Christmas in July

In summer theatre at Oxy, one of the parties we always had was a Christmas in July party. It was fun to do, when the evenings were a beautiful 75 degrees...

It came to mind tonight, as it's warm, and I had dinner with a dear friend of 20 years... and I found a "Christmas in July" XM music station on aol.com. After ten minutes, I heard my favorite version of my second favorite Christmas song:

"Have Yourself a Merry Christmas" by Jermaine Jackson and the Jackson Five. Wow! Shot out of the past. Short of that, I found this video from Ally McBeal -- which is always how I feel, every single Christmas SAVE ONE (my boyfriend at the time actually came up to meet my family).



Funny, I was just telling another friend the Christmas ritual for number of years -- no matter where I was, I would be get home to Newark and my family would try get it together to go to Midnight Mass together. Over the years, it would be hard, because people were coming from different places, grandkids would be sleeping, old people didn't want to stay awake, and other of us didn't want to have to sit and wait an hour to get a seat in the small church.

But back when it was a regular thing, I remember I'd just come from New York, December 1986, after my first six months there working on a TV show. And I was in CRUSH... Big Time. With my boss (who was almost exactly one year older than me):

This guy, when he had long and curly, Adrian Grenier (his alter ego) hair. :)

I just remember that THAT hour before mass was different. We were listening to some Christmas music played by the organist, and I was loving the smell of church incense... but I was also daydreaming of the new life I'd created in Manhattan (I saw my first snow!). The show I was on had just been cancelled so I even had a new job... and I never knew when I'd ever seen David Frankel (or our boss, Norman Steinberg) again... but I was optimistic about life.

And at one point I just turned to my mom and said, "Mom, where do you think I'll be this time next year?"

Without hesitation, she said, "Right here, sitting with me."

At the moment, I was greatly comforted by that thought, but I also remember praying for there to be a SOMEONE ELSE there too... Hey there -- knock, knock, knock.

(No answer. Yet.)

My favorite Christmas song? "Merry Christmas, Darling" by the Carpenters. Of course... of course. :)

"Mama's Mantra"

We had our first assessment this past weekend, after hearing our actors sing and read ... what a joy to hear something you've created out of your head actually manifest and be interpreted through professionals!

The RED Team has three musicals, and all three went up -- happy to say we came in the closest to time (15 minutes), but of course, we didn't have all our songs done either. I unfortunately goofed with our lead, Cain -- I didn't think he was as much a tenor as he was, so I'm just hiking up his music up a third or a fourth. He'd auditioned with "Joanna" from Sweeney Todd (lovely tenor!) but did The Beast from Beauty and the Beast too (strong, strong baritone as well!), so I didn't even pay attention to range. My mistake. Such a gorgeous voice -- I gotta take advantage of it! Take a gander here:

Christopher singing "The Christmas Song"

I love me a man that sings! (Yes, Maureen, I KNOW he's married, that's not the point, the boy's got a voice! :)

===

After the actors left and commented on their roles (same five actors in all three shows), we proceeded with our two-hour/per show assessments. Not such a bad experience for us -- there were a lot of clarity issues re: story, but only for the better, and pretty good about the music and lyrics.

Did I ever mention the title of our show?

"Cain and Abel: The Naked Truth"

We've met about our restructuring, and "Mama's Mantra," the lullaby I tortured myself with earlier, has been cut. :( I teasingly tell our lyricist that that's the LAST TIME I ever write a piece before I get a lyric because it's too easy for them to "disappear"!

But it's true -- it slows the show down (which is comedy DEATH) and doesn't really pay off. Oh well. Hopefully I'll use it again somewhere, sometime.

Hope you like it.

"Mama's Mantra"

December, Christmas Eve

When I was a little very little (2? 3?) my godmother, Tita Sol, told me I used to stand in front of the TV pretending to conduct music, right there along with Mitch Miller. She loved that... she even taught me my first song, "More" -- that standard by Frank Sinatra! No nursery rhymes for me, in any language, I had to have the "real stuff"... Little did I know I would be so involved in music growing up (high school), and so crappy as a conductor in college (the first time around), and then be back to it again later in life. I obviously lost the cojones I had when I was this little girl's age. Oh, where is she now?! (Me, not her.)

I just found out my other godfather, Tito Tony, died last Thursday, so I'm going to San Diego and meeting my family to attend all the... everythings. So, so sad... he will be missed. Christmas this year is already bittersweet.

My first "Simbang Gabi"

I'm at my folks house in the SF Bay Area. After a miserable drive up the 5 north in the middle of the night (let's just say it took longer than I planned) I took oodles of delicious naps yesterday, and yes, watched LOTS OF TV. I was a "heppy gel."

This morning at 5:00 am though, I went with them to attend my first Simbang Gabi ("Church at Night") which is really, well, mass in the morning. It's a Filipino tradition where there's a novena -- nine masses -- every morning nine days before Christmas. And a little "snack" afterwards.

This is the first year my parents' church (and the church of my childhood), St. Edward, put on their first Simbang Gabi. Although I only had an hour and half of sleep (okay, I'm a late night bird, but we all knew that), I'm so glad I went! First of all, I was shocked that half the church was full, mostly with Filipinos, but with a smattering of other nationalities too. And they all looked so festive as well!

Mom said Father Keyes would sing the whole mass, which I have to say I truly loved. My favorite period in Music History was Renaissance/Medieval and I LOVE gregorian chant... I often tell people I learned more in that Music History class than I ever did in 12 years of Saturday CCD (catechism) classes.

During the Eucharistic Prayer, where there is much repetition of the same chant, it was very meditative... and when the chant changed you knew it was for something wonderful being said, or in preparation for a response... I so appreciated it. (You'd think someone who professes to want to compose a Missa Brevis would remember what the actual names of these parts of the mass are... oh dear, I'll have to look it up later.)

I have a feeling I would have loved to hear the mass in Latin.

In any case, I've never heard The Lord's Prayer in Tagalog before: "Ama Namin". Father Keyes says he already knows it after these nine masses -- now I want to learn it too!

But the best part of it for me was during communion when the choir (yes! singing Tagalog!) sang a song that had the same musical structure as the OPM (Original Pilipino Music) have written... kind of a pop/romantic structure, but I'm sure after Father Keyes edict (12/5/05) that "the purpose of Music in Liturgy is to bear the word of God" it is truly an appropriate song for the mass.

Whatever it was, it made me cry. Here I am, 35 years after first stepping foot in St. Edward, weeping because the two things I hated so much in my life -- church and being Filipino -- had finally been joined to make me feel so very... rich.

Happy too, I guess. It made me proud that this little Filipino community (okay, in Newark it has become huge, but it wasn't always like that!) made a new tradition this year that brought them back to their past and celebrated their culture! That's so unusual, as we usually like to ignore it try to be as American as possible... but the tide is at last turning.

I was so proud to be in the lineage of a great tradition. It really was overwhelming. And I did feel sad that I had no children to pass it on to... last night when I was telling my mom about babysitting Kate, she did say, "It's such a shame you don' t have children. You are so good with them."

For once, I didn't feel like she was being critical... just expressing a feeling. And I could respond in kind: "It is, Mom. But maybe I'm supposed to be with many people's kids and share myself in other ways."

That felt good to say that. There was no sting in those feelings at all, and we really connected. I truly felt heard and seen.