//Field Notes

Somewhere in the process of rehearsing an opera, there’s an inevitable day, which everyone dreads: memory check, out deadline for memorization. In a professional atmosphere, ideally the singers would learn the music, work on it with an opera coach (an expert in language and opera styles), and come to the first rehearsal almost completely memorized! Fortunately, since I’m hired at an educational institution, they provide the coachings (meaning I save $100 per coaching!), and we memorize as we go. When we have (supposedly) sufficiently rehearsed one of the acts, we’ll have a memory check and sing the act without our music in front of us for the first time. This is upwards of my 10th memory check with Temple Opera over the years, and I have yet to see one without a train wreck in at least one of the scenes! It becomes obvious who’s invested time and who’s relentless in the practice rooms, the ink from the score bleeding on their face from sleeping on their score. I’ve seem blood and tears shed at these rehearsal (okay, less tears than blood).

So how do I go about prepping for this? Especially in another language? That’s a really good question. I’m not too sure myself. Naturally, English opera is easier to memorize, I’ve has the good fortune of learning French when I was younger, and after this summer, I’m set on Italian, but lo and behold, here I am singing a German opera. I have a basic knowledge of German vocabulary (having translated the opera the first day I received my score), but it doesn’t help with my rapid-fire German lines! Zu Hülfe! In fact, I’ll spend hours writing and rewriting my German lines before I even begin to learn the music. You know Bart Simpson writing and rewriting the same sentence on the chalkboard? That’s me. An opera singing Bart Simpson. Without the skateboard but certainly with the slingshot (keeps rehearsals interesting with some pranks!).

This last week, it’s been great being mildly unemployed because I’ve gotten to sit on my roof with my score, shirt off, taking in the sun, coffee in hand, sunglasses raging against the light, skyscrapers a half mile away, and all I want to write is how glorious this Indian summer feels on my skin, the great purpose I feel living in Philadelphia, about God giving me all I need (and more!), but instead my pen moves furiously…

O wär ich eine Maus, wie wollt ich mich verstekken, wär ich so klein wie Schnecken, so kröch ich in mein Haus!
O wär ich eine Maus, wie wollt ich mich verstekken, wär ich so klein wie Schnecken, so kröch ich in mein Haus!
O wär ich eine Maus, wie wollt ich mich verstekken, wär ich so klein wie Schnecken, so kröch ich in mein Haus!
O wär ich eine Maus, wie wollt ich mich verstekken, wär ich so klein wie Schnecken, so kröch ich in mein Haus!

I left Philadelphia on May 16, searching for a place to travel, ignorant to what the next corner held, and now, on September 10, I’ve boarded my last bus taking me from the last leg of my trip, a week long bachelor party touring Virginia and the marriage of one of my best friends, back to Philadelphia.

For nearly four months I’ve lived as a vagabond, working as an opera singer for one month and a farmhand for two throughout Italy, forging unexpected deep, spiritual friendships with a group in Napoli, tearing myself away first from my friends and then my summer-long travel partner, Chris Bowman, to spend a week with my family before heading to Philadelphia for a week and then Virginia for ten days.

When people ask me about my experience in passing, I stare perplexed, not in a I-can’t-find-the-words stare, but a my-mind-is-overloading-with-descriptors-and-you-might-want-to-get-out-while-you-can stare. If they stay around to hear my tale, it always goes the same: I begin with singing and rush straight through to describing our home in Napoli at the beginning of August. That’s when I inevitably pause.

I pause because I’d rather remember their faces in that moment than try to describe them. I pause in respect to my friendship with Bowman, a man before whom the whole world should pause. I pause because I know, secretly, that I’ve forgotten a detail of the story, which means that next time, I’ll forget a piece more.

Then I’ll realize that I’ve been remembering all the while the poor person awkwardly waits to ask the question, “So did you get to see anything?”

It’s symbolic that the summer ended with Jonny’s wedding, a beginning. This summer ended my 20 years of schooling—the beginning of my career in opera. This summer ended the first quarter of my life, and ushered in the second. My greatest adventures have just begun.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”
—Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

What a shock I had.  I had walked to the nearest cafe in the airport for my morning cappuccino, and what I saw was a circus.  I had been used to seeing Italians standing at the bar, waiting for the barista to wait on them, bringing their drinks in some semblance of order, but mostly as they would finish preparing them.  Instead of the familiar scene I had become accustomed to watch, the mostly-American-customers insisted on waiting in a line, and like any American coffee shop, they were frustrated when someone (me) refused to wait and merely approached the bar to order.  One woman refused to allow the barista to pour milk into her Americano, and grabbed the frothing tin to guide the hands of the Italian barista, even after the worker had resorted to English, “Ma’am, the container is HOT!” 

I finished my drink and found Bowman sitting near the window of the gate where I had left him.  Our standby tickets didn’t guarantee a seat on the plane—only in the event of an undersold plane would we find a seat, and in our case, we needed two.  To make the situation more stressful, they only call the standby passengers after the plane is loaded, 10 minutes before takeoff.  Bowman and I were unsure of how to feel.  Were we actually flying home?  Was I to spend the next 4 days with my family or sitting in an airport waiting for the attendants to call my name?  Should I say appreciate these last few minutes with Bowman if we weren’t sitting next to each other on the plane?  How do I say goodbye to one of my very best friends, Bowman, after spending virtually every minute together since June 27?  Was I actually leaving Italy?  Should I take a few minutes and reflect on my time?

Unlike Bowman, I couldn’t sit still.  I needed to move, to forget that this was all chance, to hope that I could pet my dog, Patience, and sleep in my own bed.  To hope that after a whole summer of picking up and moving, I would find my home in St. Louis exactly how I left it.  I only had about 7 hours of sleep for the past two days.  My emotions were more than a little volatile.

They called all the standby passengers to the desk at once, and luckily I was standing close to beat the rush.  The crowd bustled around, handing tickets over my shoulder to the woman behind the desk, asking for availability, helplessly shifting their weight.  

I was thinking about riding in the car with Davide, Manuella and Bowman, blaring music with windows down in Napoli.  

The woman interrupted my thoughts with mentioning the names, “Bowman” and “Somers”.  It looked good.  At last, Bowman and I would fly home together.  Again, she broke my concentration, “Only one seat exists. Do you accept a split?”

I didn’t know how to respond.  Suddenly the noises of the crowd around me quieted, and I could only see her face.  Split?  No way will I spli—then I heard Bowman’s voice from behind, “Yes, Somers will fly.”  Bowman?  Was that you?  I began tearing up in the midst of the chaos.  Bowman can’t stay in Rome!  How would he get home?  This isn’t how it’s supposed to end!  We were supposed to get home safely together.  I need a minute.  Why shouldn’t I be the one to stay?  How could I say goodbye to Bowman after the loss of leaving our friends in Naples?

But there was a mistake.  No seat existed on that flight, and so neither of us flew home.  Instead, we waited for the next flight to New York.   We had seats next to each other.  We talked about our summer, starting with milking sheep and digging ditches in Tuscany to bike riding in Florence, our Roman hostel, meeting our friends for the first time in Napoli, Cinque Terre, the highs and lows of a summer spent traveling without a place to rest your head.  Before we knew it, we began our descent back into our lives, and we found ourselves in New York, waiting for our connecting flights to separate us.

We ate our last dinner, as we normally did, watching our last sunset, this time from the windows of JFK.  Bowman loaded his flight, and I was alone for the first time since June 27.  I remembered tandem jumps into the Bay of Naples with Bowman, Manuella, Matteo and Davide.  I felt shockingly unbearable weight of solitude in the midst of the American crowds.  Then, all of a sudden, for the first time of the summer.  I needed to see my family.

They explained that they oversold my flight, and I was in no way flying to St. Louis.  I was to spend the night in the airport, waiting alone for the next flight in the morning. I began to call my parents when I heard my name called, filling the last seat.  Soon, I turned a corner in the St. Louis airport and began running to my family at the end of the hallway.

It always starts without my noticing.  I’ll tell a story of my trip to someone who just asked, and while recount the tale, something seems a bit off, there’s a tiny hole, like a black speck on a painting.  I brush over it, and then I realize after the conversation ended that I left out some small detail, the name of the restaurant or the street or that we sat on the curb to eat a snack or that we laughed until the sun set.  

In a few months, I’ll loose small bits of time in the midst of my story.  I’ll think: what did we do on that afternoon?  Never mind, it doesn’t matter… I continue talking with my friend.  …But I can’t help but think that it was important…  Or  I will describe it as a group of friends rather than me, Manuela, Linda, Davide, Lemuel, Matteo, Francesco and Bowman because I have forgotten the faces of those who came with us.

Soon, whole weeks become blurs.  I know I’ll have seen major sights, but the events surrounding will slip away.  The impressions will remain, which only means that I’ll recall just enough to know that I shouldn’t allowed myself to forget.

It’s the curse of time: always marching forward, pushing us onward, and the farther we travel from the past, the more we loose connection with the events that we hoped would never loose. 

- - -

We didn’t stay up all night.  We decided that three hours of sleep was better than no sleep, especially because it was the Italians’ only day off before they left for another camp, so Bowman and I slept in the Glorious Hut one last time.  Olimpia left the sheets on the beds for us.  We woke up late, and instead of leaving 45 minutes early for the train, we left 15 minutes late, rushing through the empty streets at 3:45 am.  I am unable to make conversation before 8 am, even if Davide, Lemuel and Francesco sacrificed their only full night of sleep to accompany us.  I wanted to talk so that I didn’t have to think about leaving them, but my mind was slow and my eyes were heavy.  I wanted so badly to tell them that I appreciated their company, I couldn’t have imagined that I could’ve made such close friends in such a short time, that this was the first time that I felt at home all summer, but I couldn’t dig out the words.  So we rode in silence, and I hoped that it was understood.

By the time we reached the train station, we had ten minutes to buy our tickets and get on the 4:30 to Rome.  We hugged, and said our goodbyes.  How were they able to form the sentences when I couldn’t?  I uttered a few words, deeply frustrated at my inability to communicate how much I had grown to love them and our friends, how I was amazed at their love for people and their genuine pleasure at showing hospitality.  

Alone in the station, the machine wouldn’t take our credit cards.  Bowman and I tried three machines, four different cards.  And then, rounding the corner, we see Francesco, Lemuel and Davide coming to us with cash in hand after having watched our trouble from outside the window.  My flip flop broke.  Davide offered me his red, white and blue shoes.

Then, with few minutes to spare, we rushed on the standing-room-only train to speed us to Rome.