30 May, 2008

late night in my kind of almost new hometown

Well, even though I'm just about to leave the city for my next gig, I do have to say that living here for the past 6-7 weeks has certainly been interesting.
I don't quite think I'm NYC full-time material quite yet.
I've never really moved here with all of my clothes, all of my music, all of the things that it would take to actually keep me here, rather than retreating to 'the country' for the weekend to go through stuff in storage, do laundry for free, change up the clothes that I'm bringing back for the NEXT two weeks in the city, etc.

When I'm in the city and have a purpose, my days go by so quickly.
Coaching at 4? Well that means wake up, warm up, look at music, leave the house at 3 (because no matter where I am hopstop says it will take me 45 minutes to get where I'm going), get to the coaching (early), leave and feel exhausted in that great post-singing way, and then either get a 2nd wind for dinner with friends and a night out, or unwind for the rest of the evening and maybe even listen to my recording from the coaching and do a bit of musical work to continue what the day began.

When I'm in the city and it's a free day...that's a whole different story.
Well, what's a free day, really, when you have to memorize 410 pages by 13 days from now?
Ok, so it involves waking up leisurely, checking email, nytimes, other intl. news websites..and oops, all of a sudden I haven't eaten anything and it's noon.
Music time!
In order of what should be done:
Next opera, next opera next opera, new arias.
In order of what I prefer to do and have to pull myself away from:
New arias, other new arias, youtube, youtube, youtube, next opera.

This can last anywhere between 3-4 hours, I realize I"m starving but it's too early for real dinner, so then I start making calls to best friend from undergrad (hixxla) to see what she's doing that night and if I really want to drag my ass to bklyn and hang out or if by some miracle she'll be in midtown to eat SUSHI.

Early evening- realize I probably haven't been outside all day and that the lack of natural light will probably give me some sort of disorder in life.
Put the music down, walk outside to the park, see all of the 9-5ers in their business suits on their way home, avoid slow-walking-people on the sidewalk, attempt for anywhere from 10-20 minutes to walk to the rhythm of some section of the opera that I'm testing myself on memory- ie, the FINALE.

But in the past few days I've done interesting NY-y things--
Visited the Guggenheim to see Qiang's gunpowder and '9 cars' exhibit, a musical, the park, street festivals, green markets, uws brunches (ok those are a norm) a concert, and last night ---
Italian dinner, underground R&B band, East Village bar with great pop/rock covers and oldies.
Seriously? Did I just have a 20something sex-and-the-city-esque night out and get home at 2:30am? On a Thursday? Am I cool now?

Well, RIGHT now I'm just exhausted.

Maybe there is hope after all that when I move here a BIT more permanently in Aug/Sept. that I'll start to take advantage of the myriad activities and sights that the city has to offer. Feel a bit more like I LIVE somewhere, and not just like I come into the city for coachings or auditions or 3-5 days here and there.

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