My recently quoted friend John sent me a note in response to my lack of real response to a few other notes... and it was full of good questions, and answering it would make a good blog entry. His myspace note:
"I've been trying to imagine how things are where you are. I don't believe you've gone into much detail about the average day-to-day onboard.
What's the performance space like? Live music, or canned? Adequate backstage space? Good dressing rooms? How are the other accommodations? Do you share quarters? Are you living by the boilers? Can a constant view of endless sea drive a man truly mad, as you've suggested? Are the stars closer at night?
Are you behaving yourself?
Stuff like that.
So, write about that stuff.
If you've got the time."
So, well, I have nothing BUT that kind of time… so point by point...
The average day-to-day onboard is frankly quite dull, if not in port. That's another story of, if you're me, trying to really see the place within the confines of what might only be five or six hours. Some others, regardless of where we are, go to the beach. I like the beach, say in Cozumel - what else is there - but if you're only in, let's say, HONDURAS for one day in your life, come on. You can find sand and water anywhere.
As to our sea days, which have never been this frequent in the past but now slightly outnumber our port days... well, yawn. A wise friend once said to me the that the secret of ship life is avoiding weakness, boredom, and never being surprised when people disappoint you. Trust me, that’s not cynical here. Just realism. Ship life can be a black hole that drags people into the basest forms of human behavior, but if you’re lucky, you find those people you can count on to be honest, simple, and true, and gravitate toward them. I am happy to have a few such friends here, many of them if you count those I’ve made during my entire tenure aboard.
As entertainers (particularly singers) we are somewhere in between a crew member and a guest. We have a life that consists of about 50% of the privileges of a guest and 50% the duties of a crew member. On an ideal sea day, which some are, I'll wake up in time to dress well enough to go upstairs for breakfast, around 9, at the La Veranda restaurant. You see, this is a "luxury" ship and everyone is expected to dress well at all times. You will not see jeans and t-shirts or such things above decks here; the minimum daywear is probably a nice polo and khakis. It's jacket and should-be tie after 6pm on any evening, and there are varying degrees beyond that for formal and informal nights.
So I'm upstairs getting food... I will likely take my breakfast outside to the pool deck and eat a lovely solitary breakfast with a book. Then I'll wander around the ship a little bit, I'll go say hello in the cruise director's office, then maybe visit some friends in the spa, then come downstairs to check my email. So far a rough day, right? After that it's usually a matter of finding some kind of project, something to do until lunch. Right now I'm mixing down board audio from a recent concert, but whatever I'm doing I'll be in my cabin until around one p.m. when someone will call me or vice versa for lunch upstairs. I go to the pool grill and usually wind up sitting with a couple staff members and maybe a guest or two, chat with a couple of chefs I know, and then back... to... doldrums. Once in a great while we have a brush-up for one of the new shows, that's most often about 90 minutes of the day sometime around noon. Around 6:30 I'll have to be dressed for the night and they like us to go around the three main lounges to mingle and be seen during the pre-dinner cocktail hour. This is a lot easier on the world cruise because you get to know most everyone and it's really just going around having drinks with people you enjoy. Usually.
After that, if it's one of our of late too rare show nights, I'll go and play the piano for about 30-45 minutes before our tech run of whatever show. That starts at 8pm, runs til around 8:45. I then will go to my room or to the mess and have some hot tea or something less healthy before I get ready for the show, which is at 9:45. Then, afterward, there is very little to do but either go to bed or go spend time with friends at the crew bar. The crew bar is a horrid place from which no good has ever come, but I continue to visit time and again because it can be a good time. That's a day. Repeat and rinse. Next question:
The performance space: This is the theatre at Christmas, taken from the back of the house. There’s a balcony that wraps around. The capacity is about 700, give or take.
Music live or canned?: Usually canned, but well-canned, we have excellent miking and sound; we do perform with the band for a few of the production shows and always for our own shows.
Adequate backstage space: Yes, for what we need. There is little moving scenery. The focus here is performance, the casting process focuses on finding singers who can credibly sing the classical material to a professional standard but are also capable of singing the pop material without sounding like classical musicians. I’ve never had a perfect cast vocally, there are always compromises, but right now I’m working with a couple of the best I’ve seen or worked with.
Good dressing rooms? Perfect, for the men, a little small for the women. There are four of us, six of them, so we make out a little better even though theirs is a little larger. Our costumes are stored in a storage area one deck below and are transferred up and down to meet the needs of whatever show we’re doing.
Other accommodations: Well, thankfully and mercifully I have recently stumbled into a private cabin. Honestly, I’d never return without it and I should never have taken a contract without it; the cabins are not TOO small but shoving two adult strangers into such a confined living and working situation is not good for anyone. The crew cabins here are roughly the size, some a bit bigger and some smaller, than the lowest-rung guest cabin on a line like Celebrity. The guest cabins here, all of them, are quite posh.
Does the constant sea drive you mad: Honestly, it's about the only thing that keeps you sane. And really, you make an effort to really get a good look at it. It's always there, but never oppressive. When every other aspect of life here gets me down, when the idiocy of things gets to me, I walk out on deck 5 and I look to the sea. Reflections in the waves spark my memory – some happy, some sad. I think of childhood friends, and the dreams we had. We’ll live happily forever, so the story goes… but somehow we missed out on the pot of gold… but we’ll try, the best that we can, to caaaaaaaarry on.
Are the stars closer at night? On a clear moonlit night, with say a half-moon above and no clouds to be seen, the stars light up the sky in a way that beats even the most brilliant night at home. I grew up on a farm, and there was little or no interference by the lights of some hateful city, so it’s beautiful there… but it’s incomparable here. It’s a private joy that not nearly enough people take time to note.
Am I behaving myself? In every important way. The preponderance of cheap and often free alcohol leads to a little overindulgence, but other than that I hold myself to a fairly high standard. Age may not lead to wisdom but it does lead to mistakes, and learning from them has kept me out of “trouble…” mostly. There are days. 
Still forthcoming: More photos, which for some reason will not post reliably from this blasted connection.... RIO, dinners upstairs, and who shot JR. Anyone else with the questions?
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Dateline: Western Africa, or rather just off the coast on St. Helena. Napoleon was exiled here, died here, and I can only guess did that famous dance scene in the movie at a high school here. Africa is home to some of nature's greatest mysteries... like, if you can find it, the predator shown above. Capable of camouflaging itself into almost any environment through the cunning use of t-shirts, this animal lays patiently in wait until an unwary double espresso appears at the coffee shop below. Then, well, it's natural selection.
This is a photo of the Guatemalan boy we nearly adopted, mentioned in an earlier entry. 