I booked the trip to see Deborah in concert
We met through my podcast
I interviewed her about The Golden Cage
A beautiful two-hander musical
About freedom, restriction, and art
We started chatting every other week and
Became friends
Sharing stories and hope and inspiration to
Do the thing(s)

I decided to travel light
Just a backpack on
The Amtrak up north
Zipping through freezing cold air
Past fields covered in snow and
Frozen rivers and lakes and waterways
The bliss of the quiet car
And a seat to myself

A chance to see my life-twin
My prima guapa Rachel
And Christopher and Paul
And fur-nephew Jake
The joy of being snuggled up with a fur baby
A canine-shaped weighted water bottle 

Four hour lunch at the sushi train
With Rachel and Nina and Susannah
Laughing and dishing tea
Devouring salmon and rice and beef and
Mochi sprinkled with sesame

The loveliness of cooking a meal at home
Peeling and chopping apples
Stirring sauces
Sitting together

The delight of seeing DHC in concert
Her extraordinary musicianship
“We’re all a little out of tune. That’s how you know it’s real.”
The concept of "eclosion"
The process of becoming, of expanding latent wings
Deborah’s deft use of the loop pedal
The way her harp can play classical and jazz and blues and folk and original compositions
A piece of paper woven through the strings turns it into a percussion instrument
Watching Deborah sing and play
Her joy and skill and dexterity
I want to do that
What if Eurydice could have played the lyre?

Heading to a cheese and wine party
To celebrate a birthday
Meeting lovely new folks
Who chat passionately about film and tv and
Are excited for the Oscars
Laugh over film hot takes
How very dare you not like The Lord of the Rings

The next morning
A delightful brunch
(Preceded by a Lyft driver who picked up alto sax as a grown up, once made art in New York, and now works in biotech to try and cure endometriosis)
Finally meeting DHC in person and her lovely friend Erica
A real life fairy harpist
Talking about the world and music and fairies and heartbreak
The thrill of being loaned a lap harp
(And being glad I packed light!)

Arriving in Salem
Hanging out with the Rabinowii
My chosen family
Paul and Naomi, and Fred, and Emy and Nick, Louisa, and Charlotte
Sharing a truly delicious meal
Catching up and trading stories
And marveling at the pace at which children grow

Monday morning comes too quickly
As she always does
The thrill of being able to navigate transit in a city not my own
Figuring out a different system
Aah, this is how they do things here
The modern miracle of tap and pay
Of apps where you can pre-purchase your ticket
Taking the Amtrak back south
Past snow covered fields and
Frozen rivers and lakes and waterways

Thankful, thankful for the ease of the trip
For my community of lovely humans
For unexpected surprises
For time to read
And time to write
For the change of scenery and
A break in routine
For time away
That feels
Like a return to self.

​I didn’t know singing in a cemetery while watching two Brits lug stone and ice and fire was on my bucket list
But here we are
How to explain this transcendent experience
That even days later I’m still processing
The magic of it
The meditative-ness of it
The rareness of it
The extraordinary nature of it

MasterVoices were the guests of
Kaleider’s Arch
A performance piece that has been done around the world
And this weekend was to be performed at
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
We rehearsed on Friday night
Learned all the elements of
Verity Standen’s gorgeous music
The revelation when she said
It doesn’t matter if the pitch drops
“That’s the human voice isn’t it?” she said
That’s the human voice!
And she said it didn’t matter if we made different vowel sounds
Because different vowels sound and feel different in individual voices
And wow, what a relief it was to hear that!
It’s not to say I don’t love the discipline that’s usually expected of the chorus
But it was so freeing to just SING
I floated home from rehearsal

The Saturday show was canceled
Due to inclement weather
Damn those weather gods!
But it made showing up on Sunday
All the more exciting
We rehearsed in the afternoon
Had dinner on the grass
A peak Victorian activity
In the midst of life we are--
My friends arrived
Ella, Miles, Opus, Emma, Heidi, and Molly
And somewhere in the crowd, my roomie Artur
Friends from very different parts of my life
UNSW, the Theatre Royal, Buck’s Rock, SP land, and NYC
All sitting together on the hill behind me
It was overwhelming and dizzying and wonderful

At dusk
The audience and the chorus
Sat among the gravestones
Lenny Bernstein up the hill
(Earlier, a number of us made a little pilgrimage to pay our respects
His grave is blink and you miss it
Not at all what you’d expect for one of the musical giants of the 20th century)
And witnessed the building of an arch
Out of stone and ice
A fire was fed in a metal drum
While 5 glorious singers intoned
The elemental nature of it
Water, earth, fire, and breath
Brick by brick and block by block, it was
Quite something to watch these two men haul the building blocks
While we all sat there and watched
Could we have gotten up to help?
Why do they do all the work while we just sit there?

At first the arch didn’t quite come together
It took a few goes of moving stones in and out
And readjusting and hammering
Before they took the wooden former out
The audience broke into applause when the arch stood on its own
Then Seth dragged the fire underneath
And the voices sang and intoned and rose and fell
And the ice slowly melted
It felt like we might sit there forever
Then the arch suddenly collapsed
The singing faded away
And the audience and the chorus, without guidance,
Gathered around the fire
It doesn’t get more primal than that
Humans gathering around a fire
To tell stories
Like moths to a--
As we did, the clouds parted to reveal (I kid you not),
A full moon

It was a meditation
It was immersive theatre
It was civilization and humanity and human endeavor
Everything we build will crumble
Everything we know matters
Nothing is important
What we do is vital
What we do is irrelevant
What we do is -

To quote Ali Smith
remember you must live
remember|you|most|love
remainder|you|mist|leaf
To witness it, experience it, be a part of it
I am thankful thankful thankful

​I am beside myself with glee
The re-discovery of purpose
Of coming back to myself
Doing the thing I came here to do
The thing I left the comfort and safety of Australia for
Singing and dancing and art-ing and
Tripping the light fantastic
THIS is what feels right
This is what feels good
I thought I’d lost it
Between cancer and living far from the city and divorce and heart break and not doing the thing(s)
But I’ve been doing my morning mmm’s
Morning pages, meditation, movement
And soaking up the last remnants of delicious summer
And tonight hearing British voices
Leading vocal warm-ups
Took me right back to Central
BA ba ba ba ba ba baaa!
CA ca ca ca ca ca caaa!
Vocalizing, loose shoulders, stretch to the side and feel your ribs pop pop POP!
Tummy breaths, activate the diaphragm
HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA
Poke out your tongue
Feel ridiculous
Feel glorious!
It’s all delicious!
The missing of it
The living it of it
The loving of it
The returning to it
Back to self
The world may be a dumpster fire of hell
But there still is music
There still is art
There still is sky
And earth
And breath
Take it in and --

The thrill of the 8 day play
The astonishment of first-time actors 
Learning lines and blocking 
In mere days 
And then stepping on to the stage
The way they are still a little self-conscious 
Testing out this thing of the 
Audience response 
The way their friends cheer for them 
The way their spirits soar when they get a laugh
When they nail the scene and remember all the lines
And where to move 
The way they bow 
The thrill of it all 
​Beginning

The absolutely overwhelming joy
Of seeing The Bengsons live
The gift of their music
The gift of their storytelling
The gift of their extraordinary musicianship
The way they sing about grief and death and being on the brink
The way their music reaches deep into your heart
And tears it asunder
And puts it back together with soaring vocals
Folksy guitar
And astounding use of loops
The way the set transforms before your eyes
Cedar tree! Dinosaur!
The way you walk out of the theatre
And they have transformed the way you see the world

The thrill of seeing an extraordinary play
With extraordinary performances
The way the actors seamlessly switched between characters
The delicious inhabiting of different bodies
The walk, the talk
The positioning of the head
The movement of the hands
The use of voice
In speech and song
How a hat can transform a person
Entirely into another being
The magic of theatre

Oh that I am the luckiest 
To work on Broadway in the early afternoon
And then, later, to go to a beautiful space 
On the East Side 
For a talk with Alex Lacamoire
And learn about Broadway pits 
And programming keyboards
And being a sub musician
And feeling inspired you start heading home
But you linger a little
Because it is a truly gorgeous 
Balmy spring day 
And you don't really want to go home 
And suddenly
Your dear friend calls from Lincoln Center
"I got you a free ticket!"
And you hustle as fast as you can
And the train gods are blessedly with you -
Even when you accidentally hop on the wrong train
(Uptown E = Queens, not Manhattan!) 
And you get to see Uncle Vanya
In a new adaptation by Heidi Schreck
​(she is a genius) 
With a killer cast 
And it is moving and funny and devastating 
“I just want to be an ordinary sinner and eat noodles!” 
And you wander home 
And you think
It really is the greatest city

I’d heard it was good
But I didn’t expect this
The truly glorious music
The astonishing performances
The way it cracked something open inside of me
Watching the adult-self signing with his childhood self
The thrill of the step dance
The horror of abuse
The re-living and processing of trauma
The power of art
To shake you apart
And then fill the cracks with golden light
“Sometimes you just have to leave it all behind
And leave it in the road”
"Just three simple words
I love you."

The privilege of singing in the chorus
With a full orchestra
Performing Ricky Ian Gordon’s stunning score
What would Steinbeck have made of all of this?
Or the people that he met
And immortalized in print
The stories of struggle
Of wanting something better
The desire to feed your family
The desire to just get by
Without forces and foes
Pushing you out
Forcing you down
Nearly a century later
Playing out on a fancy stage
Thankful thankful to be a part 
Thankful for Ralph, Susannah, David, Katherine, Jez, and Margo
Members of my chosen fam'bly 
For bearing witness.  

The joy of rehearsal with the orchestra 
The luxury of it 
The fun of it 
The beauty of it 
Watching Ted conduct
Watching the composer grin from ear to ear as his music is brought to life 
Hearing that gorgeous score 
Live and in-person
The sound of 100 people singing in harmony 
​Heaven.