...Pieces of a Life

 

I’ve been on a mission lately to clean out and get rid of things, and I have availed myself of various books on tidying and decluttering to aid in my quest to overhaul and simplify my life. 

 

For a while, I have had no issue with doing it, no stumbling blocks to tossing, no hesitative moments. But there was bound to come a point or a category where I would be stopped cold.

 

It’s never what you think it’s going to be. For me, the recent conundrum has been about classical music. 

 

For the first twenty-two or twenty-three years of my life, much of what I did centered on it. But by the time I neared my mid-twenties, I made peace with leaving it behind. It was never my greatest love or my passion, though I liked it well enough. 

 

I had gotten my bachelor’s degree in classical piano performance at Northwestern, had studied opera at Juilliard and sung on the stages of Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls. Whatever I was going to do with it, I had already done. And whatever I had done, never stopped me from writing songs and stoking the fire of that greatest of my loves.

 

It was easy for me to tuck it away. Studying piano was the means to an end of writing and playing my own songs and it was a great way to go. But classical singing, well, that was a huge mistake in the long run, because trying to undo that has been the challenge of all the years since. 

 

But back to the decluttering discussion. 

 

I managed to tuck away all the classical music, both vocal and piano, in a lovely decorative chest underneath my piano. I went through it once, a number of years ago, and got rid of a lot of it. But here it is, years later, and it has remained unopened since, with all the classical music safely stowed inside.

 

Do I really need to keep this?  I pondered.

 

I pulled out the chest with every intention of ridding myself of most of its contents. 

 

I pulled out score after score, and book after book, holding each in my hands. I looked at the handwritten notes on them, some of them dated, some of them with piano fingerings. All of a sudden, I remembered who I was when I sang or played each piece, and though I know I’ll never be her again, I couldn’t help but wonder if getting rid of these pieces of my history, wasn’t also throwing away a piece of who I am now. 

 

I cannot begin to guess how many years it’s been since I sang an aria or played a sonata. I’m not even sure I could do either anymore, frankly, but I do know that the person who did those things still lives inside me, and those achievements weren’t nothing. They took years of work. 

 

So do I pass these physical remnants of my former life on to music students who could use them now, or do I hold onto them myself? And what else am I holding onto that maybe I should release? What pieces of my life are over and done with and ready to be set free? What new aspects of my life would I be making room for if I decided to part with them? Who was I? Who am I? Who will I become?

 

No matter how I envision revisiting the past, even briefly, it is over. These days, my piano is covered with the songs that I write. I’ve run out of time to do anything other than what lights me up and fulfills me. 

 

For the moment, I’ve decided to tidy and/or part with other things that are less angst-ridden. There is no shortage of them. As for Beethoven et al, I will circle back around when I’ve decided if that’s a piece of my life I will truly never revisit. 

 

What are you holding onto from your former self? I would love to know.

 

Until next time, peace and blessings…

 

Ilene

The End of an Era

As I type this, the final Broadway performance of Phantom of the Opera is taking place. 

 

It’s been covered by the news, but for me, I’ve been pouring through story after story on Facebook, by people I know who have been in the production, or were part of the crew, people whose lives were forever changed, who, maybe like me, could never imagine a Broadway without Phantom.

 

My relationship to the show went beyond the musical numbers I ever sang from it. For me, Phantom will always and forever be about merchandise. Yes, you heard me correctly. Merchandise.

 

Phantom ushered in an era where Broadway merch was everything. A t-shirt or sweatshirt with that mask was cool. So were the coasters, key chains, baseball caps, matchstick boxes, coffee mugs that glowed in the dark when filled, window cards, and CD’s.

 

The lines were long, the demand was high, and the cash flowed endlessly. 

 

I used to meet my best friend, Anthony at the Majestic, where he managed the merchandise sales, and eventually, when I decided to sell Broadway merch, too, Phantom was where I trained. 

 

There was no show crazier to work, so if you could handle yourself there, you could work any show. 

 

Eventually, I moved nearby to Crazy for You, and then I floated between theaters at Les Miz, Miss Saigon, and Sunset Boulevard. 

 

Merch people were theater people – actors, singers, dancers, writers, directors, producers – all biding their time, but biding it in theaters, eight shows a week. 

 

For a short but sweet period of time, some of us would meet for a picnic dinner Friday nights during first act, on the floor of the Minskoff. 

 

I thought those days would last forever, but as the mid-nineties approached, I moved to Nashville to pursue my songwriting career. In ’97, the touring company of Phantom came to town and stayed for about a month. So back to the theater I went once again and this time sold merch to people with southern accents and the kinds of questions and comments that inspired us to keep a running journal of them, because they were that funny. 

 

Oh, you think I’m kidding? 

 

Patron 1 to Patron 2: Why do you think he (the phantom) was so ugly?

 

Patron 2: Because his momma didn’t like him none.

 

I kid you not. 

 

By the end of the run, I heard Bill, the bartender say, “Drop the chandelier on the bitch so we can go home already.”

 

It was heaven, I’m telling ya. 

 

When Les Miz, Rent, Kiss Me Kate, and Mamma Mia came to town, I sold merch for them, too. 

 

Ultimately, I liked being in the theater so much, I got a job bartending there for other non-theatrical events, which was hilarious, because there was no training involved as a prerequisite to that job, so unless the ingredients were actually in the name of the drink, I didn’t know how to make it. Jack and Coke, gin and tonic – I was your girl. Otherwise, I was very entertaining, but a terrible bartender. 

 

When I returned to New York, I worked whatever shows needed a fill in person. But eventually, the merchandise heyday that Phantom ushered in, in the late 80’s, started to wane. 

 

I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to why I feel so sad about Phantom’s closing after a 35 year run, and I think it’s that, as long as I could see it there, every night, continuing on, each time I passed the Majestic, that part of my past was somehow still alive, too.

 

In some alternate universe, this group of kids still exists, with our whole lives before us, a sea of endless possibilities, dressed in Broadway show shirts and baseball hats, about to work walkout, when that night’s audience raced to our booths to take home a little bit of the magic they had just experienced.

 

One last time, the orchestra will soar, the final bows will be taken, the curtain will come down and the house lights will come up, and Phantom will be relegated to Broadway history.