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May 23, 2007Are you feelin’ the Passion?Or are you just enduring?HEY, I’M A WRITERso sue me, but I subscribe to The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation Newsletter. Up this week–four hot tips on the use of semi-colons! (Every one of you can use them and you know it.) The newsletter, also featuring new and better hyphen quizzes, is put out by Blue Book author Jane Straus, who provides a link to another of her books, Enough is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. What’s the diff between enjoying and enduring? PASSION“If you’re not feeling passionate, you’re enduring.” I wouldn’t say it’s that cut-and-dry, but if I did have to narrow down all of life to one trait I would not do without, I would choose passion. But before the newsletter even arrived, I had already made that choice at Symphony Hall, after enduring some perfectly lovely Mozart…Let’s go back in time, all the way back to Sunday, May 20th… I WAS SUPPOSED TOrun Bay to Breakers today, but the gal who told me she’d register for us on Saturday, did not. I don’t really care, as the $49 entrance fee is an extravagance, and I sleep till 10:30 instead, then park my butt at Café International with my morning latte. The real treat, after all, awaits me tonight. The Philadelphia Orchestra, “my” orchestra, performs tonight as part of SF Symphony’s Great Performers series. AT DAVIES,I’m as excited as Mike Meyers’ little girl when Christoph Eschenbach, who looks like a Teutonic Patrick Stewart, takes the podium. The orchestra performs an exquisitely rendered, virtuoso Mozart Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major. The oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn soloists are crisp as potato chips. They’re as good as good gets—better. But whereas Bach sits at the right hand of God, Beethoven at his left, and Mozart stands close in, truth be told, I can live without this piece. Though Wolfie wrote some of the most soaring and glorious music in history, certain others of his work sound like frilly lace cuff parlor music, though, granted, the best of its kind. I can see his patrons, the refined ladies and gentry, all sitting in the gilded music room in their powdered wigs. Sue me, I just don’t like it. I SEE NOTHINGbut new faces in the orchestra. The first violinist, concertmaster David Kim, is at least twenty years younger than I, as are many of the members. Murray Panitz, principal flautist in my day, must have died or retired. As excellent as always they will be, during intermission I observe in my journal that the Philly Boys (no offense to the gals, I have always called them that) “are no longer ‘my’ orchestra. Most of the personnel have changed, this is the first time I’ve heard them under Eschenbach, I’ve never seen them in their current venue, the Kimmel Center, and my only acquaintance, violist Renard Edwards, is either no longer with them or is not scheduled for tonight. In 2001 on their last visit here, I was ready to move back to Philly to be near them again, but it is obvious that the San Francisco Symphony led by MTT is now ‘my’ orchestra.” Who’d-a thunk? THE BOYSstill have that famous “Philadelphia sound,” of course, the lush string sound I was schooled on. I feel ancient as Methuselah when I consider that I started my love affair with the Boys under Eugene Ormandy, circa 1977. He died in 1980 and resides firmly in music history by now. Firebrand Ricardo Muti had already taken over as I was leaving Philadelphia, and his successor, Wolfgang Suwallish, is now Conductor Emeritus. I’M NOT FEELINGthe nostalgia I did their last visit here, but there is more to come and I will not leave disappointed. Nor will you, if you take the last opportunity to hear them here on Saturday the 26th, when they will be performing Schoenberg, Schubert, and “Beethoven’s 10th” (batten your hatches), the mighty Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. ESCHENBACH RETURNSto the stage and now the magic begins. I am the audience Tchaikovsky dreamed of when he conducted the premiere of his recently completed Symphony No. 5 in 1888. I enter the music as into a dark wood of moss canopies, tangled vines and hazardous roots. This is not only a stellar performance of the 5th, it is one of the most powerhouse performances of any kind I have ever heard anywhere. The music has dimensions I’ve never visited. It almost materializes. WHEN YOU HEARa familiar piece as if you’re hearing it for the first time, your mind opens to more than just a new take on an old tune, but to the universe itself. I feel like I’m on Mount Olympus, and Zeus is leading the charge. I am also stunned by how mature and masterful the 5th is compared to the 1st, which I recently heard the SFS perform. From the second row, the music is hurricane force, like a wet slap in the face. I am feeling very vulnerable sitting up straight in B104 in my shiny evening jacket and beaded shoes. Eschenbach is conducting, all right–open-heart surgery on me–and I’m laid bare to the curious onlookers in the operating room gallery. I am in turmoil. I hope the ghost of Piotr Ilyich is present to hear his 5th performed to its fullest realization. NO MATTERthe strengths of the San Francisco Symphony, one simply has to refresh and retrain one’s ears with other orchestras from time to time. I CAN HARDLY CONTAIN MYSELF,as the orchestra bows and bows and bows again. I was first on my feet with the Bravos. One of the violinists notices me losing it and furrows her brow. My bottom lip is wavering and I bite it. Tears fill my eyes but don’t fall. I don’t want to cry because I will be taking the harshly-lit bus home and don’t want the heavy-duty Mary K mascara my friend Adrianne gave me to streak my face. What a stupid, stupid reason not to cry! How could I let how strangers on a bus might look at me be more important than the emotions stirred by this music? Why do we hesitate to openly sob when so inspired by music or film? And why do people make fun of us when we do (“Are you crying?”)? I spontaneously burst into tears at an Alvin Ailey performance once because I was witnessing human excellence perfected. YES, IF I HAD TO NARROW IT DOWNto just one thing, what’s most important to me in life is passion; there is no more valuable commodity. Once you’ve got that you can use it for anything, to pursue a goal, to raise your children, to do your job, to listen to music, to love a man. The passion of Tchaikovsky puts me to shame because he realized his in his music and I am suppressing my own upon hearing it.The orchestra plays an encore I know every note of but can’t place, and finally we all file out of the hall. A FEW LEFTOVER TEARSfall at the bus stop—by now I am just generally sad at whatever suffering I’ve been subject to—and I have lost interest in holding them back. I’m going to hurl myself against the wall, like Warren Zevon, ‘cause I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all. Feelings—passion—for people, for pursuits, for life—is what makes life hum. If it’s true that you “pick” your parents, before I entered this incarnation I said to God, “My last life was too easy; this time give me some challenges.” He accommodated, with a difficult family history and chronic mental disorders. But despite all that, I love life, because I have the passion to live it, come what may. I can’t waste energy worrying about what may come, I just have to face it, head on, when it gets here. THOUGH I AM WAITINGfor the 6 or the 71, an F Market trolley approaches and it is a Philadelphia car with 1938 colors. I feel duty bound as a tribute to this evening to be carried home on it, though I’ll have to walk down Street Crazy St. to get home. Sure enough there’s a street crazy at the 22 Fillmore bus stop talking to himself, but I decide to wait anyway and keep my distance. Please just respect the fact that you don’t know me, I’m thinking. Freud didn’t know what women want, but I know what we don’t want, and that is to be approached by strange men on the street at night. He looks my way a few times but seems content to ramble on with his monologue. I HAD LUCKED OUTby scoring (no pun intended) the last copy the symphony store had of the Philly Boys’ 5th CD. That’s your last copy? Give it here! I have got to hear this thing again, tonight, now! Unfortunately, at home, the CD disappears as quickly as I unwrap the cellophane to listen to it. This is something that happens to me time and time again. I have something; then I don’t have it. This is a classic story of how ADD “works.” I TRACE AND RETRACEmy steps and look half a dozen times everywhere I’ve been and everywhere I haven’t been just in case I have been there and don’t remember it. How can I have lost it so thoroughly that it isn’t even in plain sight? Which it no doubt is and I just can’t see it. I shuffle and reshuffle through the pile of items on the coffee table. Other CDs of the B minor Mass, a notebook, the last book I read, Jeanette Walls’ wonderful The Glass Castle, and ironically, a photography book called The Art of Seeing. I check and recheck the other items I bought, the remaining three DVD’s of MTT’s PBS program “Keeping Score” I had neglected to add to my library. They are unmistakably DVD’s, there is not a CD mixed in with them no matter how many times I think there should be. I LOOK UNDER THE COUCH,under the couch cushions, in every trash can, in my laundry bag, under the bed covers, in the closet where I’d hung my jacket, in the bathrooms. The only place I’ve been where I can’t look is the dishwasher, which I have already loaded and turned on. Well it must be in there, I think in exasperation, it isn’t anywhere else! My need to relax and hear this music is getting desperate, as I start to hyperventilate. THERE IS SIMPLY NOWHERE ELSEto look, but finally about to give up, I go one more time to where I remember last having it in my hand, the paper bag where I stashed the wrapper, and check again in there and all around there. And there, sigh of relief, it is, on the downward sloping back of the television, not visible from the front. I must have rested it there on the way to the bathroom. It took me 22 minutes by the clock to find it. THIS SORT OF THINGmakes me feel like I’m losing my mind, like I’m not aware of what I myself am doing and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am constantly finding myself holding something that has nothing to do with what I’m doing at the moment. Such as, I will go to the kitchen counter to feed the cats and there is inexplicably a stapler in my hand, which I must have intended to put away but got distracted. I’ll walk around picking stuff up on the way to the kitchen, a spoon, a wine glass, some laundry by the tub where I’d undressed, and, later, ready to go to sleep, I find the assortment on my bed, where I must have put it while rolling up and placing on the window sill the bottom of the hand-crocheted curtain my mother gave me, which the cats love to climb and hide behind. The CD, though of course an exceptional recording, which I listen to three times in my headphones, in no way replicates and in no way can replicate the power and punch of the live performance. Nothing manhandles my heart like a live symphony orchestra. I’M EMOTIONALLY DRAINEDbut I’m still up at 3:17, now, writing these thoughts out. I haven’t gotten over my amazement and delight that I can be up to all hours knowing I can sleep as long as I need to. Every day is a holiday. Work is no longer work now that it’s my work, my passion, and not just something I have to endure. It’s an enjoyment that drives itself along. Writing every day accumulates a lot of momentum, but writing all night takes its toll, and I am off to sleep just as long as ever I please, or until Zazu paws my face, whichever comes first.
The author wishes you had been there. ------------------------------------------------------------ When the Philly boys
Nobody can do passion like a Russian... copyright Alexandra Jones 2007 |
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