Pick a card, any card

"What are your five?"

Ask this of any opera singer and they'll rattle off a combination of English, French, Italian, German names. It is the audition package. Never are all five heard but any of the five could be heard starting and stopping at any point the panel chooses.

The audition season is like an absurd game of Texas Hold 'Em. In this version, you can choose your hand to select the strongest combination of cards possible but you're never allowed to see the flop. You ante and check, bluff and raise hoping that their cards will complete your hand; praying to win the pot. Sometimes you win! Othertimes you turn the cards over only to discover they were playing Pinochle the entire time. Damn. You've lost time and money but hopefully learned something about yourself and how to play the next round better.

Pinochle or not, I'm working on my Five. "Come Scoglio" from Cosi Fan Tutte is looking like my Ace this season.

Return to the scene of the crime

I'm not a good blogger. I once told a friend of mine, who is a wonderful writer and consistent blogger, that I could never do it well because I would continually edit myself down to an empty page. I'm never going to be the regular poster. I know that about myself. And if there's anything my french stylist, Phillipe, has taught me it's that I must know myself! That, and I should keep volume in the crown whenever I get a cut. So I find myself with things to share. Normally, I'd use Facebook but lately it's outside my digital reach.
So I return to my poor, neglected nub of a blog.

After months away, I shoulder my way thru the door - the log-in still works but the abandoned hinges protest with a groan. Looking around I see my unpublished drafts sitting in an inch of dust. There are no cobwebs or comments, not the faintest of signs of digital life. There isn't even spam. The hermetic seal of a site ignored by the internet has kept it undisturbed, like the lost tomb of an ancient Egyptian.

There's definitely work to do. But for now, there's a place to put things which is all I really need.