I am in Budapest.
The sun is shining and I am having a wonderful time. When I am back in Manchester I will blog some more about this, but I have to go to the hotel now and make myself look fabulous for a cruise along the Danube tonight.
In the meantime I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Vincent Delerm - a song that always puts a smile on my face.
Love and too much Dreher,
Despina xxx
Ugh, as I may have mentioned, tomorrow I have an exam. Sadly, I won’t be going into this one with a wonderful coursework mark to relieve the tension. Somewhere along the way, our group of five (if you can count the woman who was never there) cocked up and so I have only just scraped a pass in this very difficult module. (What I don’t understand is our 0/5 for Originality. However crap it was, it was all our own work!) To pass my exam tomorrow, I will need 38%. But I want to do more than pass, this counts towards my degree. So the pressure’s on.
Tonight I’m thinking of all the Thursday mornings I stayed in bed rather than get into the lecture for 9. The way I found the man’s lecturing style such a turn-off that I decided that I would learn better by teaching myself - but never quite got round to it. All the notes I made and just put somewhere, and subsequently can’t find. It’s not been an easy year for me, I’ve made many bad choices, and my attendance in uni has reflected this. Apart from my language classes, I’ve hardly been attending at all. I just hate it so much sometimes, the world is full of beauty and meaning, and I’m in a stuffy classroom shuffling around on microsoft access, doing nothing useful for anyone. My problem is that I’ve always been quite smart, smart enough to learn something in 24 hours, to turn in a good essay in a week. But this is not the way forward. I’ve done well in my NHS Information and my Italian, and I hope that if the worst happens and I do mess up this exam, they’ll look at my good marks and not my attendance.
We fly to Budapest in about 36 hours time, and I’ve not even begun packing.
So bring it on, Soft Systems Methodology! It looks like my love and I are both in for a long night.
I just hope it’s not too late.
Despina preoccupata x
I have just listened to all 4 Chopin ballades without so much as a sniffle.
I could explain why this is an achievement, but I’ll just say that as you can probably guess, they’re associated with a part of my life that was emotional and important at the time and is now over (thank Christ). And the fact that I can listen to the ballades and not feel the need to get all upset makes me feel very strong inside. What I will say is that whilst Murray Perahia’s playing is silvery and lovely and I like his Bach very much, I like my Chopin with a bit more angst - it can be very powerful stuff.
By the way, I don’t think there were any soup-gasms today. My other half enjoyed it though, and in all seriousness, I do need to begin taking better care of him. We’re going to Budapest in four days, I am so excited, I can’t wait to see new things together and just have time to spend in each other’s company. It’s our One Year Anniversary around that time too, which means an excuse for much sickening coupley behaviour!
Goodnight.
D x
Ohhhh God, someone found me in a google search alongside many promises of various video nasties. The query was "sexy throat".
I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
Depina (insert your own Stella Pornografica nickname here)
I am not at my opera rehearsal, because it occurs to me that I have an exam next week.
HELP!
Oh holy cow.
Hence, I am making lovely onion soup for dinner. It’s ages since I made it, and you see I have all this home-made stock that needs using, and I want to make an effort because my other half is so busy and has been away and…
OK, I’m not fooling you. Right now I would do anything rather than think about these exams.
I just read on my uni internal email that coursework marks are finally available. From these marks I’ll know just what percentage I’ll need in my exams. For instance, in a really scary module I have, I fluked a good coursework mark, which means I only need 15% in my exam to pass the unit. Obviously I want to do far more than just pass, but this is comforting. I have to get down there tomorrow and find out how I did. I am very, very scared - just found out that Tuesday’s exam is not open book, as I had been led to believe by none other than my tutor. If I fail this year I don’t think I’ll have the heart to do it again, I can’t stay in that glorified sixth form college, and I can’t stay a student in Manchester for two more years.
Somehow blogging this has made me face reality. Despina non procrastina più.
But on the plus side, my soup is smelling amazing. The last lot provoked several soup-gasms, but that was with beef stock so we’ll have to see what happens today as I am using chicken stock. I hope there are soup-gasms though, they’re good for you.
I’ll let you know.
Despina x
I had a fun night with my friend Jen and found it hilarious that after so much wine, we were attempting to watch Twelve Monkeys. I can be rather dense and literal sometimes, films can take several sittings before they sink in (Jez pretty much explained El Labarinto del Fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth to me on the way out of the cinema) - add to that half a bottle of Chardonnay and you’ve no chance.
Little Treasure
Yesterday I arrived at the MUGSS slave auction and was told that there was a general meeting beforehand - news to me! But it was a full-blown reports / elections / handraising meeting, the upshot of which is… I am now on the committee. Oh the hilarity. But I’m second treasurer, which basically means I get to watch Charlotte being treasurer and learn from her, vote on general committee things, and pop it all on my CV at the end of it. I’m excited, and also surprised that people approached me to stand for the post, I always thought I came across as a complete ditz. Add this to my committee "work" for City of Manchester Opera and I’m looking pretty pro-active.
In other news, congratulations to my friend Jonathan who has been given Honourary Life Membership of MUGSS. He is an absolute star, providing technological solutions to problems in the shows, doing lots of archiving and photos, running mailing lists, and lots of other things I haven’t mentioned. On a personal note, he has bought me fast-food in rehearsals when I haven’t had time to go to the shop, and during show week was always in the wings for a smile and a cuddle and lot of much-needed spirit lifting. A really supportive and lovely person.
Panties
Didn’t auction my panties in the end, but I won a wonderful prize. I’m going to have my own song written for me - lyrics of my choosing - by a gifted composer who’s in the society and has written whole shows in the past. Like me, he’s into many different styles of music, but unlike me has the opportunities to perform stuff other than classical. I think that working with him will be amazing, and although it’s not humble to say so, I hope he’s looking forward to working with me. It will be so good to have a song that’s mine and no-one else’s. Just got to think about the lyrics now, I think if I just keep reading, one day something will just ring true with me.
3:42 am
There was a hunk in my bed and I was happy. He had been driving since 11 pm but was also happy. The delight of seeing him coming towards me out of the shadows of my sleep can only be likened to a little girl actually seeing Santa on Christmas Eve (but we’ll ignore any scary sexual connotations there).
Mio ragazzo è qui, poi sono felice!
Despina Amorosa x
Today was something of a trip back into my childhood.
Swimming
My dad and I have both recently been advised to take up swimming. I haven’t been for about 4 years, and Dad even longer. I haven’t lived with my parents for nearly a year now, but I’m only a few miles down the road, so we have the opportunity to spend time together, if working or singing doesn’t get in the way. And the fact that I live in my own household and receive no financial support from them means that they respect my independence. But hey, I’m still their baby.
Dad and I ended up in the small swimming baths he first took me to when I was five. I was overly worried about the effect that the water would have on me. Would my eyes go red? Would my hair go blue? Would my skin peel? And once in the water, what then? My nervousness was palpable. But after the girl on the desk had laughed at our age difference, we were allowed in the pool.
And it was great! I had so much fun! I didn’t know I could still swim, so it came as a shock that I was actually making progress through the water with some style to my movement, not just random thrashings of limbs. But the best moment of the afternoon, by far the best, was watching with pride as my dad did two lengths of the pool. I can imagine how he felt when I was little and he used to watch me achieve things. Dad hasn’t swum in years and needs to shift some of the excess weight he’s gained after years of doing a pretty motionless job. I was just sitting at the side, watching him do a length, thinking please, please get to the end and then he got to the end and turned round - I actually cried. So now I am aching but happy, and he is full of a sense of self-achievement, and a bit fitter to boot.
Singing
Then this evening I sang in a service at the church I went to from birth. The first thing that struck me was just how accurately I had remembered every detail of the place. I was singing two pieces during the service, and one at the end. The theme of the service being "Faithfulness" I decided to sing He shall feed his flock / Come unto him from Messiah, a good choice in the end, as the vicar had included the passage in his sermon. I wasn’t sure what to do alongside this, but considering how illness has impacted on my practicing recently, I decided on Vivaldi Domine Deus as it’s been working for me for years. But there are other reasons why I chose these pieces. Having wanted to finish with Bob Chilcott’s Irish Blessing (the most lush blessing out there, set for 4 parts but a good solo too. If you have a choir then sing it! Because it’s wonderful) I couldn’t find the music this morning, and so shoved The Lord bless you and keep you into my bag, thinking that it would do just as well.
The organist had never seen the piece. This amazes me. I think every choir in the land sings The Lord bless you and keep you, it’s just one of those gorgeous, easy pieces. So I had to scrap this idea as it’s in about 25 flats. The Domine Deus is in C and I can get away with singing it slowly, and the Messiah piece is slow, easy (for him), and he’d probably played it before. So I sang these, and was quite happy with how they went. The Messiah was emotional for me, I was thinking of the wonderful friend and organist who taught me the piece when I was 13. He died nearly five years ago and not once have I sung that piece without thinking of him. But the rational side of the brain was also loving exploring the alto range with those deep middle Cs. I ended up finishing on the Pie Jesu from the Fauré Requiem, which was beyond how I was feeling, but easy for the organist to play. My voice momentarily gave and I started doing crescs and dims for effect, and breathing everywhere, to try and make up for my split-second of croak, all the while dreading it coming back. The Pie Jesu is one of the most uplifting, concentrated, and difficult pieces I know and I suppose really I shouldn’t have sung it.
Vocal misbehaviour
During the service, there was unprecedented clapping, and people were complimentary afterwards and I’ve increased people’s knowledge of me locally. But deep down there’s a guilt inside me. As I’ve explained I’ve not seen enough of my teacher recently, with not having anything to work up to. But I’ve been misbehaving in other ways too. Mostly too many smokey nights out, neglecting my general health and well-being, and a lack of general practice and keeping my voice "toned", I suppose you could call it. Last time I lost my voice and my desire to sing, it was because I wasn’t practising even once a week, and the voice just died, the muscle memory disappeared and I had to start again from scratch. The least I could do is a few exercises now and again - when I’m singing best is usually when I’m doing a warm-up every day, even if I’m not stretching so much. Oh, how I envy those people who have the time and facility to sing every day, or just whenever they want to.
I need to stop misbehaving. I’ve been told by assorted people over these last few days "Look after that voice of yours" and I have nodded politely, with my plastic, post-concert smile. But tonight a lady said it to me in such a way that it seemed she was expressing concern for how self-destructive I’m in danger of becoming. The key is to keep singing, to keep going. So on Sunday I’m going to a City of Manchester Opera rehearsal, even though I can’t be in the next few concerts because I’m away. I just need to sing - shame I’m having to push myself though.
But on a happier note - 5 days til Budapest!
Despina dell’Acqua x
