Laurel Massé

Grateful

O, what a lovely day it was yesterday! Daffodils have made their entrance onto the city stage, and were nodding their lovely heads in the breeze. It was warm enough for me to leave my winter coat at home, and it was the first day since last October that my boots stayed in the closet, and my green shoes came out to play. The sun was shining, yet its touch was gentle. People at the bus stop and subway station were lighthearted, and the 1 was running. I think it may have been a little early to turn the air conditioning on in the train, and I did have a little shiver and an inner whinge about that. But for heaven's sake! I was high in the air on an elevated train track, and then plunged deep into the earth, zipping along, on wheels, through a tunnel dug in the beginning of the last century, and did anything from any disaster movie I have ever watched happen to me? No. All was calm, all was bright, all hail to the Transit Authority.

I have become quite fond of the 1 train since I moved to the Bronx. It's a subway for most of its Manhattan run (except for the 125th Street stop), but, running north, it pokes its head out of the tunnel at Dyckman Street (roughly 200th St.), and continues on elevated tracks, racketing across the river at 222nd or thereabouts. From the Broadway Bridge, there's a big-sky view looking west to the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Hudson River, and the Palisades. That bridge is "the Grandma Bridge" to me. For many years, my grandparents had an apartment in Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan. When my family drove in from upstate to visit them, the crossing of that bridge was the exciting almost-there point in our journey. Now it is part of my prayer geography, a place where I always think of Elsie and Leonard, and of how blessed I was to have them so very long. I was 50 when they died within a few months of each other (as is so often the way). Age did not wither them till they were in their 90s (nor custom stale their infinite stubbornness), and they are still very present to me.

Once across the river, the train continues deep into the Bronx all the way up to 242nd Street and the gorgeous Van Cortlandt Park where there is still a stable. O wonderful, wonderful, most excellent park! I still have my well-worn paddock boots. Someday soon...

                                                                   A fellow redhead

 

The other Dr. John (Sir Doctor John)

 
Still ailing. Perhaps Sir John Gielgud's voice will have healing powers. Here are the first two of eight pieces of a lovely program about his career. I trust you can carry on without me to view the other six.

 

 

 

Time for tears

In Shakespeare's Richard II, the title character speaks a meditation on time. Richard has the time to do it - his crown has been seized by Bolingbroke (who becomes Henry the IV), and he languishes in prison. As he muses on his situation, strains of music waft into his cell. He pauses to listen; the musician stumbles in the rhythm. Richard then says this:

Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is                                                                                     When time is broke and no proportion kept!

My students have heard me say this, though never so elegantly. "Time" as a musical term means rhythm. Mammals are beings of rhythm. Rhythms - heartbeat, breath, and so many more - keep us alive. Perhaps it is because of this that many humans are more sensitive to rhythm, to the breaking of rhythm, than to nuances of pitch.

Time as the passage of moments can also be broken. We think we'll have time that we don't - to be with a loved one, to make peace, to learn to dance, to go to Ireland, to take one more run with the old dog. Storms delay the trip. Illness breaks the rhythm. And death, the great rearranger of our arrangements, begins to show up more frequently. The losses come more quickly. Yesterday, an ordinary day, I started to see them piling up.

So last night I cried in a friend's arms. My friend hadn't done or said anything to deserve a drenching. I simply had started to count time, and became afraid, for a little while, that there would not be enough time to sing as well as I really could, or act, or write, or love as much as I really can, to even begin to use up all the love in my heart. How I felt in that moment is in Richard's speech too:

So it is in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string,
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me...

Since I don't want that to be the melody of my story, I have a lot to do. Thank God for friends who help me navigate through storms, who help get my sails raised again.

You know who you are.

 

My calling birds

I have read that "calling birds" is a corruption of "colly birds", which is another name for blackbirds, a family that includes many of my favorite birds. Or that "calling birds" refers to any songbird, which is what I am. Either way, I have a special affection for this verse. But "calling birds" also means to me, after years of living in the Adirondacks, the birds you listen to for the news of the day. Is there an owl nearby? A cat? Those very vocal blackbirds will let you know.

Now in the city, while I am drinking my morning-strong Yorkshire Gold tea, I read (if you know me, this is no surprise whatsoever). I am reasonably consistent in my morning reading, and it occured to me this morning - how timely! - that I have morning companions who chat with me through various media, "calling birds" showing me what is going on in the world, what it might mean, and who we can be, at both our shocking worst and our shining best.

The first is my prayer book and Bible. The prayer book is falling apart, not so much from use (alas) as from travel, and from being poorly-bound in the first place. And from being stuffed full of dried leaves and found feathers (including peacock down from the Cathedral birds) and little prayer cards. The Bible is a beautiful, leather-bound Oxford's annotated NRSV that I bought for myself a couple of years ago. There are a lot of different translations of scripture lying around this apartment; this is my favorite most of the time. Of course the cover, when the book arrived, was the wrong color. I had ordered classic black, and this one is burgundy red. Befits my past, I guess, but how did the booksellers know? Did they have a little chat with Santa?

Then it's on to the New York Times (Global Edition) which I read online. Often the same things are happening in the news and in the scripture readings. I don't mean events, necessarily, but rather the human response to events.

When I have time, I check out my favorite blogs. My friend Paul Overton's beautiful blog, Every Day is Awesome is one I visit regularly. There is a new post almost every day. That alone is inspiring to me, and what he has to say is honest, thoughtful, and spiced with his wacky humor. I also treasure Léna's Lit.Life and Paula's House of Toast. Both blogs are rich and beautiful.

Finally,  the fourth "calling bird" lately has been William Shakespeare, with whom I am enjoying quite a torrid romance at the moment. Will visits at all hours and gets me drunk on words and passion. What stuns me about his work is the depth to which he explored the human heart, and the sheer extravagance of the talent that allowed him to write of it. There are days, especially now, as I am about to be painting bookshelves, when I think I could get by easily and merrily with no books other than his works, the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer. No, wait. It would be good to have that great big Oxford English Dictionary, too. And The Wind in the Willows, because I love the chapter where Ratty sees Pan. And Colette's La Lanterne Bleue. And To Say Nothing of the Dog. And, oh dear, there's always an "and"!

What books would you absolutely have to have? And who are your calling birds?

A feast of words

This morning's NY Times referred to Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross' 1936 Thanksgiving Proclamation (the holiday has to be proclaimed every year by the Federal government and the states).  A Shakespeare scholar, he taught at Yale for 36 years before entering politics. He knew how to write beautifully and with clarity.

(Not so easy to, like, find if someone what with these days. Also.)

Here is the full address: 

A Connecticut Thanksgiving Proclamation
State of Connecticut
By His Excellency WILBUR L. CROSS, Governor

Proclamation

Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of

Public Thanksgiving

for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth -- for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives -- and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man's faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; -- that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.

Given under my hand and seal of the State at the Capitol, in Hartford, this twelfth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirty six and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and sixty-first.

Wilbur L. Cross

You can read more about Governor Cross here.

How "To be or not to be" came to be. Maybe.

I'm resting up after last night's performance. Enjoy!

Lear, hear, here and (almost) now

"Cordelia's Farewell" by Edwin Austin Abbey, 1898.

 

The day of the reading of Shakespeare's King Lear that I have written about a few times in the past weeks is finally here. Tonight!

Hearing Lear has been happening since the first rehearsal. No, longer, actually, because I figured out that I understand the archaic words and the verse more easily if I hear it. I live alone; the only person here to read to me is me, but Me reads, Me listens, and then we chat over tea. 

At the rehearsals I am so inspired by the other actors - their intensity and good humor, their commitment to getting it right with very little rehearsal time.  They compare notes during the breaks, and tell stories about "the first time I did Shakespeare". If ever I say that, I will be talking about this week. How astounding to have this first real encounter with Shakespeare now as an adult, with enough of my life already lived that I can recognize us in what I am reading. Us, yet bigger, wilder, and more frighteningly beautiful than we usually know we are. Not pretty. Not sentimental. Not little. Huge.

The Project Rushmore Theatre Company's reading of King Lear will be starting tonight at 7 PM sharp
at The Ellington Room, Manhattan Plaza, 400 W. 43rd St. (in Manhattan's theater district). At the entrance, sign in for the Ellington Room, come to the 2nd floor and follow the sign.

Project Rushmore does not set a ticket price, but is happy to accept whatever donation you wish to contribute as you leave.

Whether you can be there or no, please light a candle or raise a glass right around 7 and wish me well.

 

 

Sing the words = speak the speech

I am in love with words.

It's not a new passion, of course. I always have been devoted to words, and to the idea that we breathe truth into being with words. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light - yup,  that makes perfect sense to me. I usually fall in love with a song lyric-first. The words hold the story and the music carries it in a way that opens the door in the singer and the listener's hearts. My favorite singers are those in whose mouths the words of the lyrics are true. Everything I know of singing is in service to one simple thing: telling the story. Because, if clearly told, it is our story, and I am just the one who happens to be telling it this time. Intonation, phrasing, diction all serve the story. Improvisation, too. In a musical theater piece, the characters talk until their emotion flames up till it's just too big for speech. Then they burst into song. In opera the emotions are all over the top, so the singing never stops ("opera" is Italian for "work"). In jazz, we scat when we want to go beyond what is in the words and music as written, and the best improvisors keep telling the story even beyond words.

What I have been discovering in acting - illuminated by the skills of the wonderful actors I am working with - is that the words themselves have a melody, subtle, but strong. Though I've often told shy, first-time singers that singing is just "long saying", I forgot to tell myself that saying is like singing on (sometimes) shorter notes and (most of the time) in the range of speech.

But honest! I was not prepared for Shakespeare, nor had I imagined that any words short of those of a man I love telling me, "I have always loved you" could be so profoundly thrilling. In Shakespeare's plays, even the villains can speak (not like today, eh?). Perhaps I am coming late to this banquet, but as my friend RIchie used to say, "I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night."

Here's a clip from King Lear, chosen because it's Lear, and because of the way Olivier spins/sings the word "terrors" (at about 8:10).

 

Mr. Lear arrives for an extended visit, or, the difficult guest

It's really fall now. Days are crisp and bright, nights begin to be cold. This is perhaps my favorite time of year - it's great to be outdoors, and equally wonderful to be curled up around a book. Book in hand now, and for the next month-and-change, is Shakespeare's King Lear. I have become a member of a theater company called Project Rushmore Theatre that has been offering two play readings a month off and on for about two years now. Lear is coming up in November, and I am part of the cast. 

When I learned that I would be in the play, I read it several times over, and will be doing that again. And again. The more familiar it becomes, and the more I think about the characters and what they do to each other, the more I know I have seen this before. There is precious little that happens in families that's not in the play. Though the language is heightened and the events extreme, I recognize the people.

I know a brother and sister whose parents both lived to be 100. The grieving "children" at the funeral were in their mid-70s. How much frustration developed in children whose parents never let them rule their own lives, and who were still being told how to live when they were grandparents themselves?

I know another family in which the parents dangled their power - which was money, the "grand" inheritance - over the heads of their children. In this family, you were in or out of favor without much warning. The pecking order was constantly shifting. One day you were the golden one, the next day disinherited because you didn't make the right "I love you so much that..." speech, or run the right errands, or dig up the septic tank when told to (I kid you not!). The parents' divisive tactics wreaked havoc, and the children were constantly at each others' throats. The irony there was that it was actually not all that much money, especially when divided by five, as it eventually was. Those parents are long gone now, but their toxic legacy is the emotional equivalent of a Superfund site, the "gift" that keeps on giving.

I know a woman who has just learned that the faint discordant feeling she's had since first grade that her mother didn't like her was accurate. I know a man whose father left  - not died, just up and left - when he was a little boy, and that little boy grew up unfathered and essentially unacknowledged. I know someone whose parent comes to visit, completely takes over the house, and might as well be arriving with a hundred knights, for all the turmoil and upset that ensues.

It's all true. And it's all in the play.

There are so many short clips on YouTube, of different magnificent Lears - Sir Laurence Olivier, Ian Holm, Paul Scofield, to name just a few- that I couldn't choose just one to post. There is even a famous Russian version directed by Grigori Kozintsev. All marvelous. But to see the whole play, go here, to the PBS site. You will see Sir Ian McKellan as Lear, directd by Trevor Nunn, filmed in 2008.