Remember Me

It's almost time to free fall into the end of the year.  Fantastic.

I don't know how many times I use that expression, actually.  We're always free falling into the end of a year, because that's the only way that a year seems to end nowadays.  Choir is basically my life, after all; I don't think there's any other way to really explain it.  It's either the end of the 'Christian year', or it's the end of the calendar year, or it's the end of yet another year singing and time for my anniversary (this one will be my 17th!), or it's the end of the academic year and then everything really is over.  Will I cry this year?  Or will I finally have got over myself?  Will I finally learn that people just... Move on?  Perhaps I need to move on in order to fully understand.  I always say I never want to get stuck here, after all.

I hate Christmas.  No, wait: I really hate what Christmas has become.  No longer is Advent the sober prelude to one of the central points of belief in one of the dominant world religions (or that crazy made up cult, as I like to refer to it when it's all getting a little too serious round here), but is actually now the whole thing!  People put trees up and decorate their houses by mid-November, decorations are up in shops by the end of October!  It's too much, Master.  Worst of all is when you're not "on message", like me: persecuted for not being manically happy every second of every day and I get funny looks for not having my shit together on Christmas shopping and get victimised for not liking mince pies.  I've had it!  Even the Coca Cola truck has already been halfway round the country by now!

Christmas is of course the time of year that choirs reach critical mass, and there's more rehearsals and carol service and actually carols than ought to be strictly legal, people trying to get you to work for free, potentially horrific Secret Santa, and of course, the all important nights out after all the concerts and carols and carol concerts.  My voice is already shattered this year, after taking the extremely professional and effective decision of singing through a head cold... Although I don't really have much choice in the matter on that one.  The real problem is that I'm fast running out of homeopathic remedies (because I am obviously a dirty, dirty hippy), and if I take any more decongestants full of paracetamol I'll either ossify my throat or not be able to stop vomiting, neither of which are particularly inspiring or useful in my dream career as Cathedral Lay Clark and programme note writer - speaking of which THEY'RE DONE and will be up here on Sunday after the concert.  The fact that my voice just basically isn't working at critical strength, especially right now is a major downer on basically everything.  I kind of feel that I'm no good at what I'm supposed to be good at, so what hope do I have for anything else?

I dunno.  It'll be alright in the end, just like it is every year.  This year isn't exactly calm, due to recording the Nine Lessons and Carols on the 23rd, not to mention the usual Concert-9L&C-Midnight Mass-Christmas Day combo that plays out over just under a fortnight round here, and probably everywhere else.  Also on the cards this year is a concert in St. Mawes which ought to raise some much-appreciated funds for the tour to Belgium and northern France this summer.  I mean, it is the 100th anniversary of the Great War after all, so it would be a shame not to go... Actually, I'll probably be neither use nor ornament for most of it.  I spent ten hours sat at this very Kitchen table in June writing the notes for the Summer concert, the first half entirely composed of settings of WWI poetry, and must have cried my eyes out for four of them.  There's just something about having to condense that kind of stuff down without getting kind of sucked in to it - I can get to that place where it's all upset but I can't exactly get myself out again.  I don't remember having to fight for too much with the edit either... Anyway.  I digress.

I guess this is a kind of unwell, grumpy kind of post.  Another thing I seem to be overly aware of is the amount of young couples going round town at the moment - I suppose Christmas is meant to be romantic?  I constantly berate myself for not being able to get a date, and blame myself completely for the string of relationships I've had that start with so much promise... But end so badly.  It's almost as if I betray myself time after time, showing a consistent interest in people who have absolutely no feelings for me at all, and I've kind of moved to a position where I feel I have accept that I will just always be like this, you know, and I'm okay with that... And I am not okay with that.  Oh well.  I actively reject any kind of sympathy, but it's just something I've been thinking about, and if I can get it out here then maybe I can accept it and move on.  I do get angry though, that things just don't work.  

Anyway.  That's probably enough moaning for now.  I'm going to retire to my deliberately very cold room, and see how long it takes for me to freeze solid (update: 9 days and counting), and then hopefully by the time I wake up tomorrow, you never know... I might actually even feel better.