in our day, oscar the grouch). dolly parton is kind of like the zany aunt we’ve never met; our family has a familiarity with her unlike any other star. it’s for this reason, really, that i understand how the people in for the love of dolly (and, subsequently, heartbreak express) go so off the deep end with her. i’ll never make a dolly parton doll or rebuild my backyard to look like her tennessee mountain home or dress up in fairy wings and cry when she doesn’t notice me during a parade (or dress up like her and hang myself, if you’re to read george lam/john clum’s version), but i understand what it is about her that makes those people feel like she’s such a part of their lives.

and so this spring has become very dolly-centric. unlike madonna’s current PR blitz (in case you’re deaf/blind/buried alive, she gave a concert at roseland ballroom in new york last night and has already released the footage. the big news of the show? she actually sang live over backing tracks instead of lip synching. this is why we should congratulate her?), dolly’s come to the front of my consciousness due to no fault but my own. spending my time working on this dolly opera, picking it apart and discussing it with george and figuring out how i’m going to create a character that’s believable and carry this entire goddamned thing by myself. and now seeing her live for the first time since we were children, when we sat in the nosebleed section at oklahoma city’s civic center. just remember: “if i have one more facelift, i’m going to have a beard.” how could you not love her?

i’ve been walking across the park every morning because, frankly, it takes barely any more time than standing around waiting for the bus, missing the bus because it’s too full, waiting for the next bus, then standing around on that bus, crowded in like sardines, waiting for the people standing halfway back on the bus even though the entire rear end is empty to move back so that we can squeeze even more people on the bus and cross the goddamned park already. ahem, sorry, i’ve collected myself. long story short i’ve been spending the first half of my commute every morning walking across central park listening to music. there are obviously worse ways to commute (see above).

but this morning i couldn’t walk because it was shitstorming when i walked out the door. it is still, as i write this, shitstorming and it’s supposed to continue until tomorrow morning. i slogged across the park on the bus, then caught the C train, where i sat down and proceeded to work on the songs i’m singing for scott and tim’s cabaret the day after (the day after) B&B is done. i went to my rehearsal with them last week not knowing the songs at all, and scott had to teach them to me call-and-response britney spears style, and i vowed to be better at them by the time we met tonight. i’m singing two songs: one is a solo that’s a little david bowie/rufus wainwright-ish (because that is majorly my strong suit. just call me the thin white duke.); the other is a duet i’m singing with this other girl who’s vocally trained that they want sung in the style of, for lack of a better word, “classical” broadway. meaning, more operatic than i’ll sing the david bowie song.

listening to this (over and over) on the subway this morning, i got really excited to sing it. and i’m having another one of these moments that i’ve been having lately, thanks to george: getting to learn new music that my friends have written that i will get to perform. i mean, seriously. how cool is it to have friends who are not only creative, but good at what they do? and then to get to have a hand in that creation? it’s a pretty fucking great feeling.

so i’ve become a one-man george lam PR factory. whenever i come across someone looking for a composer of new, exciting art music i’m like, “my friend george lam!” and i’m writing a blog about him now, which clearly means that millions and millions of people are going to have his name on their lips as soon as i press “publish.” that’s how strong my voice is among my readership. i’m like oprah and her book club, minus the fat and the books. and if it ever turns out that george has fooled me into thinking that he wrote a memoir and it turns it out it’s all made up, i probably won’t take him on a shame-tour on national television. probably, but i can’t make any promises.

i write today’s pro-george blog because, well, his music is mainly what i’ve been praciticing the last few days. between trying to memorize we two boys (brilliant, prickly text by my dear friend ben rogers) and get the notes of heartbreak express under my belt, it’s really all i’ve had time to look at. i’m working at memorizing beatrice et benedict with my headphones on my train ride every morning/afternoon, so all my practice time is with a keyboard and george. it’s not really with a keyboard, since i live in a teensy apartment and my keyboard is in storage: it’s phong’s imac open to garage band, with the “musical typing” window open. so i’m not playing a keyboard, i’m playing a, um, computer keyboard. but hey, it plays my notes so who cares if it’s ghetto. imagine me teaching, though: “now sing after me: bumble bee bumble bee bumble bee bumble bee!” (wildly tinkling at a computer keyboard)

so i was working on heartbreak express last night, and the notes are hard. like, really hard. like, my part is mainly in d major (with some other tonalities thrown in, of course), verses the string section, which is in a completely different key. and i’m stuck on this one bit that’s a major seventh, for seemingly no reason. and just as i’m cursing george to the high heavens, i play the notes. then sing them. then play them. then sing them with the words. and i realize: it’s not random. it’s a direct quote from “here you come again” by dolly parton, from her album of the same title. her breakthrough pop smash. and it’s just mixed in with all of that incredible, difficult, dissonant music. do you see why i’m a george lam PR machine? if not, you will.

when bjork’s volta came out a year ago next month, i was largely unimpressed. it’s not that i didn’t like the two albums before that—the weird, avant, nico muhly-ish medulla and the introspective (often snoozefest) vespertine, but they weren’t the kind of albums that i signed up for in the first place, even if they were the kind of albums that she’d hinted at with homogenic. i loved the big-bass 808 “hunter” and “pluto” and “hyperballad.” i loved her lyrics like ”...but you won’t notice/til after five years/if you live that long/you’ll wake up/all loveless.” it was a grand, punkish “fuck you” over innovative, dancey electronica. with vespertine, her first album after homogenic, she traded those lyrics for, um, songs about the intimate connection between two lovers at orgasm? i think? maybe? (“A train of pearls/Cabin by cabin/Is shot precisely/Across an ocean”, to be precise.)

with volta, though, she’d announced before its release that it was her return to form, a party album on par with post. i got it, listened to the first track—doing well so far—the second track slowed it down a little bit but there was still that great drum and bass—and then, um, antony from antony and the johnsons? warbling lyrics like “underneath my love’s bowed eyelashes i see the dull flame of desire?” ew. ew ew ew. antony, i can stand you when you sing “for today i am a boy,” but that’s about it. get off my bjork album, please, bring back tricky or mark bell or even mark stent, and go weird someone else out.

in san francisco, though, for some reason, i got in a huge mood to listen to bjork. i don’t know why—it just happened. and it hasn’t happened in quite a while, i can assure you of that. i listened to most of volta, start to finish, for the first time in a while on the BART train to the SF airport, and it got under my skin anew. suddenly so many of these songs made sense. suddenly i didn’t mind skipping to the end of the antony song because it meant that i was about to hear “innocence,” track four. what happened here? is it because i got out of new york city, to somewhere a little less oppressive, and i had the opportunity to listen to music while not walking/rushing/being pushed around on a bus/subway/subway platform? well, probably. being on vacation, especially somewhere like san francisco, seems to have opened me up a little, and i hadn’t even realized how much i’d shut down. i’m ready for spring; i’m ready for 808; i’m ready for volta.

i cannot believe i forgot to blog about this yesterday, but do you remember “may in mississippi,” the fantasy summer that lyday and i put together when we were doing auditions the whole month of december? the one where we were going to get into the same festival in mississippi and then spend the month of may together? well, that didn’t happen. we both got our rejection letters—very nice rejection letters, mind you, that asked us to audition again, letters that i’m sure they mailed to everyone but still felt mighty nice to read—shortly after our auditions and our hopes for “may in mississippi 2008” were dashed against the rocks. i’m sure that it’s for the best, because lyday and i together in mississippi for a summer equals me getting dragged behind a truck while lyday stands on the side of a dirt road screaming (ew, morbid, sorry).

i got a call two days ago, though, from the woman who ran the auditions offering me a contracat for the festival! i can’t do it, because it directly conflicts with both harbor opera and the premiere of heartbreak express but that’s ok. it is so nice to be offered the contract, you can never know. actually, if you’re a singer, you absolutely can know. it’s amazing validation, whether or not i could take the contract, whether or not i was the 18th alternate down the list of people they called, i still got the call. and i can’t do it because i’m going to be busy singing other places. now, i wish that this festival was taking place, say, in august, when the string of singing gigs i have lined up is over, but beggers can’t be choosers. and neither can, obviously, struggling classical singers.

phong reminded me the other day how amazing it is that i’m contracted through the end of july, when i said something about “only having gigs lined up until the end of the summer.” considering that last december was my first time out the gate doing auditions since 2005, he’s right. but i still have to keep looking forward to that next audition, looking for that next gig. until, obviously, i get a manager to do all of that stuff for me (which is CLEARLY just around the corner).

when i was getting ready for work this morning, i put itunes onto random. i always watch my DVR’d cbs sunday morning, since i finally had my fill of hearing matt lauer talk to me about sexless marriages and ill-behaved children and miraculous accident survivals. today, though, i decided to listen to music. i always like putting my itunes on random, since it’s got pretty much every cd i’ve ever owned. it’s a little bit like a radio station that only plays songs that i like (or, more realistically, songs that i once paid for, whether or not i like them). as i was putting on my shoes, madonna’s “ray of light” came on the stereo.

say what you will about madonna. say that she’s an opportunist hack who couldn’t sing properly if it meant saving an entire orphanage of malawian babies. you’d be right. but she has the uncanny ability to pick amazing producers and use them to make albums that draw on exactly what’s just starting to happen in music. with the exception, of course, of american life, which was tired and universally declared dreadful. with ray of light, the album that made me a madonna fan, she hired william orbit, who in the late 90s was a pretty famous electronic ambient artist, to make her a dance album. what happened with this collaboration was a great mix of ambient blips and squeaks and noises looping in and out of well-crafted pop songs over a traditional, thudding, 808 bass and drum kit. i’ve heard the song “ray of light” probably 400 times since it came out my senior year in high school, and i’ll probably never get sick of it. even the album version, which drags on for nearly a minute longer than the single version.

this has something to do with the memory it brings up in me every time i hear it. i’ve written about this a lot, the associations i have with music, how viscerally songs can make me remember things. for “ray of light,” i remember the first time i heard it: i was in brock’s burgundy colored mazda coupe, a car i was so jealous of because it was sporty and had a huge sound system and brock drove it around the curving country roads by his house like a fucking maniac. he’d picked me up in his mazda and we’d eventually swing by mandy’s house to get her, too, but for now it was just the two of us. there were no other gay boys where i lived, so i’d chosen brock to fall in love with. the few moments before we got mandy are the ones i remember, the ones where brock, even though he was straight, let me rest my hand on his leg as he drove the car. i smoked a cigarette (we were smoking these crazy joint-looking indian herbal cigarettes that brock had found) out his car window, which was rolled down all the way. it was fucking freezing in his car with the windows down, and noisy: brock cranked the stereo so that we could hear it over the wind, and i was deafened by all those whistling treble noises that william orbit had put over the top of everything. i didn’t know it was madonna at first, because it’d been so long since she’d put out an album, and i was so impressed that brock had bought a madonna album, so pleased at him for not being a typical, gender-normative, straight, country asshole, but i couldn’t put it into those words then.

brock killed himself earlier this year; it’s something that still hasn’t quite registered since we fell off each others’ planets after our first year of college. it seems like he must still be out there somewhere, letting someone else moon over him while he talks their ear off about brian eno, but he’s not. these are the things i thought about this morning when “ray of light” came on my itunes. it’s why i like it.

well, holy week has started out with a bang. and no, the bang isn’t the sound of me slamming my head in a door (yet). the bang would be starting holy week by singing the st. matthew passion, a work by one j(oanna) s(samantha) bach, a three-plus-hour baroque extravaganza, a celebration of all things having to do with the betrayal and execution of jesus h. christ. just not the part where he rises from the dead; that’s not until sunday so you’re just going to have to wait.

in all seriousness, yesterday’s performance went really well. the group only had three rehearsals together, and i could only attend two of them, which meant that the fact that we even got through the thing is pretty damned impressive. plus, along the way, we managed to make some actual music with a really good period orchestra. (for those non-musicians out there, a period orchestra means that they use instruments that no longer exist, instruments that have been replaced by far superior, easier to play, louder, easier to tune examples of themselves. jaykay, early musicians you guys are crazy great!) the soloists were pretty much incredible, to boot. plus i made a little bit of cash and will be able to pay my deposit for housing at the opera program this summer. sweet.

this morning i got up at SIX O’CLOCK to lead a prayer service at church. i was telling phong, i don’t think i’ve gotten up that early since last holy week, and i definitely don’t plan to do it again until next holy week. until easter, of course, where i sing a purcell duet at 7:30 in the morning. so watch out for me this week, readers. it’s going to get a little crazy. one of emily’s favorite things that i’ve ever said is that by the end of holy week singers are ready to get up on the cross themselves. i’m ready for it. i’m just going to tuck and roll.