Work on Friday felt like a Monday. Taking New Year's Day off definitely ruined productivity. Kudos to Zach for proposing a dorkish manner of celebrating the New Year - we ended up with "cheap seat" tickets to hear the Seattle Symphony in Benaroya Hall.
It was a new venture for me. I'd deliberately avoided orchestra concerts since graduating. I miss playing too much. [Sidebar: For those of you scratching your heads, I'm from a musical family. Piano since Montessori School; double bass since the fifth grade. Orchestra, rehearsals, competitions, auditions - elementary school through college graduation. The works. But dumbJames chose two rather expensive instruments to tackle... all through high school and college, basses were rented, borrowed. The piano was "on loan" from my father.] Thus, a musicless Seattle (for me, at least), has been a bit tough to bear. The metropolitan area does not lack "amateur" orchestras begging for basses - it's just that I'm also begging for a bass... and a larger car to ferry it in. Donations, anyone?
Back on track: Seattle Symphony! Zach is a smooth criminal - and convinced me to ring in 2004 with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral" (yes, the "Ode to Joy" one). Thus, I got "spiffied up" (put on a sweater), bussed it downtown, and joined the music nerds. We were literally in the cheap seats - aisles in the back row. But, that just meant I was first in the restroom at intermission! Benaroya Hall is gorgeous - and the acoustics are mind-boggling. As for the music itself, Siegfried Idyll was a new one for me - charming and relaxing. And the van Beethoven symphony was utter perfection... with one no-no on the audience's part at the conclusion of the (admittedly long) first movement: the audience applauded.
Perhaps it's because I'm the son of a former opera singer. Proper Concert Etiquette was as much a part of my upbringing as say-"please"-and-"thank-you", don't-put-your-mouth-on-the-water-fountain, and stop-running-through-the-house-wearing-mommy's-slip. Attending concerts, musicals, and operas from age three on up, I knew, above all, to sit still, quietly and respectively, and to avoid applauding until the Seattle Symphony has finished the work in its entirety. But, after a mild coronary episode on my part, the second movement began, and I slipped again into blissful Music Appreciation 101. Telepathic messages transmitted frantically from my cerebral cortex to my fellow concert-goers must've gotten through, as no one applauded in the two brief intervals between the next three movements.
Afterwards, post-concert rapture gave way to post-concert hunger; Zach and I booked it to a late-night restaurant on Capitol Hill. Seattle Symphony praise was so great that I failed to panic when Hot Jon the Graduate Student (his lab is near mine at work; and yes, I drop things or say things backwards when he's around) waltzed in with his partner and a few (beautiful) friends for some drinks. I even managed to introduce him to Zach without saying, "This is Zach... willyoumarrymejon?" Go me.
Not-so-go-me: I was eating a particularly greasy french fry at the time... which is not proper see-a-cute-guy etiquette.
Posted by James at January 4, 2004 08:28 PM