Beneath my feet there is a
sleeping stegosaurus. It’s Saturday night and I’m at the Charleston Symphony, listening to
Strauss’
Also Sprach Zarathustra. This morning I spoke to someone who scuba dives in the
rivers around here. He told me that there are fossil beds under the city, under the waters.
The orchestra is OK. Actually, very good for an orchestra in the South. They are doing the best they can in a completely classless area. It started when I was walking in. Two women were walking in front of me. At least one of them was wearing enough perfume that I could smell it from 20 feet away. This is considered to be in very poor taste in most circles. Where I’m from - the great, revered North – we don’t wear perfume or cologne to concerts. We discovered, rather quickly, that people who are allergic will sneeze, cough, and die loudly of asthma attacks during concerts if we wear perfume.
Beneath my toes are retired triceratops. They slumber. Can you feel them? Feel your feet – they are under there. Far down, like the earth.
The Music Director speaks well, is personable. This is also something fairly new for me. Maestro Stahl describes the works he will be conducting, gives us enough background so we can see the pictures the orchestra paints. The first piece is Harbison’s Remembering Gatsby. It’s a very interesting piece, but I feel the execution is not so good – the timing is a bit sloppy. Then again, I’m not an expert. I’ve had friends who could hear individual instruments, know exactly who was playing well, and who was lagging. I’m not that good, or that isn’t the way I listen. I like to relax, flow with the music. Sometimes I wonder how others react to orchestras. Do they sometimes get the feeling of floating? Of becoming as ethereal as the string of notes?
All of the dinosaurs dream. We build and build and build. We bury old buildings and build new ones on top of them.
There’s gum on my seat in the auditorium. I move to the next one. The people behind me comment on the fact that the conductor is balding. After the show people who were just listening to Beethoven try to run over pedestrians in a pointless rush to go somewhere else.
If I could make a perfect place, it would be Cleveland in the summer. It would be summer all year long, year after year. Never snow, never a cold night. No wind that tears hope from the soul. And it would have a few dinosaurs too – just to keep us on our toes. So we could have more realistic challenges than trying to not get hit by these drivers or not sit the gum on the seats.