What are you?

It's strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

Gustav Mahler
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There's the story of the man who became a nuclear physicist because when he was in high school he found, by accident, in an encyclopedia, the scientific explanation of rainbows.

There's the story of the South American Indian who found a guitar sitting alongside a remote trail, picked it up and discovered that he could play it and went on to become a well known musician.

And there's the story of the business man who developed a problem with his throat and, on the doctor's suggestion, took up singing to exercise it. Within a few years he sold his business and became a full time opera singer, something he never thought he would be.

Here's my story.

It was 1958. I was 19 years old. I had just left college prematurely because I didn't want to be a well rounded liberal arts student, or a well rounded anything else. It was the era of the Beatniks. My sister once said she thought I was probably one of the originals. That was probably so.

I knew I wanted to do something interesting with my life, but I couldn't decide what that was. There were several options, specialties of activity, roads into the unknown, sturdy brass hinges to hear scraping as they opened the door I would step through.

I enjoyed writing. I had written a short story and some poetry which a lot of people seemed to like. I had been a music student, learning violin, percussion and composition, and I had played drums for a jazz trio in the area. I had done some work for the local police department and was encouraged by the captain to go to the police academy and have a career in law enforcement. I had worked for a French chef, a wonderful man I admired, who wanted to teach me all about cooking and how to be a chef and manage a kitchen. I had done some acting in school and for local theatre groups and I enjoyed it. While in school I took a geology course from an inspiring teacher and became very interested in geology, an interest I still have. I had done some drawing, painting and design and wanted to get formal training in art. I really didn't know which direction I was going in, but I also didn't think about it much.

One afternoon I went to visit my sister. She was having a dinner party later that day. I was early and tired from something, so I lay down on her living room couch to take a nap. In the middle of the floor was her vacuum cleaner waiting for me to wake from my nap so she could vacuum the floor. She was in her kitchen preparing the dinner. The radio was on to a classical music station.

When I began to awaken the radio was playing the Symphony #2 by Sibelius, As it neared the end I, in my half sleep, was seeing a vision. It seemed that screens were passing in front of my face, each one replacing the one before it, back and forth, in and out they went. And each one had an image that represented one of the options of my life. There was a screen the showed me as a drummer, another that showed me as a painter, another as a chef, another as a cop, another as a composer, another as an actor, another as a poet, another as a scientist and so on. These screens just kept passing in front of my mind's eye as I listened to the finale of the Symphony which is a combination of march and hymn. When it was over I got up and stepped quickly over the vacuum cleaner and when I did one of those screens popped back into my head and on it was written "You're an actor." I knew right then it was true.

Everything else became a hobby or a special interest. From that very moment I became an actor and I never looked back.

Dana Bate
The True Vagabond
(Never give up.)
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SUMMER QUESTION

Summer is moving along, people.

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

17 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Curtain Up Anyhow

If you want to do something, you do it anyway, and handle the obstacles as they come.

Benny Goodman
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Here are 2 true show biz stories.

If you described show business to an actuary or a systems engineer they would tell you that it doesn't work, it can't work, don't try it. And yet, in spite if the impossibilities, the curtains go up and the shows go on.

I was dong a long running show in New York. The cast was three men and one woman. The actress had a physical problem that sometimes incapacitated her, so she needed to have an understudy. I helped to audition the understudy and had only one rehearsal with her. She attended every performance but never had to play the role.

Until one evening well into the run I was sitting in the dressing room and outside the door I saw her looking at the call board which is where the actors sign in and check for any notes they might need. I asked her if she was playing that night. She turned with a smile and said "Yup."

She was Miss Cool. I had two very difficult scenes with her. She played them beautifully, as if she had been doing them all along, without the slightest slip up. I wanted her to take over the role. But she eventually got a real acting job and left the show. I heard that she went to California and was working out there. She was quickly replaced by another understudy who was fine.

Actors usually take a role and play it until the show closes. In the case of a long running Broadway show they may play for a year or so and then be replaced by a fresh face. If they work on a film their job is done when their last scene is shot.

With opera singers it's very different in many ways. A singer usually develops a catalogue of roles that fit his vocal range and then sings those roles at various opera houses, wherever he can.

There was an opening night of a new production of a popular opera at a New York City opera company. When the conductor arrived he was informed that the tenor was ill and would not be able to sing that night. So the conductor went to the understudy to discuss some parts of the opera, interpretations, tempo, dynamics and so forth. Just before the performance began he was told the original tenor was feeling better and would sing after all. So he went to talk with that tenor about the dynamics and interpretations, and so forth.

When the opera was about to begin the conductor went to the pit, led the orchestra through the rather long overture and when the curtain went up the tenor who stepped on the stage was a total stranger, a third man It was someone the conductor didn't know and had never met. He didn't even know the man's name. And that was the tenor who sang the opening night.

The show can't go on. Show business doesn't work, it won't work, it can't work. But it does.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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SUMMER QUESTION

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

10 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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