Bittersweet Symphony, That's Life

We went to the Symphony on Saturday night.  We took the kids.  It all started because Jack plays the Cello and the Baltimore Symphony has a featured cellist.  It was in the amazing Music Center at Strathmore up in Rockville MD.  Here's a pic:

Halfway through the first piece, a Rococco themed fugue, which was really interesting and a bit complicated musically, Caitlyn says, "I'm bored," then, "I'm hungry," then she starts fidgeting away and generally being about as pleasant to sit next to as an irritated badger.  At which point, I wanted to throttle my second born, for being ungrateful and thoroughly ten.

See, we sort of have this idea, that we ought to expose our kids to this sort of thing.  Not that we're really that cultured, to tell you the truth, I don't know much about what was going on on that stage, but it sounds kind of cool, and it can stir up some feels about as much as anything that doesn't involve words.  The thing that struck me though is the obviously herculean amount of effort it must take to get that many people, who are that good at playing instruments to pull together and put in the time and effort it takes to pull off something like a symphony.

I know people who play the violin, and the trumpet, but I have yet to meet anyone who plays the bassoon or any of those weird back row instruments, some which look like big cast iron skillets.

Jack was enthralled by the featured cellist, a very tall thin fellow, who is to cello what Jimi Hendrix is to guitar, Cate spent most of her time waiting for the trombone section to do something.  I found myself watching all of those peripheral musicians who just sort of sit there and wait, while the violins, cellos and flutes wail their way through the waves of high flying sound.  The tubas and trombones and basses, the drums and xylophones and chimes just sort of wait for the right moment.

Cate is a trombone player in her school band.  I wonder what, if anything, was going through her head as she watched the three trombones in the back row between the tuba and the trumpets, wait, and wait, and then play three notes and then wait some more.

I wonder if she appreciated that a symphony requires that some people play those parts.

I wonder if we appreciate that life is better for diversity.

I wonder if we don't hang too much on our celebrities and the "big news."

Maybe that's why we're so miserable most of the time.

Every day I read so many things that are telling us to be afraid or listing all the ills that afflict us.  There is no shortage of opinions that tell you we are a miserable, doomed lot of hairless apes who are violent and pugnacious to an unhealthy degree and who are like as not going to exterminate ourselves in a conflagration of greed, hatred and sheer ignorance.

But dammit we write symphonies, and we play them, and we listen to them, and we don't understand them, and we're bored by them, and we annoy the proper old lady sitting in front of us, but we don't care because music is art and art is what shows us that we are truly much more than what we seem.

When Caitlyn is grown up, she won't remember that she was bored or hungry (she didn't even remember that at intermission), she will only remember that shimmering gold concert hall and that strange, beautiful music, and waiting for the trombones to do something.  That's how memory works, that's why the past always seems better than the present, that's why your childhood is "way better" than what kids have nowadays.  That's why you post facebook memes about how great it was to play with rocks instead of an XBox and get regular floggings from your parents, because it all blends together into fondness in hindsight.  That's what art does, it re-frames the harsh reality of life, so that we find meaning.

I already forget how really irritated I was with my daughter (though I can pull off a fair re-enactment), and I am glad I stayed up past my bedtime and was given the gift of going to the symphony.  That's how this works.