I have to tell you about the concert tonight, tonight, because I’m already losing precious details that I need to share.
The day was planned around going in town to meet up with Rhett, and see the John Williams tribute concert, day two of C’est Pas Classique. And until I got into town, and realized that I could squeeze in a few minutes at a Satie concert in Old Nice, there was no trip for Soca and some other unidentifiable desert in the plans. However, walking back from the so called Satie concert (a bunch of children and their parents... Turn out they were playing the entire set, which lasts 20 hours, so the shifts aren’t always well known musicians per say) with my host parents, I almost walked into a mob of people in front of the Acropolis! What is this blockade? I have a concert to get to! Silly people!
... Who are all trying to get into the same concert as I am.
Oh Dear.
I made it through the jungle of people waiting in line, and grit my teeth, ignoring the people who cut in line, because I knew as soon as I got through the entry doors, Rhett was waiting to accompany me in doing the same. Ickyyyy.
We arrived to the front of the line where he and his friends had already been waiting for an hour just as the wave of people flooded the floor. Security guards chopped the line literally in front of us and told us to wait, that the first two floors of the 2500 seat auditorium were full. -WHAT- Which would have been fine, had Rhetts mom and little sister (who is my buddy, she drew me a picture!! <3) had already gone ahead of us, and would be waiting with seats.
The first time we tried to force the doors to get to them, we got yelled at by a security guard, who proceed to go yell at someone else. Rhett put on his serious face, walked up to the door man and told him that we were going to go meet with his mother, and that two more people were coming later to join us. The guard, though not as impressed as I was, was enough so to let us all pass (five of us!) into the “full” levels, and sent us off with best wishes for the evening.
The family charm obviously doesn’t start or end with the future delegate, because by the time we caught up to his ladies clad in pink, they had sealed us an entire row, for whichever friends were going to join us later. A feat near enough to impossible, since as I already stated, this was the floors closed to the public already. But as always, it gets better!
Which row did the adorable smile of a little girl in a pink jacket win us?
Third. Yes. Three rd.
My host brother managed to join us after pulling a needing to find his parents line, and also be escorted by Rhett, and I can’t tell you how hard he laughed when he seated himself, and received a call from two friends on the balcony letting him know he had an identical twin sitting way up front.
None of that was pressing enough to make me stay up and write, so say farewell to emoticons and exclamation points, and brace yourselves for an excessively wordy text.
The announcer started the evening off by congratulating us on surviving getting seats, and said that it was only fitting that we started with what easily could have been our theme song for the past two hours: Indiana Jones. One hit knock out. I was sitting dazed clapping my hands numb by the end of the piece, startled that a band of 100 could be so perfectly synchronized, and keep an audience of two and a half thousand so perfectly silent.
The 7 by 15 meter screen in the background displayed movie clips, and the next to be featured was Jurassic Park, the very first scene with the little girl, crying out that she found something. I wonder how many others in the audience had the slightest idea what she was saying. It was then that I realized that while my attraction to this show was a union of famous movie music, that every other soul in the room was there to have their will to speak taken away, be gracefully and perhaps even gratefully silenced, to understand something beyond the spoken word, whatever language it may be.
The next piece gave me goosebumps before the solo violinist had even raised her bow, and that’s a powerful statement, since the first notes played in the Schindlers List theme belong to the soloist. My memories of the film are few, and faint enough as to only induce one tear, as I tried to recall the plot line. The violinist on the other hand, was visibly possessed. No, possessed isn’t the right word. How can I describe the way she swayed, the way she drank into the notes? It was as though she had no instrument, but a third limb, and she was being consumed by it’s tragedy, writhing to escape from the murderous grip of their fingers and strings tangling. The piece reached it’s climax, and the release was not only that of a single sustained note, but of the breath of thousands, a simultaneous oxygen rush, so unified there was a change in the pressure of the room, though the unmistakeable shift in objectivity may to have been to blame. To be granted the right to breathe, breathe free...
Naturally, I was so lost in my thoughts at this point, the Superman theme song struck an unpleasant chord within my currently peaceful and pensive soul. My mind wandered, and waited out the end of the melodramatic chords, and decided to stop on the song lyrics to Insensitive by Jann Arden.
Bringing me back to earth, and almost giving me the impression of being brought home, I laughed out loud when a shot of Emma Watson in the Sorcerers Stone flashed across the screen, and images of me four consecutive Halloweens flashed before my eyes. I guess some things will never change: I still have a crush on Harry Potter, and I would still tolerate Hermione’s hair to be go to Hogwarts. Embarrassing confession checked off the bloggers to-do list, we move onto another series embedded into my memory.
We were treated to a 5 part Star Wars: Luke’s Theme, Leia’s Theme, (we were invited by the director to put on our official Darth Vador masks for the) Force Theme, (and were invited to exchange the Darth Vador mask for a shrink ray and little green suit for)Yoda’s Theme and finished the show with a bang on the finale.
My first instinct was, as predicted, a reflection on all the times I refused to watch the Friday family movie because it was Star Wars again, how mad I would get when I had to hear Anakin’s theme for the second time in one day, and that if I heard a light saber one more time on the car ride to Cape Breton I was going to snap. Believe it or not, I smile thinking back on those days.
I didn’t reflect too long on memories though, because the familiar spectacle or listening and seeing mesmerized me again. Suddenly, I was day dreaming about the Nutcracker, where not only did I know which notes come next, but the rise and fall of the bows and chests of the musicians are familiar, predictable even.
Being in the audience of a concert like this was different. I knew all the notes, but there had never been a visual like this, all I ever “saw” when I “heard” Star Wars was film clips. This time, and despite a lack of a score, I saw what I heard for the very first time. There were no staves, no notes, no rhythms to count, or dynamics to account for. But the orchestra looked like a loom with a hundred needles, treading each fine thread of the melody together into a tapestry, rich in all it’s colors, and richer for it’s absence of a particular image. Does a song not warm the cold heart more deeply than any material? They're the same, but one you can touch, and one you can feel.
I’m no good with the written word when it comes to expressing what only the written harmony can express. Being able to give a material, personal form to each nuance in a song is mind blowing, and slightly out of body. As you try to stretch your mind around the concept that the four arms leaning and dipping, seemingly tied by their unique strings to some ethereal puppeteers finger is perplexing enough without expanding your focus, and realizing that for the metaphor to be accurate, they would be tied to one finger, and to each tutti their own. Who could possibly master the complexities and abilities demanded to read a dozed lines of a different languages, translate and program it into the corresponding individual’s heart, while simultaneously teaching and accompanying them in the recital of this new prose? Who could fluently speak such languages, posses the patience and technical ability, and emotional fluidity? Who could overcome the massive and impressive beast that is the connexion uniting a song?
A composer, who interprets the undeniable inspiration.
An orchestra’s director, who interprets the unidentifiable intention.
A musician, who interprets the unspeakable inflection.
A human, who interprets the unalphabetized indentation on the soul that is music.
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