Eating the fish

Now that I'm up to the present with my posts, I thought I'll sometimes be more thematic than narrative. This will avoid repetitions of 'today I had quantum, then solids, then stat mech...', and hopefully make this more like a blog and less like a schedule.

So, to eating the fish. I did actually have fish for dinner on Wednesday and yesterday (haddock with mushrooms and creamy spinach), but that's not what this blog is about. I'll give a little background regarding the title.

From time to time I eat out, and when I look at the menu there is often a fish dish. Now the fish dish always looks appealing to me, so in the past I used to order it quite frequently. The problem was, it never lived up to my expectations: I usually found it a bit dry or flavourless. So eventually I decided I should make a rule never to order fish, no matter how tempting I found it, because I was only going to be disappointed.

Now, on coming to a completely new city in a new country, I'm making a conscious effort not to exclude things just because they're outside my comfort zone. I think I've been to more bars in Cambridge/Boston than in Canberra, for example. But the particular example to which I'm referring in this case is singing.

I'm a pianist by training, and when I was younger I always believed myself to have a pretty terrible voice, and I think I was actually correct. I have, however, taken advice given to me long ago: by Mr Waters I think. He said if you think you have an awful singing voice, you should sing as much and as loudly as possible, especially in church, that God will improve your voice so He doesn't have to listen to the terrible singing. In my case, it seems to have worked, and I can hold a bass line pretty well now.

So yesterday evening I decided to audition for the MIT Gilbert and Sullivan company's production of 'The Mikado'. Only on Wednesday did I finally work up the courage to admit I could do this, so I searched the web for suitable audition songs, and found some in the MIT music library. I ended up preparing 'Where is the Life that Late I Led' and 'Luck Be a Lady', although I only sang the former.

'Where...' is actually about as out of character for me as it's possible to be: it comes from 'Kiss Me Kate' (an adaptation of 'Taming of the Shrew') and is Petruchio reminiscing about all the girls ('a multitude of girls') he used to have before he got married, and how things were so much fun there. I thought, though, that it would be fun, and it was a good range for me and was by a composer whose work I've at least heard before.

I went to the audition, and it was terrible. The accompanist was better on sight than I was after an hour and a half with the music (that's all the preparation I did, so I guess it's not surprising the audition wasn't great), and he was actually playing what was written there rather than chords and the melody. For whatever reason - I guess inexperience was the main factor - I found it very difficult to stay with him, and so the song basically collapsed in a heap.

Although I think the range test showed I wasn't as bad as I had seemed (I can sing in tune, at least to major triads, and over a greater range than I had thought), I'm not sure whether I'll be wanted in the chorus. I will keep you posted.

In summary, although I'm really mixing my metaphors here, I did order the fish, and I was disappointed!