The Sound Of Music

It was a concert, classical music, Sunday afternoon, students. There isn’t much to say about it. I walked over there, I listened, I went home, that’s it.

The temperature was around 5 degrees, the sun was shining, there was no wind, I was wearing a parka, and the world was a good place to be.

The ensemble is called Les Petits Violons. I’d only heard them once before, that was about 6 years ago.

“The hills are alive,” sang the Maria character, played by Mary Martin and by Julie Andrews in the Broadway and film versions of the famous musical, respectively, “with the sound of music.” I don’t know what kind of music one hears in the hills, but, unless we are auditioning new audio equipment, the sound of music isn’t what we usually focus on. What we pay attention to is the melody, the words, if there are words, the quality of the performance, the mix if it’s a recording, the emotional temperature.

The first time, though, that I heard this group play… Well they started with Mozart, a string orchestra arrangement of one of his quartets, and when that first note hit, the world changed.

That’s heavy, I know. This is not a world class ensemble, they are not famous, they don’t, as far as I know, record - not commercially anyway. They are students, “composé des membres les plus avancés de l'École” according to their website; some look to be as young as 14, most are older.

But what I’m saying is this. The sound they made was unearthly. The music was beautiful. They played Mozart, they played, if I remember correctly, Kreisler, and they played Britten. But it wasn’t the music itself that mesmerized me; it was the sound of it, a live string orchestra playing the world’s great music in a room optimally designed for acoustics. I can’t describe it.

So I finally made my way back there, this past Sunday, and it happened all over again. This time I was ready for it, so those first notes didn’t take me by surprise. Ha, I said, do your best.

And the music did its best, indeed. I was transported. You close your eyes, you’re not there, there is nothing but the sound, the notes, it’s everywhere around you, you’re not touching the ground.

The entire affair lasted an hour. They played Mozart, Kreisler, Elgar, Telemann. The last movement of the Telemann was entirely pizzicato, and I could not describe it without lapsing into purple prose. Words fail me.

And so I left there a bit after 17:00 and walked out into the still beautiful air, back into the world, which was dark now, this being the first day of standard time, back to the normal sounds of traffic and people talking and The Rolling Stones playing in my ears. But the world was different from how it had been an hour before.

They play again on December 12…

Moments

And I ain’t gonna let this big world get me down
I’m gonna learn to keep a hold of my head
and keep my feet on the ground.

From Moments by Ray Davies

This past week I availed myself of a rare opportunity to fall flat on my face.

I like writing, and I’m proud of what I write. I leave it to others to decide whether it’s any good, but I read it back to myself and it feels right. And if it doesn’t feel right I go back and fix it until it does, sometimes quite long after I originally wrote it.

So I had what I thought was a good opportunity to share some of my stuff, a networking evening, the occasion having been billed as an opportunity to “speak out about yourself… or do a magic trick, make a performance or simply nothing whatever you like. [sic] ”

Nobody did any magic tricks, nobody “made” a performance, and everyone basically did the same thing:

“Hi, I am John Trombone, I work for a drudgery company and I do some terribly uninteresting work that nobody here could possibly be interested in.”

“I’m Alice, I am a chemical engineer and I used to live in Botswana. Now I live here, I wear very expensive clothes, I take myself very seriously, and I don't talk to people whose surname starts with C”

“My name is Yitzchak Pimple and I have my own importing business, I am very boring and I have been looking high and low for a wife for quite some time. Oh, and maybe someone could lend me 5 bucks. “

So stupid me, I thought maybe doing something a bit different, something outside the box, would be a good thing. Wrong. It was a terrible thing. The organizer was embarrassed, thinking that maybe it would take longer than the allocated 3 minutes, thinking that I was bound to bore everyone (she was probably right about that, but that has nothing to do with me nor my writing.) And, assuming she was the one who wrote the promotion, literacy was not her strong point. So she wanted no part of this. Ok just read one paragraph she said, and it went downhill from there.

It was the wrong crowd, the wrong evening, the wrong stuff, the wrong idea. I sat down and I wondered if I’d be able to face this crowd again.

So that’s what it was, a moment of total humiliation. And I sat there under a cloud wishing I could make myself invisible and wondering how long I had to sit there before I could quietly make my escape.

When I finally did leave the place, about an hour later, things were different. I had gotten into a conversation with someone the details of which, and whom, will have to remain unreported for now. But it was pleasant. And it was promising. And later when I contemplated the ramifications of that, I had to admit to myself that there may be no ramifications at all, What it was was a moment, a good moment, and a moment to remember and be happy about, but not expect any particular long term (or even short-term) follow-up. Value it for what it was.

And so with the bad stuff. It was a bad moment, but that’s all it was. A moment. I’m allowed to make mistakes, right? I’m allowed to misread a situation, to misjudge the moment, to make myself look like a complete and total misfit. I’m allowed. Right?

Right?

Some of the moments in our lives are springboards to greater experience and opportunity, and sure, some can have long term consequences, but we never really know. And it’s best to remember that whatever it is, this too shall pass, and let’s just move on to the next moment.

But man, I sure felt stupid…