Feeling: wistful
Listening to: Frou Frou - Flicks
Reading/Watching: Rent

I arrived home from Thanksgiving with the family (which is a whole separate story... I may or may not go into the big Discussion with my mother), and got my mail before taking our bags into the house.

One was a very large envelope, so heavy it required three stamps. Inside was an invitation to join the Super Duper Smart Music People Consortium (names have been changed to protect the innocent), a two-week program taking place in eastern Europe, where students who are Cool Enough will tour the birthplaces and concert halls of classical music superstars from days of yore, and learn valuable musical knowledge from symphony players and European professors (who are way better than American ones, because of the accents).

It was all expenses included, except for one teensy tiny meal per day, for the whopping bargain price of $4500.

Even as I was opening the letter and reading down the invitation, which spent far too much time complimenting my academic success to be a truly competitive group, I knew I wouldn't be able to go. For starters, they'd gotten my name from the National Dean's List, which is the grown-up version of Who's Who, a vanity publishing that features people on two inches of a page and then suckers them into spending sixty dollars for the hardcover volume of the Smrtist Collidge Students in Amirca, featuring their precious little selves. Money was clearly the aim of the letter, not any recognition of my achievements.

Plus, as my mom was wont to say when I was younger, "We're not the type of family that sends their kids to Europe." I hated hearing it, but over time, I realized it was true. We do not tour France in June. We pay bills on time, and pay for college tuition, and don't run into debt when a medical emergency crops up. As a result of my parents' practicality, I had never been outside the continental US, but I had also never worn clothes with holes in them (until I was on my own and buying clothes fell by the wayside).

I was saving my own money to take a trip of my own "someday," but in the manner of most frivolous savings, it went toward practical things, like rent and food this summer when I was broke as hell and scrabbling jobless with three voice students a week.

And so, as I read the list of cities the Music Consortium folks would be visiting, like Vienna, Salzburg, Prague... my eyes got a little misty. I wanted to go in a way that made my heart hurt. I wanted it. I just knew it was something I would not have; not like that.

All things aside, even if somehow mon coeur and I could save up the money to send me, no way would I take his money and jet off to Europe for two weeks, leaving him alone in Texas not one month after our wedding. If I ever visit Europe, it will be with my love at my side. I could never go without him; it would be utterly unfair.

So I walked over to where he was playing Eve online, and turned him to face me. "Promise me we'll go to Europe someday, and visit all the concert halls and musicians' birthplaces and big museums. Promise me," I said, on my knees in front of his chair.

And, since we have recently determined that his hands must be magnetically attracted to my sides, he put his arms around me and said, "We will. I promise."

Then I sighed, and threw all the Europe information in the trash, packed back up in its so-gigantic-it-needed-three-stamps envelope.

On our way back from Hometown, we stopped in at a self-described Christian coffeehouse, because I'd read an e-mail that said Lady Jane Grey would be playing there. It was our first time seeing them live, even though I own their CD and have all their songs on mp3. They were fantastic, just as solid in person as they are on a recording, if not better. It's a young married couple, the husband plays guitar and sings harmony, the wife sings lead, then turns to her cello and makes it sing like a third member of the band.

But during a break, I overheard the wife talking with some fans about working a grueling shift yesterday at the bookstore, while the big sales and crazy shoppers were all out.

It made me realize that the people who are living their art as well as they can are also holding down mundane day-jobs to pay bills. It's not just people who aren't good enough to make a solid living off their music- it's everyone. It's that the gigs aren't always out there, and everyone needs a back-up plan. Makes me feel better about substitute teaching, or waitressing, or working a cash register to make rent. As long as I'm doing something with my voice, I'll be fine. I'll still have forward motion.

I don't need a fancy trip to Europe to be a musician. I just need a voice, a heart, and a pair of feet to carry me around my mundane day job.

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