Some Little Guys Stick With You


Farewell to the cutest dog ever...and a reminder of many years past.

I got a sad email last night, from an old, old friend. And it took me back many years to my former life as an aspiring performer in NYC.

I moved there at the ages of 22 after graduating from college and getting my union card doing apprentice work at a Summer Stock Theatre in Michigan.

When I moved there I had some idol worship going of a young performer I had worked with the previous summer, Marin Mazzie. I used her recommendations for a headshot photographer, for a voice teacher, and for a vocal coach.

I have no idea if things are still so segmented, but the thing to do if you were a singer back then was have one person who worked with you on technique (the teacher) and one person who worked with you on material and interpretation (the coach.)

And because I eventually started doing a cabaret act, my coach Richard also became my musical director. Richard was obviously a terrific pianist, but he had a brilliant emotional ear. What do I mean by that? He would have me really work out the entire sub-text for every song I sang. Who was I singing to? Where? Why? What did every line really mean to me personally.

Well, sometimes it seemed a lot like homework, and sometimes I didn't come up with my specific underlying subtext for every, single lyric. When we would sing the song, without even looking at me, eyes focused on the music he was playing, he could tell when I had been a slacker.

We'd finish the song and turn around and ask what I had come up with for a certain line. And without fail the answer would be "nothing."

You get to feel close to someone when you're making music with them, and when they're hearing all the deep emotional sub-text you're mining to interpret that music.

When I left New York, after 4 years, I cried when I said 'goodbye' to one person: Richard, my coach.

Richard had the best pet ever, a little dachshund named Max (perfect right?) Max would run to greet you every week, and hang out in the room while you sang, and just generally be as charming as a dog could be. So much so that I often still think that if I add a dog to my animal kingdom, it will be a dachshund (and yes, I was even planning to steal the name Max.)

I haven't seen Max (or Richard) in over 14 years! So much time has passed I can't quite remember Max's dachshund coloring. I think he was a brown dachshund like this:




Although, there's an off-chance he was a bi-colored one like this:



It's really his personality I recall, more than his coloring. He was the perfect, friendly companion to a guy who had lots and lots of people coming in and out of his apartment every day.

Max lived to be almost 17, which is damn old for a dog, and apparently several years past the average life span of dachshunds. But I can tell you from experience...a long-lived pet still never lives long enough. As my cat, Samantha, hits the mid-way mark between 17 and 18, I hope she is some miracle double-decade cat.

So, farewell to Max. I know Richard is going to miss him a lot.

Posted: Sun - November 28, 2004 at 09:41 AM       EmailFeedback

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