brozinski

I am baffled. Just baffled.

There is a homeless man who lives around our store here. JR is his name. One day last winter our floor manager, Jared, found him behind our dumpster just sopping wet. Now to the credit of Jared and our boss lady Rosanne they have done everything in their power to make sure that he's been taken care of. But these people are staunch Utah Republicans. There's too much government and too many taxes and we can't have a Democrat in the presidency because he (or she) will make it a socialist state and we won't have any money of our own and so forth and do on. Which is fine. Those are their beliefs and they are entitled to them.

The first thing Rosanne does though is find which government program and agency will take care of JR and all of his needs. And then she complains about the homeless shelters, which are indeed in dire need of funding, while simultaneously complains about how high her taxes are and wonders why these shelters can't be any better.

Today completely baffled me. I directly quote from her conversation with the food stamp people.

"You know what bothers me about programs like yours. He's afraid to get a job because then he'll be earning too much money to be able to get food stamps. It's his safety net"

She doesn't want a government that takes care of people, but then she wants a government that takes care of people.

Sorry. Venting. There ought to be a way to make this work but these double standards (help people we know not people we don't) just drive me up the wall.

Rehearsals began in earnest last night. The last three Mondays we've just been going over the music, twice with Suzanne and once with the conductor. Those rehearsals have generally not been very long, about an hour tops, although when you only have 54 measures (I counted) of singing that hour seems quite long.

Lot's of blocking and staging last night and I have learned a few things. One, I overact, which is probably not a surprise to anybody who knows me. Two, for Opera, which as we know is "serious music" acting is secondary to the sound that one can put out. Three, everybody at the rehearsal overacts. Fourth, this is very different than musical theatre and I feel like a straddling two entirely, seriously entirely, different worlds. There is hardly anything that touches. Yeah, there's singing and acting and dancing but it's completely different. And odd. I'm not sure I like opera. It will bear further research.

Last thing I learned, if you're nice and easy to work with the director will give you more to do. Lucky me.

I feel like I haven't seen my boys in a week.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: William Shatner - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

Not the cold calling. I'm still trying to figure a way around that. The outstanding accounts. They were very nice but I'm going to treat myself to lunch at my favorite place, East Coast Subs. Best fake Philly sandwich and the best real onion rings ever.

I feel like I'm going to be sick.

Current Mood: accomplished

I really do. I wonder if I'm just a whiny wuss or some such. I spent years on Paxil and it's assorted cousins for a panic disorder. Bad problems with them but at the time I thought that it was certainly better than the alternative. 2 or 3 years ago I found that the alternative had to be better than being on the pills so I went off them. Cold turkey. Something I wouldn't wish on my casual enemies. Worst enemies maybe, but my casual ones I like too much. Everything went fine. I'm doing things now that I never thought I would; singing in a professional opera, making money playing the piano, things like that. I've got more friends then ever before and I'm happy.

So why can't I make phone calls? Just can't. As my friend Jason will attest, I don't (read can't) make phone calls. I hardly call my own family because it is so hard for me to pick up the damn phone.

I come back to work after my operation and boss lady says that she can keep up on the daily balancing (which she can't, she takes the money home with her and does the balancing at night) and so what if I take over the school accounts.

Now the school accounts. They're kind of a special deal. We split our profit margin with schools that order their music from us. If we get 50% from our publishers, the schools get a 25% discount on there music, publishers give us 30% and schools get 15%. It's wonderful right? Anyway that we can help get more music in schools.

So I make a database of all the schools in the state, and some of the surrounding ones, and I mail out letters and I take orders and then I learn, which I really should have guessed except that we have someone else who takes care of accounts, that I will have to call all the schools with delinquent accounts. Boing! Heart in my throat. Oh, and by the way, would you call all the schools that you sent letters to. Boing! Oh, and will you call the publishers and make the orders and take care of return authorizations (story about that which makes me want to choke) and all that jazz. Boing!

How do it do it? I've been dragging my feet on a couple of other projects just so I won't have to do this? I know the worst that will happen. The schools will say no, the publishers will laugh at me after they hang up the phone, and neither of those things will affect me. What's the worst that could happen if I don't do this is losing my job, but it is so hard to make phone calls.

Current Mood: nervous

Well, my lady at the Symphony Chorus needed to know by Friday. I hadn't heard back from everyone on Friday so I sent an email saying how grateful I was to be considered but since I hadn't heard back from everyone I would have to decline but should further opportunities present themselves I would be pleased for consideration, and so forth. I find my formal writing skills are sorely lacking, oh what is the word, ... formality.

We get home from Idaho yesterday and sitting in my email box is a letter from my last obligation paraphrased thusly, "That is so cool, let us know your schedule and we will work around it." So I quickly sent another email saying I could do it and I hope this isn't too late and please let me do it, I'll wash your car, I'll be your best friend, and so forth. I don't think I came across as whiny and needy.

So now I wait at work, wondering if I really want to do this, because I'm not operatically trained and I know a lot of musicians and some aren't very nice if they think your getting special treatment especially if they don't think that you know what you're doing, and I kind of hope that Susanne won't let me but at the same time really wanting to do it.

I feel odd.

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Music: Don Giovanni (thought I ought to listen to it at least once)

A few years back, pre-Puffbird in fact, I was a member of the Utah Symphony Chorus. We sang a lot of great stuff, Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" is the one I still talk about, and I had a great time. While I was singing with them though was during my time on the Paxil. I met Puffbird and my coping skills changed focus.

I ended up dropping out of the Symphony Chorus and another choir that I was involved with at the time (which is really OK because the conductor was, perhaps he has changed, an unbelievably emotionally manipulative person and I'm better to be done with him) and not doing very much with music for a good while. I played the piano and taught the odd, and sometimes even, piano lesson, but I missed my time in the choir.

Flash forward to a couple years ago, Puff sends me an email saying the Utah Symphony Chorus has a new director, Susanne Sheston who is really good, and they were having auditions and that I should try out or penalties would ensue. I try out, I get in and I immediately flake out. It's not entirely my fault for there were a number of upheavals going on in our lives at the time. I thought that I had made very little impression on Susanne, and if i had it would have been a bad one.

So, yesterday I get an email from Susanne. There's been a last minute opening for the chorus of Don Giovanni with the Utah Symphony Opera and she wants me to do it. I am floored, due mainly to the fact the I previously stated: I didn't realize I had made any impression on her, least of all a good one.

The reason I'm not jumping at the chance to do this is now that I'm making a fair bit of money accompanying, I'm also spending a lot of time doing it. I have previously committed to being rehearsal pianist for "Sound of Music" with our local arts council and I have recitals at the end of April and beginning of May for the students I accompany, and two students that I work with at the Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts are going to the State Solo and Ensemble Competition. All of these are smack dab in the middle of Don Giovanni. Which bums me out. It would be a $400 dollar check and I'd be in a freakin' opera. A professional opera at that. It is so cool. Whether I like Mozart or not, it's a frakin professional opera production with a professional check.

My day will be spent planning the next month to the minute to see if I can do this.

Current Mood: determined

If this is true I will have to do some terrible things to somebody somewhere somehow.

Madonna wants to remake Casablanca

I know, I know. Happy thoughts. Happy place. Watch my DVD of the original when men were real men, women were real women, and small furry animals from the Andromeda Galaxy were real small furry animals from the Andromeda Galaxy.

(Weeping silently to myself in the corner)

Current Mood: depressed

I don't think I'll stay very long today. Already in more pain than I've been in for a week. I fear what has happened for the last week. They weren't sure I was coming back today but it was still 10 minutes after opening that anyone else arrived.

I think not fun work is a bad influence on me. I've been pretty happy. Now I'm grumped.

Hmmmm.

I need to figure this out.

Current Mood: annoyed

I've been home/in-laws for about a week now. I guess you count this as day 7 after surgery. I still can't sit up for very long which will make both work and fun work (which actually pays me a lot more than real work) quite difficult. Oh well, at least the wound isn't itching yet.


Oh crap.


Scratch scratch scratch.

Not that I'm really scratching of course, but oh how I wanna.

On a lighter note, taxes are done, check from Gypsy is in the mail, and I guess that I will finally see "The Sound of Music" all the way through for that is my next musical.

Hope everybody is well.

I'm back from surgery. I may be dead but I think I'll get better soon.

All well wishes are now being accepted.

Current Mood: blah

Sometimes I'm a pig. I'm not sure I should be allowed in civilized society.

I'll go hang out with the Grammy crowd where my petulant childish behavior should go unnoticed.

Last year I read a very interesting, if a little weirdly written book called This Is Your Brain on Music. It explores how different regions of the brain react to music, it talks about memory and archetypes and it is just really interesting.

In the middle there was a part where they talked about splicing two parts of different sounds together, the attack (the initial blow, strum, pluck) and the decay (the rest of the sound). People couldn't discern which instrument either of those sounds came from and it coalesced into a new instrument.

Kind of a long build up to this. On NPR this morning they were talking to a composer, Stephen Scott, who writes for bowed piano. It's modern, which I like, and it put me mind of this interesting phenomenon of the brain. Heres a video and I recommend the book highly.

Current Location: work
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: NA084CD - Stephen Scott "Vikings of the Sunrise"

And now, some twenty-five minutes after we open, along strolls the son and floor manager of the store spouting "Never fear, for I am here."

Out of curiosity, and so I don't have to call my surgeon, does anybody know about playing the piano with, and more importantly recovering from surgery to repair, a hernia?

I am so happy. As I was wondering and browsing the Naxos Music Library I found an entry for a composer that I had not heard of. Not really surprising in itself, there are a lot of composers whose name I don't know. His name is Kalevi Aho and he's Norweigen, Norwiegin, Norweigin, from Norway. I think to myself how bad could this be? He has written two very modern concertos for, wait for it.......... accordian. They are cool.

It's weird to hear "serious" music from the accordian. Polka music this is not.

Current Location: Day Murray Music
Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: AHO: Accordian Sonatas No. 1 and No.2 'Black Birds' ABCD104

I don't want this journal to become a gripe fest, which apparantly it has looking back, but if you give someone one week to learn a musical like the back of your hand, have him make some extraordinary concessions at work to be able to pull off rehearsal pianist for high school rehearsals, and ask him if he couldn't put off a hernia surgery until after closing night although he is in great pain your better darn well let him play the performances and make sure you do your job to get an orchestra to play with him.


GRRRRRRRR.


Next post will be happy smiley, I promise.

Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Edward Elgar - Enigma Variations

I get to work at 9:00am every morning, mostly anyway. The store doesn't open until 9:30am, so I have time to get started on my balancing before I end up needing to help customers, which I do although it no longer is in my job description. I have lots of other things that I can barely keep up with, especially with Gypsy right now, to help with customers on the phone when I know, and can see from by vantage point, workers on the floor who could help. That is only a slight irritation. The greater one is this. As I began posting this the floor manager (read son of the owners and person in charge of opening the store) had just barely walked through the door 10 minutes after we opened, which would bug less if it happened only once in a while but it is every (expletive deleted) day. And then he disappears for 10 or 20 minutes at a time during the middle of the day or is making personal phone calls that last a very long time while on the floor with customer milling around waiting to be helped, or complaining about his wife to somebody who is not his wife.

Am I being childish? It is only 10 minutes in the morning but I don't get paid for what I do now let alone his job.


GRRRRRR

Current Mood: aggravated

As many of you may have heard by now Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has passed away. Kind of surprise because he wasn't sick, but not really a surprise because he was 97 years old. I remember years ago, 13 really but who's counting, that he would be the next president of the Church and I was bummed. My only experience with him up to that point had been of him speaking on behalf of Presidents Kimball, Benson and Hunter. And boy was he dry. I was hoping for Thomas S. Monson. He told great stories. This was all before I understood the deep intricacies of the succession of the Prophet. Longest serving member to the Twelve and all that, which is course subject to change depending on revelation.

As the years have passed I have grown to love this man that I have never met. In all of his speeches and interviews he has always seemed very genuine and true to himself and what he believes. And I am suprised that his death has received national coverage. I still think of Mormonism as a podunk western religion of only little more than cult status. I mean, if y'all will indulge a brief divergence into religiosity, I really believe in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in spite of it foibles, which I blame more on the imperfections of man than any weakness of the religion, but it used to be much smaller. I look at it like my nieces and nephews. I picture them at 5 years old, and I imagine the same will happen with my own children. They'll be stuck at some much younger than they really are age in my mind.

I like that we are perceived as less strange than we used to be. We are strange. Some of our beliefs are really very different. I am not going to pretend otherwise, but it does please me that we are more understood.

What does kind of stick in my craw though is this. The news here last night was filled with pictures of earnest looking youth with candles and tears glistening in their eyes and singing the hymn "We Thank Thee O God For a Prophet." And today I hear from the floor manager here at Day Murray Music that he had heard on the radio that we should dress up as a show of respect for President Hinckley. It's very sweet I know but the whole smacks to me of the Pharisee's yelling their prayers from the street corners saying how much more holy they are than you because they are so much louder in their devotion.

To me, the best way to respect the man, who was indeed just a man although one of the very best men, would be to live the religion that he had lived his life for, that he had spent countless hours teaching to us by his every word and deed.

I will miss President Hinckley. And I will try to live my religion the best way that I can. But I'm not wearing a tie today because I heard on the radio that I ought to. I'm wearing a tie today because all my jeans are dirty.

Current Location: Work
Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Dvorak Symphony No. 9 BIS-SACD-1566

Since I'm feeling a little bit down I have gone to my current favorite pick my up. Kristin Chenoweth is an honest to goodness Barbie doll but she can sing and she can perform and this always make my smile. Enjoy.

Current Mood: better

It has been a while. If there is still anybody out there (besides Puff who already knows all of this) this is what has been happening lately, and less lately. I have begun work at Day Murray Music, my dream job from when I was but a wee lad of 16 years old. I have found that it is not so much the dream job of a somewhat older than 16 year old with a wife and 2 boys. Setting that aside for right now (and the insanity of some of the business practices of a family run business)I have been able to make some very good contacts in the music community here in Murray.

I played for a musical last spring and summer and apparantly impressed the socks off of them. It was lucky that I got it. The director had gone through 12 pianists and had walked into Day Murray Music out of desperation to see if he could find one. Now I'm there first call and will be playing for Annie this year. I made some great friends who helped me with my confidence. As many of you know I'm not very confident in my piano playing so what happened next was kind of a big deal, for me anyways.

We have studios here at the store that teachers rent to teach music lessons. The biggest studio is rented out by David Schmidt who's really good at what he does. He and his wife set up a charter school here in Salt Lake City. I thought, "hey voice teachers sometimes need pianists to be in their lessons to play, I'll talk to Dave about it and maybe audition for him." Well, long story somewhat shorter, he was also very impressed and said that as he build his studio with more voice teachers he will use me as their accompanist. Yeah me.

Then I start getting stomach pains. Different than my normal bad digestive ones. I thought they were nerves 'cause they kept going away. So life moved on, I did some piano playing, did some playing and then got called in November to be the rehearsal pianist for Gypsy for the Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts. My boss said I couldn't do it but after Christmas they still needed a pianist and I could do it.

Now the stomach pains get worse and I think that I should go see a doctor. I have a hernia. And it will need to be operated on. Gypsy people start to freak out. Can you put it off until after the 16th of February? Well, it really hurts and it's making me sick to my stomach, but I will see what I can do. The surgeon says I can get cut open on the 18th of February although he'd rather do it sooner. Blah. So, I have a hernia, we're gearing up for 2 weeks of performance for Gypsy, and I'm going to get cut open. Big year. But it's been fun.

I'm going to try and be better about updating. Ciao y'all.

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: Mahler Symphony No. 10 in F# minor (performing version by Deryck Cooke) CHAN1045