I am not one of nature's party animals, but if I had not attended the Ig Nobel cast party tonight I would not have had such a lovely interaction with two-time winner David Hu, mostly about earwax and eyelashes. Also I got an enthusiastic recommendation for Górecki's Symphony No. 3 from also-winner Tomasz Paterek, which is why I am now carrying a cocktail napkin with a famous twentieth-century composer's name scrawled on it. Also I got a ride home from one of the other singers and I think we may have tentative plans to hang out once we recover from having been part of an opera. People kept asking us all night if we were part of a regular company that maybe just performed scientific operas; we kept repeating that we had never met any of our fellow cast (including each other) before August and had had a grand total of five rehearsals (and each missed two!) before showtime. I said it came together very quickly, very chaotically, and very successfully, an assessment I stand by. A+, would impersonate weird personality quirks again. Or whatever the next year brings.
(I am extremely fond of this screencap from the webcast, brought to my attention by Thomas Michel who played the Director of the Museum of Bad Habits. The dead-eyed stare of the captive audience really makes it for me. Also the fact that I am being upstaged by the ass-scratcher. My bad habit, of course, was constantly talking.)
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Before the party, I met![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants and genarti at Athan's and discussed the surprising dearth of Ruritanian democracies; before the not-coffee break, I had my first rehearsal of the season with A Besere Velt, already preparing for our recording session this winter; before that I was asleep and that is probably the state I should attempt to return to. I have concluded my commitments to this very busy week, none of which I regret. I feel rather breathless and more than slightly burnt out and this has been a summer of sustained performance adrenaline, which kept the rest of me functioning even when my body was not necessarily cooperating, and that is not the most affordable fuel. I am having some difficulty thinking about the fact that I have received multiple compliments on my performance in the mini-opera, including from colleagues of spatch's, Ig Nobel laureates, and an actual Nobel laureate whom I passed on the stairs on my way out of the theater on Thursday night. (It never occurs to me that I am recognizable to people who are strangers to me. At least three people at tonight's party said the hair was unmistakable. I genuinely thought the glasses would be more of a confounding factor. Dammit, Warren Quimby.) But I also feel significantly more like myself than I have in some time and that is valuable to me.
(I am extremely fond of this screencap from the webcast, brought to my attention by Thomas Michel who played the Director of the Museum of Bad Habits. The dead-eyed stare of the captive audience really makes it for me. Also the fact that I am being upstaged by the ass-scratcher. My bad habit, of course, was constantly talking.)
Before the party, I met
skygiants and genarti at Athan's and discussed the surprising dearth of Ruritanian democracies; before the not-coffee break, I had my first rehearsal of the season with A Besere Velt, already preparing for our recording session this winter; before that I was asleep and that is probably the state I should attempt to return to. I have concluded my commitments to this very busy week, none of which I regret. I feel rather breathless and more than slightly burnt out and this has been a summer of sustained performance adrenaline, which kept the rest of me functioning even when my body was not necessarily cooperating, and that is not the most affordable fuel. I am having some difficulty thinking about the fact that I have received multiple compliments on my performance in the mini-opera, including from colleagues of spatch's, Ig Nobel laureates, and an actual Nobel laureate whom I passed on the stairs on my way out of the theater on Thursday night. (It never occurs to me that I am recognizable to people who are strangers to me. At least three people at tonight's party said the hair was unmistakable. I genuinely thought the glasses would be more of a confounding factor. Dammit, Warren Quimby.) But I also feel significantly more like myself than I have in some time and that is valuable to me.
