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Okay, I didn't.
Most of it.
I didn't go help clean up the beach because I looked up and it was after eleven and it was only till twelve and my Different Hand Problem is only partly resolved. I didn't arrive in time to help my friend with her yard sale but I did arrive in time to witness a nasty family argument and to go walking with the least horrible of her little dogs and Truffle, mine, who nearly followed a cormorant off the cliff there at the end of her street (it's sort of near Pleasure Point, for those of you who know Santa Cruz). She gave me her comps to the season premier of the Santa Cruz Symphony and I took that nice fellow I married -- she was going to go with me, and I told the nice fellow about it and he wanted to go, but instead of me buying a third ticket and us all going she decided to take her grumpy self in to take a bath instead.
I didn't do the wine. I guess I'm a chicken. I only did a little bit of the writing. I did some of the painting. I did pick up the dead rat so my daughter could bury her. I did comfort my daughter, who now wants a mouse or maybe a large dog or a hermit crab. I am not making this up, except for the hermit crab part -- I can't remember exactly what kind of crab it was. I did do an immense grocery shopping. I figured out what it is about symphonies I don't like. I like concertos, and a lot of other shorter pieces, though of course not all of them, but as for symphonies, I don't even like the ones I like, and this was some thing by Brahms that was only nice in sections. What I don't like about symphonies is that the structure is completely opaque to me. I cannot divine any reason why the tempo changes, or the motif shifts off into another key, or the violins suddenly go pizzicato, or the timpani rolls out for a few beats and then goes back to nursing whatever silent grudge it has, and the emotions keep switching around and nothing has a coherent feel to it for more than five minutes which after a while means that it all sounds the same. Even the good ones are like this. With a concerto, you've got a sensible structure, you've got a finite time, the tempo changes have to be logical because there's no temporal room in which to go all random, and you've got to get that theme and motif in there in a recognizable way before you get the curtain.
At least this is what I think now. Remember, I like piobaireachd, and that means I have some portion of an abstract mind somewhere, I'm not inherently too dull to get the music.
I had a wonderful time at the symphony, though, even though the first piece was Charles Ives who ought to have composed television commercials because he doesn't seem capable of sustaining himself for a whole whatever you call that type of piece ("Variations on 'America'"). "Rhapsody in Blue" is overrated but fun. The Brahms symphony (Number One? I forget) had a half-moment at the beginning, a melodic interlude by mistake in the third or fourth movement, and a tolerable ending. What I should say here is that the musicians were fantastic. They really believed in what they were playing, and it's not their fault the phrases never added up to a paragraph. The conductor was vibrant, in that old school fling yourself all around fashion (isn't it conductors who live the longest of any profession?). The pianist they brought in for "Rhapsody in Blue" was a hoot -- he surely thinks he is the Man: he has a pianist hairstyle, just long enough to toss around artistically while he does a tango with the piano. Talk about flinging -- I thought his hands were going to end up in the top ranks of the seats, or the vestibule. ANd his nose, too. How do you fling your nose around like that?
He got two standing ovations. He encored with "Five Feet Two, Eyes of Blue," and "is You Is or Is You Ain't" -- but you now, I didn't recognize them, and as a rabid Fats Waller fan I ought to have recognized the latter, even if he did doctor it up for a classical audience. And I don't think it was my fault. I think he doctored them up too much.
So, anyway, I'm cultured tonight, if not quite culturny.
I didn't go help clean up the beach because I looked up and it was after eleven and it was only till twelve and my Different Hand Problem is only partly resolved. I didn't arrive in time to help my friend with her yard sale but I did arrive in time to witness a nasty family argument and to go walking with the least horrible of her little dogs and Truffle, mine, who nearly followed a cormorant off the cliff there at the end of her street (it's sort of near Pleasure Point, for those of you who know Santa Cruz). She gave me her comps to the season premier of the Santa Cruz Symphony and I took that nice fellow I married -- she was going to go with me, and I told the nice fellow about it and he wanted to go, but instead of me buying a third ticket and us all going she decided to take her grumpy self in to take a bath instead.
I didn't do the wine. I guess I'm a chicken. I only did a little bit of the writing. I did some of the painting. I did pick up the dead rat so my daughter could bury her. I did comfort my daughter, who now wants a mouse or maybe a large dog or a hermit crab. I am not making this up, except for the hermit crab part -- I can't remember exactly what kind of crab it was. I did do an immense grocery shopping. I figured out what it is about symphonies I don't like. I like concertos, and a lot of other shorter pieces, though of course not all of them, but as for symphonies, I don't even like the ones I like, and this was some thing by Brahms that was only nice in sections. What I don't like about symphonies is that the structure is completely opaque to me. I cannot divine any reason why the tempo changes, or the motif shifts off into another key, or the violins suddenly go pizzicato, or the timpani rolls out for a few beats and then goes back to nursing whatever silent grudge it has, and the emotions keep switching around and nothing has a coherent feel to it for more than five minutes which after a while means that it all sounds the same. Even the good ones are like this. With a concerto, you've got a sensible structure, you've got a finite time, the tempo changes have to be logical because there's no temporal room in which to go all random, and you've got to get that theme and motif in there in a recognizable way before you get the curtain.
At least this is what I think now. Remember, I like piobaireachd, and that means I have some portion of an abstract mind somewhere, I'm not inherently too dull to get the music.
I had a wonderful time at the symphony, though, even though the first piece was Charles Ives who ought to have composed television commercials because he doesn't seem capable of sustaining himself for a whole whatever you call that type of piece ("Variations on 'America'"). "Rhapsody in Blue" is overrated but fun. The Brahms symphony (Number One? I forget) had a half-moment at the beginning, a melodic interlude by mistake in the third or fourth movement, and a tolerable ending. What I should say here is that the musicians were fantastic. They really believed in what they were playing, and it's not their fault the phrases never added up to a paragraph. The conductor was vibrant, in that old school fling yourself all around fashion (isn't it conductors who live the longest of any profession?). The pianist they brought in for "Rhapsody in Blue" was a hoot -- he surely thinks he is the Man: he has a pianist hairstyle, just long enough to toss around artistically while he does a tango with the piano. Talk about flinging -- I thought his hands were going to end up in the top ranks of the seats, or the vestibule. ANd his nose, too. How do you fling your nose around like that?
He got two standing ovations. He encored with "Five Feet Two, Eyes of Blue," and "is You Is or Is You Ain't" -- but you now, I didn't recognize them, and as a rabid Fats Waller fan I ought to have recognized the latter, even if he did doctor it up for a classical audience. And I don't think it was my fault. I think he doctored them up too much.
So, anyway, I'm cultured tonight, if not quite culturny.