You Follow Opera?

The Muse. It is like when a friend comes to visit for a while. When the guest arrives everything else stops and all attention is paid to the visitor.  One does things the friend wants to do, even if you were not planning on that activity. That is the way we entertain the Muse.
Right now it is the Muse of writing which has come to visit. She has completely taken over and there has been no activity in my life for the last three days but writing.  I can't tell if it is the project or the process that has me hypnotized because the result is the same, an obsession to keep writing. Even when I have hit a wall in the story twist of my project, I still have to write. So, this blog becomes the vamp until I can get clear on how to proceed with the other writing.

Some time ago I was at a dinner party. I love dinner parties. Parties where friends get together for a meal, conversation, stories and laughter. This party was ebb and flow of several conversations going on at once when anyone could jump in and add commentary to the various subjects being discussed.
I remember telling a story about the Horn in Santa Monica.  It is a club where I worked when I moved to LA.  It was mainly a singers room, but they had two comics a night. I was one of them for a while.  The story involved the struggle to follow a singer on stage who had just finished a set of depressing, heart wrenching music leaving the audience suicidal.  And now the comedy of... Jay Johnson.  Brutal, but you learn quickly.
Seemingly out of the blue the man sitting next to me said, "Have you seen the latest version of Pelleas and Melisande?" When I said no, he launched into a review of a production he saw. He mentioned that the director had also done a production of the Marriage of Figaro, and asked if I liked his work, I was stumped.  He might as well have been speaking foreign language. Then he started naming people I found out later were up and coming Opera stars.  This man was passionate about his Opera and continued to pepper questions at me designed to solicit my knowledge or interest in Opera. Finally the hostess heard him say to me, "I thought you said a minute ago you followed Opera?" I briefly tried to recall the conversations up to that point but did not remember ever saying that I knew or even liked Opera. The hostess jumped into our conversation and in one sentence recognized the problem and source of the confusion.  She said,
"CB, Jay did not say he followed Opera.  He said at the Horn he had to 'Follow Opera.. SINGERS'."
As you were,
Jay