Emchap's Shit from the Internet 05/8/19 🍠
I spent last night at the Walt Disney Symphony Hall rehearsing for my part of this bananas piece of contemporary composing with 249 of my nearest and dearest (we get up to our full force of 1000 next time). It was fun—I'm finally at the stage where I know the faces of most of the people in my chorus, which is great, and I've finally found the slightly sullen shit-talkers, which is even better—but very odd in the way of any event of that size.
The piece is composed of many groups, and at least for our performance, the clusters have been sourced from all over. No one at my level of things had met the other groups beforehand (we knew they weren't all choruses), so I tried to suss it out. One group seemed to be a nursing home, several others were clearly choruses, one seemed like maybe a church, but I couldn't figure out what the group next to us was. I had thought they were a school group, but there were several adult-adults in there and half the kids seemed non-disruptively non-interested in a way that didn't seem like it was an extracurricular.
I finally asked the dude next to me, who seemed like he was max 20, and he said that they were a cluster of several group homes—transitional housing out of jail. He asked if I lived with the women in my chorus, and I said no, and tried to explain that we're a community protest chorus, but he did not hear me, did not understand my mumble-whisper, or did not fully believe my deeply uncool extracurricular life.
Unlike the other groups, which were all super opt-in, there were incredibly varying levels of engagement among the mostly-youths. Several of the folks very clearly wanted to keep it together (another dude, who also seemed to be very young, kept telling his seatmates to act like adults; someone in the background was singing intentionally off-key; several people were playing candy crush).
It was only halfway through the piece that I realized that the printouts that the group had didn't have the sheet music for the sung portions of the piece. The kid who's been trying to get the other folks to shut up finally muttered "they have the notes" at no one in particular when he noticed our printouts. And I thought about how mad I would have been if I'd showed up to rehearsal having very clearly not been given all the info I needed.
The conductors are—I'm sure—good conductors in whatever capacity that they normally conduct. (Well, most of them; one of the subconductors forgot to queue my group SEVERAL times until our somewhat timid section leader decided to say fuck it and start.) But at no point did they stop to teach the group the tune for the two sung pieces; at no point did they explain how to be queued-in if you're being conducted. (Which I'm sure I only know because of being in band and orchestra as a kid, much like I only know how to read sheet music because of piano lessons.) The group next to me was out of tune and off-beat, as a result. I felt bad, and annoyed at the leaders of the group; the piece is intentionally not written for professionals and they should have gone over things.
Instead, the very highly-strung subconductor yelled at people for going to the bathroom during first part of rehearsal, despite not having said we'd have a break during the 3 hour rehearsal and not establishing ground rules. She had the sort of anger that only comes from not having any real power but wanting to feel like you are important, which is a set of emotions that I Know Well but don't like seeing in anyone else, because theory of mind is a nightmare.
It reminded me of the worst sort of college professors, who are good at what they perceive to be their job (research) and bad at what everyone else considers to be their job (teaching). These remain some of my least favorite kinds of people, though it is wildly ungenerous and my own industry has plenty of the same (we are rife with individual contributors who became managers with the opposite of training).
Despite all of that, it was a fun rehearsal. I got to scream a bunch, which was cathartic, and there was choreography introduced to us by a French man who was a clone of my old improv teacher and his silent hypebeast assistant, who was named Spencer and who I am now married to in my head. I look forward to returning.
Shit to read
I watched Someone Great this weekend (a movie generated by AI to appeal to me), and I completely loved it, but I thought one of the more interesting implications is that the protagonist's ex-boyfriend does not seem to have nearly the social network she does when processing her breakup. One of the few times you see him post-breakup, he's kind of on his own (he's with a friend, but it seems like a casual one). I thought about this when reading this article about how men need more and better friends. (Not just more women friends. Most dudes I know with mostly women friends are just outsourcing emotional labor. This is my hot take for the newsletter.)
This article about dads blew up my Twitter circle this week. I am super curious if the article applies beyond affluent NYC circles, but I suspect it does, and it makes me very sad about the chances of my liking anyone enough to marry them and definitely enough to have kids.
Two poems that made me cry this week! Ballrooms in the Titanic and Edna St. Vincent Milay making me sob per ushe (and showing that "writing a letter about your feelings and NOT SENDING IT" has been a Thing since forever). The SVM poem in particular is just the perfect, perfect description of the emotion it touches.
The old #aesthetic is dead, long live the new #aesthetic.
A depressing article about suicidal farmers.
Imagine opening a world-changing restaurant when you're 24.
I dislike the outdoors but I like Molly; the way she feels about being outside is the way I feel about skulking around theatres.
PLEASE check out this photo essay of people on the LA River, it is so good.
Never give your senior engineers the ability to bypass code review but also this is great.
When I was a child, I bought a 24 pack of Arizona tea iceboxes (expired) for something like $3 at a store called A to Z which my grandparents live near and which is full of just a truly stupendous assortment of shit. I love Arizona. This piece does not, and this piece shares my own sentiments.
How am I the last person on earth to know that Lisa Hanawalt and Adam Conover are dating?
Shit to eat
Elaborately confit some tuna.
Or buy the good kind in oil, whatever.
Cut a baguette into a sandwich length and then in half.
On one half, put mayonaise.
Tuna goes on top.
Then an egg, boiled for 9 minutes and chopped up.
And whatever salty olives you have in your fridge, chopped up and sprinkled on.
Add some basil, and some cucumbers and tomatoes if you have them.
The top piece of bread should be covered with tuna oil as much as possible.
Wrap everything up in tinfoil and stick it in the fridge for lunch the next day.
When lunch comes due, enjoy the best lunch sandwich you will have all week (unless you made multiples).
Shit to listen to
Some faux-Motown goodness about a dude who isn't getting his shit together (as all good songs are). (This is a lie; some good songs are about trains.)
Shit to buy
I want this matisse-ass rug, and this one, and drugs: the rug, and this one for someone who owns an ironic nipple mug, and Stockholm But More.
Time for a fancy cutting board.
And trash can.