Performing Arts

I'm not sure if this topic is worth ten minutes, but hell, the point of the ten minute writing is to worry less and write more, so I'm going to find out.

I forget sometimes how lucky I am to work in a performing arts building on a college campus. In my building there are four theatres of varying size and purpose, plus a whole ton of rehearsal rooms, classrooms, and all of the other sorts of miscellany that are required to teach and make live, moving art.

Being a theatre person and having worked in this building for [a number about 30% larger than it should be] years, I have become completely accustomed to the various strange things that happen there on a daily basis. You'll find middle-aged professionals who build sets or create props trolling the hallway with, say, a giant rolling cart full of end tables. Or possibly a tree. A costume-shop worker will trot by with a shopping cart filled with 18th century French pants. Ballet dancers on break sit in the hallway and do impossible stretches.

I think the sound, however, is the coolest thing. There is always a herd of music students wandering about with their strangely-shaped instrument cases, muttering in technical jibberish about recessed minor fifths and whatnot. When they're not wandering the halls being geeky, they are sitting in curved rows in a rehearsal room and making ridiculously beautiful music. I have on several occasions walked from one end of the building to the other and heard, in succession, a women's gospel acapella choir rehearsing something unbelievably soulful, a string quartet lilting out the technical perfection of Bach, and a full orchestra (or what sounded like one) practicing some grand symphony complete with melodramatic violins, kettle drums and crashing symbols. (Or cymbals. Sometimes it is fun to leave the incorrectly spelled words.)

This is a good place to work, because there is beauty and weirdness around every corner. I just have to be sure to keep listening, because anything that is always the same becomes quickly taken for granted. Pay. Attention.