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epitome of incomprehensibility
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What do you call the feeling when you're annoyed that someone pushed you to do something you wouldn't have thought of doing yourself, but now that she's convinced you to do that thing you realize it's actually a good thing to do and your pride makes you not want to retract your agreement, but you're still a little resentful because this new thing will take up time?
...If there IS just one word for that, it isn't "alto."
But this is what happened: alto. Alto-ness. Specifically, last night at choir practice, during the break, the chorister who's also in the theatre group with me (aaaand who convinced me to join that) came up to me with a question: "Are you good at sight reading? and learning new parts?"
Me, a little proud that she'd assume that, "Somewhat. It depends."
She said something about doing an alto part because of "voice balance." At first, I wasn't sure what she was getting at. I thought that this was some new thing that she wanted me to do, now that the Gilbert and Sullivan plays were over, so I was curious and inclined to have a positive face.
(That's right, "inclined to have a positive face." It made sense in my head.)
Buuut what she wanted was for us both to offer to sing alto instead of soprano in Puccini's Gloria Mass, which takes up the entire first half of the concert. The reason is that two altos had to leave, one for a sad reason: her husband passed away last week (he was fighting cancer and they knew his life was in danger, but he wasn't expected to die so suddenly).
So before I quite knew what was happening (she has a Chinese accent and I don't always understand her right away), she was steering me towards the piano and asking the conductor. The conductor, maybe already apprised of this, tested Sophia's (the other person's) voice range. She played phrases on the piano and asked Sophia to sing them.
While they were thus engaged, I *did* understand the situation fully and had a choice. I could decline or go ahead. I went ahead, but with this escape hatch in the back of my mind: "Maybe Gohar (the director) won't think my low notes are loud enough."
And maybe they weren't as loud as Sophia's (who was at my side, telling me to project more - okay, at THAT point I had a right to be annoyed at her...you're not really going_around_being_supportive if you're being distracting). But Gohar approved me to sing the alto Puccini part along with Sophia - "but can you stay on Soprano 2 for the rest of the concert? We need you there."
Needed. Wanted. But a little pissed (annoyed, not drunk).
See, I still remembered parts of the soprano section of Puccini's Gloria mass from when we'd sung it seven years ago. And I was quite confident that I'd improved the clarity of my high notes.
In fact, I was feeling a bit bored when we were going over that piece before break, thinking, "These pages are easy...why is she spending so long on this?"
So - laser_guided_karma? Situational_irony? Whatever. Now I have to learn the alto part.
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