A shy reference librarian, and a college student who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, meet in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over. What ensues between the...
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I'm visiting one of the friends I met in chorus. He's a baritone, and part of the college's Conservatory of Music, majoring in conducting and composition. He's also an artist. The walls of his dorm room are covered with pictures he's drawn, and bits of sheet music, as well as the usual posters dorm rooms get decorated in.
He has a single room. It's not much larger than a walk-in butler's pantry, but still, it's a single. Lucky him. He's a senior, and seniors get top priority in the room draw - that, and there are more single dorm rooms available for male students than there are for female students, which seems remarkably unfair.
I keep finding myself gravitating toward him. We can talk for hours about philosophy, about art and music.
We spend a lot of time these days talking about how impossibly harsh our choral director is - he makes us spend several hours a day in special sessions with our respective sections to work on the Bach motet we're studying (Singet dem Herrn, BWV 225, which according to my friend is one of the most difficult-to-perform pieces of Baroque-era choral music in existence) in addition to the two hours every other afternoon that we spend in chorus, and often we practice while being barked at by an irritable terrier of a director for not having memorized our music to his satisfaction. The director obviously loves music, and he possibly even loves teaching music, and we're stretching our voices and learning an astonishing amount of information from him about how to use our throats and lungs, and how to blend well together, and about the composers we study; but none of this matters, because he is a holy terror.
That's what my friend thinks, anyway.
I kind of have a crush on the director. I love the way his face lights up when he's conducting. I haven't mentioned this, though. It doesn't seem quite right to confess to being hot for teacher when we're in the middle of complaining about the teacher in question.
"I don't see why I have to have my part memorized now," my friend says. "The first concert won't be for another month and a half. And I have to finish the rough draft of my opera before the end of this semester if I'm going to stage it for my senior independent study project... Maybe I'll drop out. Chorus is only a quarter of a credit."
"Well, it is kind of easier to nail the counterpoint if you don't have to look down at the notes to remember what you have to sing."
"No, it's not. If anything, it's harder, given that we're still just learning the first movement. It's not like the second and fourth movements, those we got down pat within a week. The first movement is a beast. And unlike you, I can sight-read my music easily. Wait, why are you taking his side?"
