Pre-performance Stress and new purchases

So that Karma thing is back.

But I get ahead of myself.

Today I had my lesson. It was a good lesson except I noticed that little things are starting to make me crazy. Tripping crazy.

I am working on Shepherd on the Rock by Shubert, its neat piece but Its 12 pages long and I don't normally judge a tune by how many pages it is, but this feels long. I am told by others it's not but we'll see.

So I am singing this LONG song and my coach is picking on the little stuff which is his job. He has this thing where he starts singing with me, which usually means I am doing something wrong. OK. So he starts that. But I usually know what I do that's not wrong. And I don't know at this point. So I stop singing to figure out what he's doing that's right vs what I was doing that wasn't. YOu know what? HE JUST LIKES TO SING THIS SONG. I was doing it right. I internally went nuts. I would never say it to him because he's programmed differently than lots of people and it would be mis-interpreted.

So we go on to discuss some other things. Then we start back on the Schubert. Now he's singing the Clarinet part. Weirdly. Trying to make me laugh. So of course, I do. Then I turn around and say loudly ....

" You can't DO THAT while I am SINGING" ( Nathan Lane, The Birdcage. )

He responds, "Thank you Nathan - can we can continue?"

That's when I realized I was starting to lose it on little things.

My recital is 4 weeks from tomorrow. Those who have lived through my undergrad recitals can tell you how crazy psycho I get right before. Not usually this early in the game though, I generally save it all up and dump it on the poor soul (you ALL know who you are! and you know I don't mean a word that comes out of my mouth in those final hours) who had the nerve to say "Hey how's it going" an hour before performance - or worse - "Wow you look great" Good Lord - DO NOT COMPLIMENT ME!!!! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THAT????? What if I suck??????

So the fact that I am starting to get edgy now has the possibility of making me a real problem figure for the next four weeks OR making me bearable the day of. Four weeks, by the way, that include a business trip that I DO NOT want to go on, but am required to. I can't even use budget to get out of it, because they cleared the budget already! How freaking absurd. It's warmer here today than it is down south where they are sending me.

So to make myself feel better, and because I needed them, I bought clothes, a new laptop case, an IPOD Nano ( silver) and a DVR/VHS combo. Everything is here but the clothes and the Ipod. OK I probably didn't NEED the laptop case. I have a perfectly good one. But it's brown and I am a black and silver girl. Sorry. Yes I needed the DVR. My DVD player broke. Clothes because, well, I"m a girl I don't need a reason, an IPOD because if you have been reading for awhile, I've been thinking about this for awhile and I got really pissed at the individual who had the NERVE to spike me on ebay for the one I wanted.

Yes. I FINALLY bought an IPOD. I was shocked that I did it, but I used a gift card for that and the DVR ( shockingly there is still money there - go figure).

I have the feeling I will love the IPOD. I have a digital recorder and I LOVE that. I use it for practicing, lessons all kinds of things. Now I can take things off that and transfer them to the IPOD. That's cool. I even have software to edit out the background noise. LOving this. MOre ways to waste time. Ha

So I am starting to try and formulate my program for this recital. I have more rep choices now, but I would love to NOT sing some of it to be honest. Some I like, some I don't, some I am ambivalent about. I wish I had more choices to cut and replace with. None of this stuff is EASY and none is really HARD. Just enough to keep me occupied.

I had a wonderful surprise today too, I got an email from an old friend I hadn't really heard from.

who said there was no such thing as Karma?

Maybe it's a good sign that my recital will go OK.

I hope so.