23rd & 5th

“I've always entertained myself in line at the store with speculations about people's lives based on their purchases.”

I’ve been tagged by Melissa to participate in the “23rd & 5th” meme, in which you dig back through your archives and discuss the 5th sentence of your 23rd post. An intriguing exercise.

I find in extremely interesting that my sentence has nothing to do with singing! It was written after a grocery shopping trip in Summer 2005, when I was living on my own in a small apartment near Tanglewood. (Read the rest of the post here.) I distinctly remember being conscious of the non-musical nature of this post, of trying my hand at observational writing, not unlike what my friend Chiara does so well, or what I read over at dooce. I enjoy that style of writing, and I think I’m not too bad at it, but I couldn’t imagine always having something insightful and truly unique to write about in an observational blog. So, I focus on my work.

This summer, I did have someone suggest to me that I might write a book someday, something that pulls most of its content from my blog entries. And maybe I will. But that sort of endeavor is so time- and energy-consuming that I don’t see it happening for many years! A good retirement project, maybe. I’ll admit, though, that I am a bit tempted by National Novel Writing Month, in which you have 30 days (November) to write 175 pages (50,000 words). With the idea of aiming for quantity over quality, NaNoWriMo is meant to encourage anyone who’s ever thought about writing a book to stop procrastinating and just do it! If I didn’t have tons of music to be learning and auditions to be scheduling and gigs to be singing, I’d totally do it. Hmmm…. I wonder how many words I’ve written on The Concert…

I’m not going to dissect the meaning of the above sentence; I think it gets explained pretty well in the post. I’ll only add that for as much as I am a performer, I’ve always been a voyeur, studying people and creating a life for them around the little glimpse of them I see in the cafe or the grocery store. I’ll never know if I’m right, of course, but it’s fun! Maybe that habit would come in handy if I did ever decide to write a novel. Again, not going to happen any time soon…

So there you have it! My 23rd & 5th. Let’s see… who’s next? … I think I’ll tag Tomness and The Dilettante Traveler (who doesn’t need NaNoWriMo to write a novel – she’s doing it right now!). You’re it!