4.27.02
I dig boys with glasses.
And I adore tenors.
I met several tenors with glasses this weekend.
I also made the acquaintance of a few basses, bespectacled or non, and took home a half-dozen phone numbers and email addresses.
I love making new friends.
It was All-Virginia Chorus weekend, and for some reason, the entire state congregated in Bristol. For those of you who don’t know where that is, it’s that little podunk city on the border between Virginia and Tennessee. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, I spent the weekend in Tennessee. Woo boy.
So what if my enthusiasm for the event wasn’t aptly conveyed in that last sentence? Regardless of textual sarcasm, I had an amazing time. That’s not to say I had fun, per se, but I met some awesome people, made incredible music, and still made it home in time to work three hours tonight
But work was mundane, so I’ll talk
about the trip for a bit. Then, mom
will yell at me to go upstairs and go to sleep, since it’s past
I’ve never really understood the concept of ‘emotional rollercoaster’. Supposedly I would, since I’m female, but I don’t. I still don’t fully comprehend it, but I know a little more now what full-blown PMS must be like. Or maybe not.
Let me try this again. I’ve been on the verge of a) tears b) helpless laughter c) biting someone’s nose off all weekend. Something about the idea that, for three days, a group of over three hundred juniors and seniors are shoved into one high school to sing, and to get to know each other and then go back to their homes…well, it’s cool. The way I try to explain it (and fall horribly short, especially in text), is as follows:
Y’know that feeling you get when you and someone else say the exact same thing at the exact same time? And you sorta look at each other and grin, like hey, that’s really cool. For that split second, you’re thinking totally together. And that’s an interesting experience, as a human, to be having. A human experience. Especially with someone you just met. So take that feeling, and multiply it by…say…two hundred and fifty. And then put it to music.
It doesn’t do the experience justice. Singing in a group is enthralling enough; you and however many others are thinking the exact same way, in the exact same pattern, and the sound is [usually] impressive. This morning before our concert, I was standing around with a group of people I hadn’t known before yesterday and may never see again, and we were just harmonizing. I don’t even remember the songs…I didn’t know most of them, but I picked them up and hummed a few notes. The feeling of singing, especially a cappella, and especially on the fly like that, is one of the few things I consistently take pleasure in. I simply love it.
So who are these people I keep referring to? Do I keep referring to them? Not really.
Right. I’m not voicing myself as well as I should be. I’m anxious to get this entire weekend down on the screen before I’m hauled upstairs to bed. So.
The people who I will invariably mention at some point in this entry are: Travis, Josh [A], John, Josh [B], Tobin, Russell, Gina, and/or Brice. If they ever get around to reading this, they get to see their name in print.
Morgan made a fool of herself yesterday during break…a trio of guys was standing behind us, and somewhere along the line she got confused and responded to something I’d said that she thought I’d said to them but was in fact not relevant to their conversation, and then we all had a good laugh [at her]. I love Mo, but she’s a bit…flaky.
Anyway, one of them queried me about my ‘Got Chalk’ shirt, and for some reason he kept talking to me. That was Josh [A], who happened to be sitting a few seats down from me. That night at dinner, I encountered most everyone else, except for Gina and Russell, who sat next to and two seats down from me, respectively. Tobin was filming the event, and I decided to tag along with their group and watch them do funny things. I was not disappointed: Travis tackled Brice, who had previously racked himself on a handrail. Travis rolled down the hallway, and I shimmied up a brick off-width, though not for the cameras. It was still fun, and I think I surprised some people when I hailed from fifteen feet off the ground.
Why is it that friendships are made so quickly when you have little time together, but those of us who have years’ worth of time to build the friendships let them slip by? I’ve never understood how I could feel so close to people I only knew for a day and a half, and still not know the passions of the girl who’s been in my English class since seventh grade.
But I get philosophical. None of these meetings has totally altered my life and my way of looking at it. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t meet some fascinating, funny, energetic people who I would have loved to have had another year or so with. As it was, we had a ‘social event’ last night that ended up being a shocking amount of fun. Relative to rehearsal, it was the best thing all weekend. Relative to sleep, it sucked. But I hung out with my new acquaintances and enjoyed myself far more than I would have had I done homework, as I’d originally planned. Josh [A] taught me…er…something ‘new’, while Josh [B] tried (in vain) to teach me how to do the Samba. I never enjoyed Cotillion, and I was too sleepy to follow steps. Regardless, watching Travis dance gracefully with his stony-faced director was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. In fact, Travis in general was an all-around hilarious guy. They all were. And the strange thing is, I miss them more than I did anyone that was here while I was gone. And I keep coming back to the fact that I’ll never see them again.
Shit.
Or maybe I will. Some of ‘em are still juniors; we’ll see each other at All-State next year, right? Or Honors choir. (Here’s hoping.) And Stafford County (from whence most of them hail) is no more than an hour’s drive from here. I may be taking a road trip this summer, insofar as an hour drive can be considered a ‘road trip.’ And there’s always email.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that I currently hate my real friends in favor of those I met while on a chorus trip. Tenors are altogether the sexiest singers, and guys with glasses doubly so. But the best part was that everyone was nice, everyone was interested in who you were, where you were from, and how long you’d driven to get there. And no matter what else we did for fun, we all loved to sing. We all had common ground in being able to strike up a random tune in the cafeteria, or to be able to discuss pieces we’d done and harmonic disasters we’d participated in. It was, altogether, one of the most amazing and rewarding things I’ve ever done…rewarding both in human companionship, learning experiences, and the loss of that which strikes fear into the hearts of men: my voice.
(And all of this was without touching on my roommates, the directors, the food, Ms. P, the drive, or my theories on glasses and sexiness. Well, maybe it touched on the latter. However, not nearly enough.)
There’ll always be more.