![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanaleh
I woke up at 5:30 today -- worse than usual, I've been getting to 6 or 6:30 and occasionally even to the 7:15 alarm of late -- so hey, I'm using the time to finish up this long-overdue entry.
Reply to this meme [by yelling (or even saying gently) "Words!"] and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
It's taken me several days -- perhaps because I got rather more rambly than was strictly necessary! Having seen this meme go by a whole bunch in the meantime, I find that I tend to prefer (aesthetically) the responses that stick to one reasonably pithy paragraph per word. But the words that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lillibet gave me are pretty major themes in my life, obviously (heh, almost all of them are existing tags in my LJ, for that matter), so I just wrote on... and here they are.
Note that "what they mean to me" could be approached from various angles, not least the literal. But I will try to go with "what is their place and significance in my life, presently and historically". I will reorder them slightly to improve the logical transitions, though.
Music. I've naturally been a singer all my life; I was in children's choir at church from the time I was a wee thing. I have always been able to do the "sing while I read [something else]" thing, to my mother's great amusement. It also turns out that I have some degree of perfect pitch; it drives me crazy trying to harmonize to a song I know if it's being sung in a key other than the one I know in my head.
I am the Human Jukebox; I have a vast memory for lyrics of all kinds. This isn't 100% instinctive; in junior high, I used to sit down with cassette tapes and rewind bits of songs over and over again in order to write down the lyrics so I could commit them to memory. Nowadays, I am more likely to listen to the same CD on endless repeat for weeks on end (or the same track 15 times in a row) while I try to learn the songs by heart. (This is totally why I can take all comers [except, apparently,hahathor!] at Encore.) However, it was only this year that I had an insight that these are not unrelated behaviors: it's a form of practicing. Because I am a musician, and voice is my instrument -- and the more songs I have in my memorized repertoire, for all occasions, the more skilled, and happier, I am.
For the record, I also took piano lessons from first through eighth grade (with a one-year break somewhere in the middle of that, I think). However, it was always kind of a struggle, not least because I hated to practice (but one could argue that I hated to practice because I didn't love it enough). In 9th grade, I switched to taking voice lessons -- and it was rather magical. I mean, I still had to be poked to practice between lessons, but I finally *got* it.
Acting. My first improvisational theater class was the summer after 6th grade. I took improv a couple more times over the next few years, by which time I had also taken all the drama classes (two) offered at my high school and become a faithful minion to the Drama Club. I managed to attain membership in the National Thespians Society -- not by virtue of being in shows, but by racking up half a point each by submitting playbills for every professional show I had *seen*, of which there were a few dozen by that time. :-} When I got to Brandeis, Tymp was putting on Godspell (long among my favorite musicals) as their fall show, and I eagerly auditioned... failed to get in, and never tried out for another show again while in college. Sigh.
It wasn't for 10 more years that theater resumed its place as a major part of my avocational life: in the fall of 1999,ablock and kalessin talked me into auditioning for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mitgsp, who were doing Iolanthe (with fenicedautun as music director). The rest is history... or was, from about 1999-2004 -- though I'm rather tempted to try out for their Mikado and Gondoliers this year. Also in 2004, desireearmfeldt (with whom I'd done some mitgsp shows) invited me to be in her Occasional Players' production of The Lion In Winter, which was super awesome. Then, late in 2004, lillibet recruited me to audition for Talley's Folly, and I was sucked wholeheartedly into the wacky and wonderful world of theatreatfirst.
FYI, the Occasional Players ride again this summer with a production of Theresa Rebeck's Spike Heels, to be performed August 14-15 only at the Arlington Center for the Arts.Maybe I'll get a webpage up for us by the time the show goes up. -- Well, that shows how long I've been working on this entry, because occasionalplayers.org is up now. :-}
Judaism. Oh, where to begin? Well, plainly in 1989, when I arrived at Brandeis, since I had vanishingly little exposure to Judaism before that. The saga of my gradual discovery is chronicled in some detail in my conversion essay:
Marriage. The immediate relevance of this one to my life at present is obvious, being just over 10 months in. :-)
It's been... rather an emotional adventure so far, and (I must admit) not all in the warm-and-fuzzy kind of way. At work a couple months ago, a young mom I'm friendly with asked "How's married life?!"... and in an attempt to give more than the usual glib oh-fabulous answer, I must have looked a tad stymied, because she immediately said, "You know, I really found it was a major adjustment period." I was incredibly grateful for that.
I find myself coming back over and over this year to another bit of wisdom that I got from, I believe,lifecollage: The reason marriage is such an adjustment is that it forces you to Deal With Things that you never dealt with before. Everything you've swept under the rug up until now in your relationship? Suddenly says "Hi, we're here and we're not going away! All your various strategies of not-dealing are Not Sustainable! Nyaaaaah!"
So, yeah, there have been moments already when I think "a year ago, we would absolutely have broken up over this". But being married means that you don't just give up when it gets hard. Having made that commitment -- not just to each other, but to your families, your communities, your health insurance company -- you have to find a way to come together on it. That's what it means to me.
The other thing it means is that I get to have one of the brightest and funniest and cutest people I know, in my house, in my home, in arm's reach, every day. And that's a blessing. :-)
Community. This one has a lot of ramifications, I guess, and is harder to pin down. For one thing, I never felt like I had much of it growing up, and I've spent a lot of timechasing investing myself in it as an adult. It's a larger and deeper concept than "friends"; there are several whole broad levels of people I consider Community without being exactly one-on-one Friends. It's also less geographical for me than for (I suspect) many people; my Community tends to be fairly localized, but it doesn't *inhere* in the localness the way I think of my growing-up hometown community. (OTOH, one of the things I noticed after moving to Cambridge and joining tremontstshul was that suddenly, for the first time, I would see people on the street that I knew to wave and say hello to. I hadn't previously had that experience anywhere but college, really.)
So, but what is the deep sense of "community"? In its essence, it is any of the networks of people I belong to and -- possibly more to the point -- with. People I share common ground with... culturally, mentally, emotionally, or physically. I can see someone in an airport and think to myself "That's not someone I know, but they might as well be." I love that. I can see someone in person that I've been keeping up with on LJ, and although I haven't seen them in person in several months, I can leap past "So what's new?" immediately to "So what happened with XYZ"? I love that. I love bonding over in-jokes. I love jumping into new projects with theater people (this is also the source of post-show letdown, the loss of that intense but inherently ephemeral community). I love having people around who get me, in any of a number of dimensions. I love knowing that if I need something and put out a call for it, there is probably someone, somewhere, who will bring it to me -- not because I know them well enough to presume on them personally, but out of a sense of Community. It's an incredibly rich feeling.
Reply to this meme [by yelling (or even saying gently) "Words!"] and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
It's taken me several days -- perhaps because I got rather more rambly than was strictly necessary! Having seen this meme go by a whole bunch in the meantime, I find that I tend to prefer (aesthetically) the responses that stick to one reasonably pithy paragraph per word. But the words that
lillibet gave me are pretty major themes in my life, obviously (heh, almost all of them are existing tags in my LJ, for that matter), so I just wrote on... and here they are.Note that "what they mean to me" could be approached from various angles, not least the literal. But I will try to go with "what is their place and significance in my life, presently and historically". I will reorder them slightly to improve the logical transitions, though.
Music. I've naturally been a singer all my life; I was in children's choir at church from the time I was a wee thing. I have always been able to do the "sing while I read [something else]" thing, to my mother's great amusement. It also turns out that I have some degree of perfect pitch; it drives me crazy trying to harmonize to a song I know if it's being sung in a key other than the one I know in my head.
I am the Human Jukebox; I have a vast memory for lyrics of all kinds. This isn't 100% instinctive; in junior high, I used to sit down with cassette tapes and rewind bits of songs over and over again in order to write down the lyrics so I could commit them to memory. Nowadays, I am more likely to listen to the same CD on endless repeat for weeks on end (or the same track 15 times in a row) while I try to learn the songs by heart. (This is totally why I can take all comers [except, apparently,
hahathor!] at Encore.) However, it was only this year that I had an insight that these are not unrelated behaviors: it's a form of practicing. Because I am a musician, and voice is my instrument -- and the more songs I have in my memorized repertoire, for all occasions, the more skilled, and happier, I am. For the record, I also took piano lessons from first through eighth grade (with a one-year break somewhere in the middle of that, I think). However, it was always kind of a struggle, not least because I hated to practice (but one could argue that I hated to practice because I didn't love it enough). In 9th grade, I switched to taking voice lessons -- and it was rather magical. I mean, I still had to be poked to practice between lessons, but I finally *got* it.
Acting. My first improvisational theater class was the summer after 6th grade. I took improv a couple more times over the next few years, by which time I had also taken all the drama classes (two) offered at my high school and become a faithful minion to the Drama Club. I managed to attain membership in the National Thespians Society -- not by virtue of being in shows, but by racking up half a point each by submitting playbills for every professional show I had *seen*, of which there were a few dozen by that time. :-} When I got to Brandeis, Tymp was putting on Godspell (long among my favorite musicals) as their fall show, and I eagerly auditioned... failed to get in, and never tried out for another show again while in college. Sigh.
It wasn't for 10 more years that theater resumed its place as a major part of my avocational life: in the fall of 1999,
ablock and kalessin talked me into auditioning for mitgsp, who were doing Iolanthe (with fenicedautun as music director). The rest is history... or was, from about 1999-2004 -- though I'm rather tempted to try out for their Mikado and Gondoliers this year. Also in 2004, desireearmfeldt (with whom I'd done some mitgsp shows) invited me to be in her Occasional Players' production of The Lion In Winter, which was super awesome. Then, late in 2004, lillibet recruited me to audition for Talley's Folly, and I was sucked wholeheartedly into the wacky and wonderful world of theatreatfirst.FYI, the Occasional Players ride again this summer with a production of Theresa Rebeck's Spike Heels, to be performed August 14-15 only at the Arlington Center for the Arts.
Judaism. Oh, where to begin? Well, plainly in 1989, when I arrived at Brandeis, since I had vanishingly little exposure to Judaism before that. The saga of my gradual discovery is chronicled in some detail in my conversion essay:
I was completely blown away. This was the Conservative service, held in the Spingold Auditorium with close to 1000 people, and the energy in that room was amazing. But what struck me most powerfully was the sense that for once, it was directed toward the God that I had always felt was there... talking about God the way I had always understood God to be. And what I felt there was the overwhelming energy of being with a thousand other people praying to that same God in those same terms.In short, it's become a defining force in my life, in terms of study, practice, culture, community, leadership roles... (and now professionally, too, of course). On the other hand, part of the problem with running things so much of the time is that I don't often get the opportunity to just be, to engage, spiritually and liturgically. There is more I want to do. Oh yes.
Those first impressions formed the basis for all my further study and eventual conversion to Judaism. The rest is commentary. :-)
Also, taking part in Hebrew prayers (or even, with my nonexistent ability at the time, listening to them and trying to follow along in the English translation on the facing page) was very moving. I had the sense of glimpsing some facet of spiritual reality that I'd never been so close to before.
Marriage. The immediate relevance of this one to my life at present is obvious, being just over 10 months in. :-)
It's been... rather an emotional adventure so far, and (I must admit) not all in the warm-and-fuzzy kind of way. At work a couple months ago, a young mom I'm friendly with asked "How's married life?!"... and in an attempt to give more than the usual glib oh-fabulous answer, I must have looked a tad stymied, because she immediately said, "You know, I really found it was a major adjustment period." I was incredibly grateful for that.
I find myself coming back over and over this year to another bit of wisdom that I got from, I believe,
lifecollage: The reason marriage is such an adjustment is that it forces you to Deal With Things that you never dealt with before. Everything you've swept under the rug up until now in your relationship? Suddenly says "Hi, we're here and we're not going away! All your various strategies of not-dealing are Not Sustainable! Nyaaaaah!" So, yeah, there have been moments already when I think "a year ago, we would absolutely have broken up over this". But being married means that you don't just give up when it gets hard. Having made that commitment -- not just to each other, but to your families, your communities, your health insurance company -- you have to find a way to come together on it. That's what it means to me.
The other thing it means is that I get to have one of the brightest and funniest and cutest people I know, in my house, in my home, in arm's reach, every day. And that's a blessing. :-)
Community. This one has a lot of ramifications, I guess, and is harder to pin down. For one thing, I never felt like I had much of it growing up, and I've spent a lot of time
tremontstshul was that suddenly, for the first time, I would see people on the street that I knew to wave and say hello to. I hadn't previously had that experience anywhere but college, really.)So, but what is the deep sense of "community"? In its essence, it is any of the networks of people I belong to and -- possibly more to the point -- with. People I share common ground with... culturally, mentally, emotionally, or physically. I can see someone in an airport and think to myself "That's not someone I know, but they might as well be." I love that. I can see someone in person that I've been keeping up with on LJ, and although I haven't seen them in person in several months, I can leap past "So what's new?" immediately to "So what happened with XYZ"? I love that. I love bonding over in-jokes. I love jumping into new projects with theater people (this is also the source of post-show letdown, the loss of that intense but inherently ephemeral community). I love having people around who get me, in any of a number of dimensions. I love knowing that if I need something and put out a call for it, there is probably someone, somewhere, who will bring it to me -- not because I know them well enough to presume on them personally, but out of a sense of Community. It's an incredibly rich feeling.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 11:52 am (UTC)Yes, this.
Also, words?
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:14 pm (UTC)Hmm. Ok.
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 11:57 am (UTC)(And why did I just get an image in my head of David Tennant playing Hamlet?)
Re: Hmm. Ok.
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 12:23 pm (UTC)The reason marriage is such an adjustment is that it forces you to Deal With Things that you never dealt with before. Everything you've swept under the rug up until now in your relationship? Suddenly says "Hi, we're here and we're not going away! All your various strategies of not-dealing are Not Sustainable! Nyaaaaah!"
It's funny (in a wry, rather than ha-ha) sort of way how making the commitment of marriage changes things, ever so subtly, to force you to confront all those areas in your relationship. Sure, you can still find ways to ignore them (and I'm sure we all know people who have done this) but as rough as that adjustment can sometimes be, I believe it offers a way toward growth.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 12:32 pm (UTC)You're right, you know, theatre is inherently manic. The rush, the highs, the lows, back to the highs again. We're really all just addicts.
It's funny, I also agree with the role LJ has played in the sense of community. It's no substitute for face-to-face time and the groundwork you need to put in to establish lasting friendships but it is a terrific maintenance tool!
And words, please!
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 12:58 pm (UTC)First last: But being married means that you don't just give up when it gets hard.
From the safe distance of four years, I can say...Yes. This, precisely.
Dealing with the Stuff has brought the most satisfying and fundamental change, to each of us individually and to Us as a whole. A lot of pain, and a lot of work, and worth every minute of it in the end.
*hugs*
Words
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:37 pm (UTC)Also, are you participating? :-)
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 05:12 pm (UTC)Music, Judaism, and Community, BTW. Acting, yes, but for some strange reason that's not coming to me now, less so. Marriage hasn't had enough time to ferment into logical thoughts yet, although Lifecollage's comments did strike a chord.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 02:53 pm (UTC)Also, words please!
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 06:19 pm (UTC)You don't have to give me words -- I have to write the ones I've got.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 10:28 pm (UTC)Might I also ask how long the two of you knew each other/were involved before marrying? (To me it's always interesting how marriage does or does not change things for people.)
no subject
Date: Thursday, July 9th, 2009 12:18 am (UTC)I did my 5 Word Meme (http://davidfcooper.livejournal.com/516902.html) already, but if you can think of five different words you associate with me I'll try to find time to do it again.
no subject
Date: Thursday, July 9th, 2009 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, July 9th, 2009 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 09:34 pm (UTC)Yup. I hear that ( : Everyone asks me that too, and I never know what to say. I was surprised the first time. Adjusting, what adjusting?
But then, I don't talk about that stuff with people. I remember I spent the honeymoon being terrified I would stop being me because this W word had fallen over me and I would be subsumed into thousands of years of people in the same role and vanish, logic notwithstanding. Definitely unexpected.
I had some important tests during the time before we got married, and some important tests since.
The other thing it means is that I get to have one of the brightest and funniest and cutest people I know, in my house, in my home, in arm's reach, every day. And that's a blessing. :-)
DITTO! If I never sent you the pics I can. And I'd love to see yours.
Mike and I will be 12 months on Sept 20th. What was your date? *HUGS*
no subject
Date: Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 09:37 pm (UTC)