Better Than Fine

I went to a concert alone last night.  My original intention was to attend with a friend but work responsibilities crept in, made the evening a difficult one for her.  I haphazardly threw out invites, to no avail.  I decided to go by myself, silly 8th grade don't-want-to-go-to-the-dance-without-a-date insecurities and all.

As an extrovert, I tend to be happiest in the company of friends, either of the long-established friendship variety or the nice-to-meet-ya sort.  I love people, the stories, the laughter, the inside jokes, the sharing of plates of french fries, the mutual hatred for That One Song, and the mutual love for That Other Song. But the older I get, the more I realize how capable I am of happiness outside such a throng.  The absence of friends may make me lonely for a period of time, but that period is always finite and brief.  I'm easily distracted by the joy of experiencing something new, something pretty, something soul-soothing, and the world is full of such things.

To listen to live music in the company of a friend, especially one with a like sense of what constitutes Good and Not Good music (with mild acceptance attached to deviations from those norms), is a precious thing. To have someone to smile at after a particularly rousing set or to help you pick out the flaws of an off-key songstress is a key component in establishing music-based friendships. And to find someone that doesn't require a constant discussion, someone that will just let you dance or bob your head or close your eyes, without a need to dissect the moment is equally important.  Perfect music friendships notwithstanding, in the company of a friend you're always subject to their whims, their exhaustion level, how many beers they want tonight, how desperate they are for a date, how annoyed they are by a tardy performer. Even in the best of scenarios, where you find a balance of musical personalities and like appreciation for concert-going decorum, you're still at the mercy of their happiness.  Or I am.

It's functionally impossible for me to enjoy myself if I sense that my companion is having a not-awesome time.  If they're unhappy (or if I can't tell one way or the other), I spend the evening trying to be exciting, trying to amuse them, trying to make them smile. I'm on a stage that I did not ask to be on.

Alone, I am invisible. There is no harm in my desire to move from the balcony to the floor and back again.  There is no risk in looking like a fool if I decide I want to dance. There is no barrier to conversation should I say hello to the nice-looking boy at the bar.  There are no hurdles if I tuck myself into a corner and jot a few notes for That Other Blog. I drink my Diet Coke. I chase it with a beer. I am the only one that needs to care, the only one that matters. And beneath it all is the pulse and twang of the music I came to hear.

I know that I will always prefer the company of a like-minded music buff.  I will always want to bemoan the amount of coffee ingested the next day with a friend who talked me into one more song the night before. I will always want the stories and laughter and side-by-side flailing that has blessed the majority of my concert experiences.

But on the rare occasions that I venture onto a out alone, move to the music in the company of strangers, I will be happily, unsurprisingly, better than fine.

Holiday

A mere 8 days after returning from my own trip abroad, I had the good fortune of reliving a shadow of my trip to Milan while watching the Guthrie’s production of Roman Holiday. While I can’t say that my trip included a lot of spontaneous musical numbers, I definitely appreciated the hustle and bustle of Italian street life, the penchant for good gelato, and the afternoon sips of wine (champagne in Holiday’s case) mirrored in the Cole Porter show.

The voices of all the actors were perfect and while the Joe Bradley character was a bit more selfish than I recall of Gregory Peck, the transformation from self-serving newsman to heartstring-tugged gentleman was touching and believable, a not-easy task (in my mind) when faced with the pace of the dialogue and the more saccharine of Porter’s songs.

Porter, of course, was a genius. He summated seemingly complicated emotions into the black and white (the Night and Day, as it were) of “I want to be with you, only you, forever” and gave it a lilt with a turn of phrase that kept the romance of that complication. All the tumbling, fussy emotions of new attachment were always tied up into lyrics that captured exactly the intensity of that messy, exhilarating feeling (without tripping over themselves the way we bloggers tend to do when trying to describe in words what Porter did in melody).  Night and Day has always been one of my favorites of Porter’s, for just that reason.  Because, at its simplest, love is about wanting to experience every inch of the day and night in the company of another, specific soul; finding someone to share the adventures and the disasters in equal part.

The story ends, of course, with a bittersweet tone.  No forever-type commitment.  No “I love you”s exchanged.  A final glance, a “thank you” for an adventure well-spent, and the continuation of separate lives.  As relationship endings go, however, that has to be one of the best. And despite the inability of these two lovers to fit snugly into one another’s lives, the audience does get the sense that each has been effectively shaken and inspired enough to demand some flavor of that adventure in future loves. And I think most people can relate to that moment of realization that love doesn’t work without being buddies. And gelato and trips to Rome help, too.

My Music Friend

I've never really had a music friend before.  I've had friends who shared a mutual affection (read: obsession in the case of U2 and my bestie, Megan) for a band or singer.  And I've gone to concerts with boyfriends or boys-who-are-friends and had a few too many beers lounging on grassy lawns listening to who-knows-who do a sound check. I've managed to drag a host of people to Dulono's for bluegrass and a few actually agree to be dragged again.

But I've never had a buddy who loved pretty much everything I love about music.  Kim is the first. Now, we diverge in some ways.  Kim has not yet been schooled on the awesomeness that exists in much of country music, her experience having been tainted by some too-poppy quasi-country hacks. But she respects Tammy Wynette so she can't be a total lost cause.

And my tastes can run a bit more mellow than Kim's on occasion.  I can spend a good month of my life dedicated to the National and emerge without feeling too suicidal, and I think maybe that would drive Kim to madness.

But my best music memories in the Twin Cities have been with Kim, slightly divergent tastes notwithstanding.  The important aspect of our balance is that we both, quite simply, want to be THERE. The radio is nice, CDs are nice, iPods are nice.  But whenever possible, whenever tickets aren't exorbitantly expensive (and sometimes when they are), whenever we can justify a week night outing that will result in a painful weekday morning, we want to be there.

We joked last night that we're rather doomed by the weather.  Every show we've seen has been cursed by some facet of awfulness in that regard.  The first show we saw together, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, was one of the more disgusting concert experiences of my life.  It had to have been 95, 80% humidity, and the venue was packed.  We squeezed as close as we could to the front (Kim is a squeezer, moreso than I, but her habit has rubbed off on me and now I want to shimmy as close as I can to the stage).  The smell of pot and patchouli was enough to make the beers we were drinking somewhat superfluous, but drinking water would have been lame. I was wearing a short skirt and a thin tshirt and within 20 minutes both were soaked with sweat. All we did was dance, laugh, and comment on how amazingly unattractive we'd both become.  At the end of the set, when everyone was drunk and soaked in sweat, the lead singer, Alexander, had the brilliant idea that we should all sit down. This was not a soft, grassy field.  This was a beat-up, needed-to-be-repaved-30-years-ago lot full of bodies too bunched together for what would become a sit down.  But slowly everyone maneuvered.  I was standing next to some kid in his early 20s who was clearly enjoying some sort of herbal experience and he patted his knee and said, "don't worry, just sit on my lap."  So I half-sat on an infant's lap and half-sat on pavement that left tiny pieces of concrete on my thigh when I stood up.  By the time Kim and I wandered back to her car, we were exhausted, danced out, and in desperate need of a showers.  And I have never enjoyed a show so much.

We've seen other bands, too, many in equally hot and steamy environments (considering how rarely it gets like that up here it does seem odd that Kim and I manage to pick the concerts that boil), and some in the rain (Rock the Garden 2011), and some in both (Bastille Day block party). Sometimes the bands have been amazing, sometimes they've been okay, sometimes there have been surprises (I had no idea HarMar Superstar resembled Homer Simpson).  But what I love about Kim is that she's up for all of it, all of the imperfection of live performance, coupled with the excitement of hearing voices you love sing songs you love.

And I think mutual musical affection is a key connecting point for me, perhaps moreso as I get older.  There are seasons of your life that feel impossible to describe.  But if I tell Kim I have been listening to Bon Iver nonstop for a month, I know, in some small but not insignificant way, that she knows what the month feels like for me, what comfort I require, what music makes the days a bit more palatable.  And vice versa.  There's a communication possible in music choice and attachment that transcends "how was your day?" and gives a fuller picture of the answer than "it was okay."

I know, on her bad days, Kim needs to hear something with a beat worth dancing to, even if she isn't up to it.  And she needs music you can eat soup to, with her pup in her lap, that makes the stress feel less insurmountable and the question marks of everyday life a little less daunting.  And Kim knows that on my bad days, I just need some The National playing in the background, and I need a text message reminding me that David Bowie exists.

Snippets of the Thing

Twice this week I sat in a theater and watched a performance that made my mind wander.  It didn't wander  in the eye-rolling, bored way, but in the way I've grown accustomed to in the last several years, catching on snippets of things and fashioning them into never-to-be-written stories. And sometimes, in my less humble moments, I've wondered if that's how writers eventually write.  Is it always snippets of things, snowballing into flesh and action? Or should it be more organized ("more organized" being high on the wish list for every facet of my life and thus, quasi-impossible)?

I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Wednesday and Julius Caesar tonight, each with a dear friend in tow.  The Williams play set my mind on a leather briefcase, thanks to Gooper's obnoxious legal wrangling, and molasses got wrapped into the story in my head, too.  It's Williams so it's, unsurprisingly, Southern in its accent, but maybe it would have been Southern without Williams's influence, thanks to the region of my own birth.  I got home after the play and jotted a few things down, thought of a certain twist to a certain plot, got annoyed, tossed the scribbles away as I normally do, went to bed.

Tonight's Caesar was, I think, my favorite of the week. To restage Shakespeare with a modern voice, keeping the Shakespearean tongue, is not new.  It's so "not new" that it practically is new again, maybe? The Obama-esque Caesar and the modern warfare were played right, they felt easy, the way Shakespeare should feel, and it was Casca that set my mind adrift.  It was always the side players in Caesar that I wanted to know more about.  I never bought Brutus as a tragic figure, nor bought Antony's final declaration that he was the only noble voice amongst the conspirators.  I don't think any of them were noble, but I'm curious how the Cascas and Cinnas of the world got wrapped up in conspiracies so vile.  How do the normal (not heroic, not noble, not particularly intelligent) folk succumb to the whispers of envy and the shouts of mobs? It happens everyday, of course, but Casca was always the one I wanted to sit down and have a chat with.  "What exactly were you thinking? Did you really think this would work? Did you even really care?"

I'd write that dialogue, maybe, if I were to write anything. 

But I won't, because it seems like a lot of work and the idea itself is so lazy.  I just wonder sometimes, with all these half-stolen, half-inspired ideas snowballing from one side of my brain to the other, will I find something someday worth writing, really writing.  Or will I just write a lot of half-lovely paragraphs for the rest of my life?

Heaney and Definition

Earlier this week I had a double dose of Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, thanks to an In Conversation program at the Guthrie on Monday and a showing of his Antigone adaptation, The Burial at Thebes, on Tuesday. (Caveat: I'm vaguely aware of an FTC law that requires bloggers to note when they've received goods or been paid by an entity that they review, but I believe that only matters if the entity requires a review, which the Guthrie has not.  That being said, I submitted my blog address to the Guthrie when they invited bloggers to do so, I got a couple free tickets to Thebes, that was that. I bought the tickets to see Heaney myself. Feel free to read the following comments with all that unnecessary exposition in mind, or, kindly dispose of it given its superfluousness)

Heaney was introduced to me by a dear friend whose first role in my life was that of favorite professor, Dabney Stuart, who's a poet and letter-writer and sender of books.  I'm sure Dabney has become some romanticized image of Brilliance in my head, but he always counted me as a romantic so I won't apologize for that on his account.  We exchange letters sporadically, and occasionally when I'm stumbling over my own attempts at verses or when I just want to talk to someone about a book, I'll wonder if he thinks of me sometimes, aside from in those letters.

Dabney taught a poetry class at my alma mater and while I remember several of the poets and poems we went through, Heaney's "Digging" lodged in me soundly and never loosened.  Heaney's "Digging" and "Oysters", Yeats's "No Second Troy" and "An Irish Airmen Foresees His Death" together, sing to me better than any musician.  So to hear Heaney himself (who I'd always imagined as sort of an aloof, painful jerk) speaking of his boyhood, Belfast, death, and growing old, I felt like a mesh of all my poets, my favorites, were speaking to me from no less than 15 yards away.  When he was asked what poetry "meant," what good poetry's purpose must be, he just sighed and laughed and thought a minute.  He didn't have a polished answer, and in between other questions and thoughts, he'd come back to that one and try to tackle it again.  He settled on the subject with a comment that poetry should, simply, be more than what it is.  He worded it differently a dozen times.  It should be bigger.  Deeper.  More palpable.  Wiser.  Than what each single word alone could possibly mean if each were added together like an equation.  All of it, together, should be more.  And in the end, he was unsatisfied by that definition.

Antigone is one of those classic plays that I must imagine would be hell to be invited to adapt.  What can be done to make Antigone fresh?  Its import lies in how heavily universal its concepts of self-sacrifice and morality and government oppression are, its merit is pertinence despite age.  It has been told and retold and Antigone has been dragged out of her cave a million times as a feminist ideal and champion, so anyway, I wouldn't envy a poet/playwright for retelling such a myth.  How do you retell a story that is effectively its own metaphor?

But Heaney's struggle with defining the import and power of poetry echoed with me as I watched Thebes.  Because that struggle was perfect on stage, the way "Oysters" is perfect on paper.  Thebes works because it balances the heavy history of a play regurgitated for every power struggle, every argument of might vs. right, with the requirement of telling Antigone's sad, sad story in a way that feels important for the 90 minutes it lasts.  You can't watch 90 minutes of metaphor.  I don't care how cool an English major you are or were, 90 minutes of symbolism will suck the joy out of any soul.  So the story itself still has to feel like the characters are alive, aching, and their end is something the audience should care about.

The scene between Creon and Haemon has always haunted me but I think this production was the first time I had any heartache for Creon (and I almost feel guilty admitting it).  Haemon is beautifully done in this work, emphatic in his love for Antigone, and smooth in his attempt to cajole his father into freeing her, making Dad see reason.  There was a hint of "you will regret this moment" streaming from his lips in his final words to his father, and memories of that shouting match invariably resurface as Creon later crumbles over the body of his beloved son.  Heaney's adaptation allows a deeper vulnerability in the ironclad Creon of other productions.  While Antigone's demise lives the loudest in current vernacular, called up as a symbol for lost, valiant causes, in this production it is Creon's sorrow that is the scariest.  Antigone, after all, dies knowing she did what she must.  Creon lives on, knowing his blind governance and disregard for inherent morality (the morality of the gods), slaughtered innocents, including his son and his wife.  That continued life seems the most tragic.  Creon's burden wrecks me.  What "rules" do I insist on that are contrary to my faith or the tenets of my God? How often do I let blind ambition cloud my judgement, block my ears from reason? How dangerous is my pride? 

I think most people hope they would be Antigone.  But I think the power of Heaney's play rests in how often we tremble with worry that in a moment of truth we will be Creon.  And, like poetry, the last words, the individual moments, grow to mean more than the sum of their parts.  It isn't just an old Greek play with some new vocabulary.  It's the train wreck of pride we watch in ourselves, and the palatable fear that we will realize, too late, that pride will surely strip us of those we love most. 

Powerful stuff, poetry.

Arms and the Man

In college I assistant stage managed (ASM) Shaw's Arms and the Man.  At the time, I was a theatre major, and ASMing was a requirement for that course of study.  I was loathe to forego an opportunity to be onstage for the stress of backstage turmoil but I swallowed my pride and hoped for the best.  A dear friend was the Stage Manager and, honestly, I'm rather surprised our friendship survived that experience.

Last night I attended the Guthrie's performance of Shaw's play in their proscenium.  And I was struck by how little of the story I remembered.  I remember cues, certain costumes, certain pieces of the set that rolled away during dress rehearsal (resulting in my sacrificing myself before the wrath of the Director), a line or two, and a long, long night of finishing the set mere hours before showtime.  I remember waking up on the floor of the theatre, curled up in a heap of velvety curtain, shaken awake just in time to shower before my first class.

I remember that show, not as a performance, but as the experience that made me hate the process just enough to drop the major.  I loved (still love?) being onstage.  And I was a very good actress.  I would hazard a guess (based on professorial comment) that I was also a pretty kickass ASM. I took the bullet when necessary and I sweat blood for that show.  But at the end of the run, I despised every inch of that set, the direct opposite of how I felt after acting.  It was an easy decision, dropping the major, as much a result of exhaustion as it was critical thinking.

But last night made me wonder if my life would have been different had I finished up the requirements, stage managed another show, graduated with the theatre degree.  Not a lucrative career path, to be sure.  I likely still would have done Peace Corps, but I might have been more likely to side with a trip to New York upon my return than I was to fill out law school applications. 

I don't regret where I am now and I don't regret the path I took to get here.  I do wonder how this life compares to the ones I might have known had I taken other bends in the road. There will be more bends, I'm sure. And George Bernard Shaw and his play will prove to be only one groove, one turn that led me to somewhere I haven't seen yet. 

And I like that.