Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

And the scale sounded so pure to me. Like in the end, if you had to be stranded on a desert island, you wouldn’t take Traviata or Bohème , you’d take one scale. Because it has everything in it. I hope I don’t have to be whacked every time just to learn one crummy, measly, huge lesson.

Thursday, May 2 — Singing words!

Saturday — He asked me today if I knew the difference between sentiment and emotion.

Monday — Today he said, “Your voice is a beautiful face. Which you manipulate with the coarseness of a circus clown.” My first compliment from the Kaiser.

Thursday, May 9 — The Kaiser has set up an audition for me with Mr Gatti-Casazza, il numero uno of the Metropolitan Opera! November 12. He is going to let me sing an aria! Aria? What’s that? The Kaiser said if I’m lucky Mr G-C will put me in the Met chorus next season. And I finally got up the guts to say I’d rather go back to New Waterford and have ten babies than tote notes in the Met chorus behind some Franklin stove of a superannuated diva. No, Diary — I must be honest. I said, “Sir, I am not chorus material.” And he said, “That is the correct answer, Miss Piper.”

Saturday — “Listen to the piano, you’re not listening, Miss Pipah.” I’m sick of the piano. It’s time the piano started listening to the voice.

Monday — I asked the accompanist, perfectly politely, how long she had been playing piano and she raised one eyebrow and said, “I’ve always played.” Oh, allow me to prostrate myself before thee, oh sphinx of the keyboard!

Tuesday — Miss Lacroix is in league with the Kaiser. She can do no wrong. She plays like an automaton and I’m supposed to follow her. I told the Kaiser I might as well go down to the Henry Ford plant and sing to the rhythm of the assembly line. I said exactly that and he just shrugged a bit. Maybe he’s mellowing. Maybe I’m wearing him down a little, or maybe — oh horrors — he likes me. She still never looks at me much less says good morning, who does she think she is? Where did he dig her up? I thought coloured people were supposed to have rhythm.

Friday — She has a first name: Rose. If you could meet her you’d know how unlikely that is. And what’s more, she can actually play the piano.

I came early today. I saw the Kaiser chatting with His Most Terrible Majesty Signor Gatti-Casazza out front and I slipped by and up the stairs. That’s when I heard the most sublime, the most beautiful music. I thought it was Chopin at first, it was that romantic and thoughtful, but I knew it wasn’t quite that, then I thought Debussy, it was dreamy enough but there was too much space in between some notes and not enough between others and time changes that slipped by before you could pinpoint them and sudden catches of achingly sweet melody that would just end like a bridge in mid air or turn into something else, and though there were many melodies, you could never hum the whole thing, nor could you figure out how they could all belong in the same piece and yet somehow they do, and you have no idea how or when it should end. In fact it doesn’t end, it stops. Some modern composer I guess.

Anyway it was her playing! The sourpuss accompanist. She didn’t see me. Someone should do something about her clothes. She dresses in pink, with puffed sleeves, pleated skirts and a hemline one inch above the ankle. Looks like she just came out of church around twenty years ago. Hand-me-downs maybe, from some rich battleaxe in the Temperance League. Anyhow, when she stopped playing I said, “That was nice, who wrote it?” And she just glared at me. If looks could kill. Just then the Kaiser came in, so our delightful conversation was cut short. He said his usual “Let’s start with C Major, Miss Lacroix,” and you’d never know she was a musician. But I know.

Wednesday — Miss Lacroix and I have a game we play. It’s called Kathleen Arrives before the Kaiser and Listens to Miss Lacroix Play Piano Who Pretends Not to Know Miss Piper Is There. Why are the only people I’ve met in this city either senile, sadistic or eccentric?

Thurs. — After listening to Miss Lacroix play in the mornings before class I feel like a total impostor with no musicianship. (She’d love to know that.) I have figured out one of her secrets. She is the composer of the beautiful strange music she plays. If she even “composes” it — I think she just makes it up as she goes along because her pieces always come to an end the moment before I hear the street door open downstairs, which means she has seen the Kaiser through the window.

Saturday — This morning I got there even earlier and broke the Kaiser’s rules. I sang whatever I darn well pleased. I sang Tosca! I felt like a criminal or a nymphomaniac. And when Miss Lacroix arrived I was dying to see the look on her face when she discovered she’d been beaten at her own game, but I didn’t want to acknowledge her presence any more than she does mine. She left and I could have killed her except I suspect she just went out into the hall to listen, not wanting to give me the satisfaction of an audience.

Friday, May 31 — Got her! This morning I came to the end of “Let the Bright Seraphim,” then I got up silently and crept to the door and there was Rose, sitting on a chair tilted against the wall with her eyes closed. Her profile is imposing. I wish I could draw it. She is arrogant even with her eyes closed. Especially with her eyes closed. She has a tall round forehead and a high straight nose that flares out at the base of the nostrils, and her lips sit against each other like dark pillows. Almost purple. The only way my lips could remotely look like that would be if I puckered up for a kiss, but she doesn’t look like she’s expecting anyone to kiss her. Her eyes go up slightly at the outside corners almost as if she were Oriental. She has high cheekbones and a dimple in her chin which is entirely wasted on her, dimples being accessories to girlish charm. She reminds me of the pictures of African women on P.T. Barnum posters except she hasn’t got the rings around her neck. And she’s not wearing a colourful turban, she has her hair pasted to her head in two pigtails with little ribbons that look utterly perverse on her. Not to mention her Pollyanna dress with the ruffles. Doesn’t she have a mother? Or a mirror? I noticed all this in the three seconds before she opened her eyes and looked at me. She didn’t say a word, just got up and went into the studio and started playing. SCALES. Then she spoke, and I should have slugged her. She said without even looking at me, “You embellish too much. That’s a thing of the past.” Have I mentioned she’s five foot ten?

2:30 am — The Harlem Rhythm Hounds!! But the sun is coming up, good-night.

Sat. — Can you wail like that saxophone, can you walk like that bass guitar, can you talk like the trumpet and beat like the drum? Then what are you doing so far from home, little girl?

Mon, 3 — David is too embarrassed to dance but there are lots of fellas willing to dance with me and I feel perfectly safe doing so because, after all, I have an escort! He was scandalized when I danced with a coloured man named Nico but he got over it as well he should, I fail to see why colour should cause such a commotion. I wonder if there’s anything like this going on back in the Pier or Fourteen Yard? I was too much of a priss then to find out. Tomorrow night David’s taking me to Ziegfield’s Follies. Maybe I’ll introduce him to Giles.

tues — I want to be a show girl, I’m going to take tap-dancing lessons, forget the opera. I think this is an enchanted city where you hear with different ears and see with different eyes. I feel like I’ve been living in a graveyard till now. Reading dead books, listening to dead music, singing dead songs about dying. Beautiful, yes, but dead, like Snow White in her glass coffin — except the music I’ve been singing doesn’t move when you kiss it. Or at least, if it could, I haven’t found how to make it.