Cans and Bottles

There's nothing orienting the days of the week for me.  Every morning I've been surprised by what garbage I should take to the curb.  I was so excited for cans and glass bottles this morning, only to discover that it was plastics day.  It was a bit difficult to start the day with such a letdown, but I recovered and am looking forward to tomorrow morning with even more excitement.

And tomorrow, in addition to being cans and bottles day, is our first day of rehearsal for a three-day project of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Dvorak's Symphony No.9.  Chestnuts, no letdowns there.  I forgot to copy my music to prepare it for rehearsal (a bummer because I'd prefer to be prepared, but I've played them both countless times), and so tonight I listened to refresh my memory.
There is something so visceral about this music, maybe about all music.  Something that gets in the body.  I'd think that being a musician must be the greatest thing in the world, and yet I am one and that automatically becomes tempered by reality.  But it is still pretty cool.  Or maybe to be a dancer.  To be able to feel that pulse moving through your body as you move through space.  And yet I know that this too is tempered by the amount of training, self-criticism, and sacrifice made towards attaining such a body and skill.  I guess life sculpts us towards what we practice.  We become these things and stop realizing that there could have been another way of living.

I remember my aunt, a director, once yelling at a group of dancers leaping across the stage in rehearsal, "Smile!  Most people would love to be able to do what you're doing!"  Oh yeah, a reminder:  this is really cool.  We're burdened by the body, burdened by the reality of space and time and perception, but somewhere in the middle of dance, music, poetry, light, color, texture, sensation, is something that we can find and make real, even if only for a moment.  We have many opportunities to make this happen, so it's a bit of a letdown when it doesn't.

But for sure, cans and bottles tomorrow.  A promising start.