Of course they’d be doing Shostakovich.


This was my first rehearsal with A Far Cry, and I hung back, on purpose.  Just sat and listened through the first run through.  When they started working I got up and started shooting, but I stayed behind the orchestra.  I will need to get in front of them at some point, which is going to be a challenge in that room.  But trust is not automatic, it’s earned, and it takes time.  I have the great luxury, finally,  of time. I’ll wait.

Also being behind them put me somehow in them, which is what I’m trying to get at.  I shot through the players arms, read the scores over the necks of their instruments.  This is not the vantage point of the seats in the hall.  

I spent most of the time on the long end of my favorite zoom, the 24 to 105.  After a while I switched to the telephoto.  It seemed like the further into those instruments I could get, the closer I got to something, and not just literally.

Of course Shostakovich because I have a long history of Russian nerdism.  My high school term papers were on Dostoyevsky.  My college application essays detailed my life goals of becoming the CBS foreign correspondent to Moscow.  My 19 year old cat is named Masha after a character in a Chekov play.

I’ve been watching this orchestra for a while, waiting for right opportunity.  Of course the concert we finally connect on, would end with Shostakovich.  

Of course.

I have been spending the afternoon with Charpentier, editing last November’s performance of ‘La Descente d’Orphee aux Enfers’ by the Boston Early Music Festival. 

The first embarrassing thing about me editing opera is that I sing along while I do it.  I can’t help it.  This is one of the many reasons I don’t have an assistant currently.

The second thing is that my french is so elementary (literally, I learned in elementary school) that instead of asking the sovereign king of the underworld to spare Euridice, I keep asking him what time it is.

Maybe time to quit for the day.

I’ve taken more visitors for a walk around Walden than probably any place else.  Writers, hikers, sisters :)  everyone finds something to like about.  But I rarely get the chance to walk it with the one person who knows why it’s my favorite walk.

Annie was my BFF in highschool.  Somewhere in my basement I have a stack of letters that she wrote me every summer. Different color pens for every line of the address, envelopes decorated with Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics and stickers.   She has an almost identical stack from me somewhere in her attic, I’m sure.  It was such a kick to drive her by 17 pantry road to see the mailbox all those letters passed through.

This pond that had so much romance and promise to me at 16.  I spent those few perfect summer days on this beach, building sand castles with my cousins and dreaming, the evenings writing long letters about everything, looking out at that mailbox.  

So funny to be here on this crisp fall day at 40, walking it together, finding we are just where we wanted to be, the 2 of us. 

You’re a doctor!  I work with cameras in theatres and get paid for it!  Are we amazing!

October is my favorite month for so so so many reasons.  The color, the chill, the little kids in plaid skirts and blue pants running down the sidewalks.   The baseball season ends and the opera season begins.  Hooray.

I have always wanted to shoot for Opera Boston, it’s a little company with a big mission that rehearses and performs right in my own backyard.  I am still heartbroken I didn’t see Madame Whitesnake last year… it sold out before I got a ticket.  :(

So, especially special to sit in on a rehearsal for this one, never mind how much fun and Much Ado!  an all time favorite.  Great people, great work.

Finally!  Opera!  Boston!