May 25, 2006
May 24, 2006
The Tyler Grant CD
I have a hot new CD for sale.
Its title is “Tyler Grant – In the Light,” and it is a 13-cut mix of bluegrass and country-rock, and the title song – “In the Light” – is a stopper.
Tyler is my son, just turned 30, and now in his fourth year in Nashville, picking and writing songs and learning the business. This is his first CD. He is the lead singer, the guitarist, the producer, and the stock-room boy.
You can read more about Tyler and his band at www.myspace.com/tylerhgrant, including his list of his major musical influences. It is a long list, beginning with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia, David Grier, and then fourth on the list (ahead of Tony Rice!) is “Michael Grant.” Tickles me to death. I do play guitar: three chords and a suggestion of Elvis. Tyler likes something about the way I play, but I think my influence was more as an archivist than as an artist. When Tyler and his older sister Jessie were babies, I would play my old Presley, Cash, Perkins and Berry 45s on the stereo and bounce them in my arms in those pure energy music waves streaming from the speakers.
He also is just now getting a Website up, at www.tylergrant.org.
Then, as now, I have always been on the alert for songs that stop me. When I hear them for the first time, they hit me so hard that I play them over and over again. It can be as simple a thing as a chord change, or as complex a thing as “Stardust,” which I believe is the biggest stopper of all time. I love it when I hear a stopper for the first time. It doesn’t happen very often, and it happened this week. Tyler sent us a copy of the master CD and it was there in the mailbox as I was out the door to work. I was listening to it driving to work when “In the Light” hit me.
I played it again, and again and again. Yes, I know, Tyler is my son, but there is no bias here. A song either stops you or it doesn’t. Tyler has been writing and playing music for a long time, and he never wrote a bad song (if you ask me). He never played one that knocked me over, either, until “In the Light.” I have always been loyal, but now I am hooked. Tyler Grant goes on a short list of artists who have flat run me over with a song.
So I shill without shame. The CD will be available online from FGM Records around June 1; when I know the date, I will post it. You can advance order by going to www.tylergrant.org and click on the CD logo in the left margin. The order page has a complete rundown of the 13 tracks, with comments. FGM Records is the distribution side of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. “Flatpicking,” of course, is the 100-mile-an-hour guitar style made popular by Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs and others. Tyler has become well-known enough among the flatpickers, both as artist and teacher, to be scheduled to be on the magazine’s July cover.
This is the independent, or “indie,” route to getting one’s music into the mainstream, and it has arisen in response to today’s high-octane distillation of the old artistic catch-22: if you don’t have a track record, you must not have commercial appeal. Most media arts companies today are run by corporations who will not take the slightest business risk. They want the money in their hands before they sign the contract, and that shuts out most new artists and their sounds, and makes the stoppers even more few and far between.
Tyler seemed to understand from the first, what it would take. He started learning guitar when he was in high school, but he didn’t stop there. He completed the music program at Grossmont College and then took his degree in Music Performance from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Along the way, he learned not only guitar, but music. His CalArts recitals included pieces from bluegrass to Bach (you will find Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Bartok, also, in his list of musical influences, but far down the list from “Michael Grant”).
He also learned the academics of the business of music. When he moved to Nashville, he started to learn the realities of the business of music. He practiced constantly, played constantly, taught lessons, wrote songs, toured with a band (Adrienne Young and Little Sadie), entered and won a couple of flat-picking contests, went to many festivals and conferences, played bluegrass in China, jammed countless nights and early mornings with some really famous players, and listened as these people taught him how the business works. He also found a day job, substitute teaching in the Nashville school system.
When he was professionally ready, he borrowed money, assembled a band (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, dobro, bass, drums), reserved studio time, put sleep on hold, rehearsed the cuts until they were tight, developed the CD cover, recorded and mixed the songs, and on Monday Karen and I found the CD in our mailbox. She will tell you, too, it’s a quality product, from a quality artist.
Its title is “Tyler Grant – In the Light,” and it is a 13-cut mix of bluegrass and country-rock, and the title song – “In the Light” – is a stopper.
Tyler is my son, just turned 30, and now in his fourth year in Nashville, picking and writing songs and learning the business. This is his first CD. He is the lead singer, the guitarist, the producer, and the stock-room boy.
You can read more about Tyler and his band at www.myspace.com/tylerhgrant, including his list of his major musical influences. It is a long list, beginning with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia, David Grier, and then fourth on the list (ahead of Tony Rice!) is “Michael Grant.” Tickles me to death. I do play guitar: three chords and a suggestion of Elvis. Tyler likes something about the way I play, but I think my influence was more as an archivist than as an artist. When Tyler and his older sister Jessie were babies, I would play my old Presley, Cash, Perkins and Berry 45s on the stereo and bounce them in my arms in those pure energy music waves streaming from the speakers.
He also is just now getting a Website up, at www.tylergrant.org.
Then, as now, I have always been on the alert for songs that stop me. When I hear them for the first time, they hit me so hard that I play them over and over again. It can be as simple a thing as a chord change, or as complex a thing as “Stardust,” which I believe is the biggest stopper of all time. I love it when I hear a stopper for the first time. It doesn’t happen very often, and it happened this week. Tyler sent us a copy of the master CD and it was there in the mailbox as I was out the door to work. I was listening to it driving to work when “In the Light” hit me.
I played it again, and again and again. Yes, I know, Tyler is my son, but there is no bias here. A song either stops you or it doesn’t. Tyler has been writing and playing music for a long time, and he never wrote a bad song (if you ask me). He never played one that knocked me over, either, until “In the Light.” I have always been loyal, but now I am hooked. Tyler Grant goes on a short list of artists who have flat run me over with a song.
So I shill without shame. The CD will be available online from FGM Records around June 1; when I know the date, I will post it. You can advance order by going to www.tylergrant.org and click on the CD logo in the left margin. The order page has a complete rundown of the 13 tracks, with comments. FGM Records is the distribution side of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. “Flatpicking,” of course, is the 100-mile-an-hour guitar style made popular by Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs and others. Tyler has become well-known enough among the flatpickers, both as artist and teacher, to be scheduled to be on the magazine’s July cover.
This is the independent, or “indie,” route to getting one’s music into the mainstream, and it has arisen in response to today’s high-octane distillation of the old artistic catch-22: if you don’t have a track record, you must not have commercial appeal. Most media arts companies today are run by corporations who will not take the slightest business risk. They want the money in their hands before they sign the contract, and that shuts out most new artists and their sounds, and makes the stoppers even more few and far between.
Tyler seemed to understand from the first, what it would take. He started learning guitar when he was in high school, but he didn’t stop there. He completed the music program at Grossmont College and then took his degree in Music Performance from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Along the way, he learned not only guitar, but music. His CalArts recitals included pieces from bluegrass to Bach (you will find Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Bartok, also, in his list of musical influences, but far down the list from “Michael Grant”).
He also learned the academics of the business of music. When he moved to Nashville, he started to learn the realities of the business of music. He practiced constantly, played constantly, taught lessons, wrote songs, toured with a band (Adrienne Young and Little Sadie), entered and won a couple of flat-picking contests, went to many festivals and conferences, played bluegrass in China, jammed countless nights and early mornings with some really famous players, and listened as these people taught him how the business works. He also found a day job, substitute teaching in the Nashville school system.
When he was professionally ready, he borrowed money, assembled a band (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, dobro, bass, drums), reserved studio time, put sleep on hold, rehearsed the cuts until they were tight, developed the CD cover, recorded and mixed the songs, and on Monday Karen and I found the CD in our mailbox. She will tell you, too, it’s a quality product, from a quality artist.
May 19, 2006
What shelter means
Shelter may ultimately be as vital to survival as water and food.
But the need is different. With water and food, there is no choice. Without them, human beings can’t survive very long.
Humans can go indefinitely without shelter, but we don’t want to. Without a pressing need – extreme cold or heat – we still choose to provide ourselves shelter.
That’s why, years ago when kids still played outside, they loved the box more than the gift. Out in the yard, or on the front porch, they turned the box into shelter. In winter, in yards piled with warm brown leaves, kids burrowed in, pulled the leaves around and over them, and peered out from this sanctuary at the world.
At my house, we had a covered front porch, as most houses did, in West Texas before central air conditioning. When I heard thunder, and the sky began to darken, I would pull two porch chairs together back-to-back, run back to the bedroom for a quilt, throw the quilt over the chairs, and climb inside as the storm broke. I didn’t need shelter – I already had the porch – but I built one anyway, and in my sanctuary lightning lit the darkness, and thunder roared harmlessly, and the cool, wind-driven mist off the rain was just enough to wet my face, as I leaned near the entrance and watched.
That was the ancient shelter instinct rising. I didn’t need it, but in a raging primeval world of elements and survival demands, I wanted it, because it was something I could do to protect myself. Against all that raw power, it gave me a small corner of control.
That is our real need for shelter. It is evidence that we do in fact have some control.
Then, sometimes, control can get away from people. It slips away, in a million different ways, and always the last thing they want to let go of, until they have no choice, is shelter. And then control is gone.
When that happens, people, all sharing the same ancient instinct, are moved to help each other restore that choice, to have control. Tomorrow night, San Diego’s Interfaith Shelter Network will celebrate its 20th year of bringing people into shelter, step one, they say, “along a path marked ‘self-sufficiency’.”
The Network is a program of the Ecumenical Council of San Diego County and is supported by the city and county of San Diego, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and private donations. It works by obtaining agreements from church congregations, mainly, to use church buildings to provide “rotational shelter,” and it is powered mainly by volunteers. In 2004-2005, 110 countywide congregations participated, organized into seven regions, sheltering 281 people for more than 8,113 people-nights. Volunteers during that year provided 24,000 meals, including a hot supper family-style, breakfast, snacks, drinks and a sack lunch for every person every day.
The largest group served (47 percent) was families, 44 in all, comprising 133 individuals. Others were single men and women, and couples without children. All were referred to the Network by one of 10 local service agencies, whose referral criteria included the individual level of motivation to end their homelessness.
From their base in the Shelter Network, 57 percent of the people found and moved into more permanent housing, 41 percent were working when they departed the Network, and 62 percent of the adults had developed an income stream, either from jobs or other entitlements. The Network also provided career planning workshops and budget workshops. In 19 years, the Network had sheltered more than 6,500 men, women, and children, for 155,000 nights.
Friday night, the 2005-2006 figures will be announced, at the Network’s 20th anniversary celebration at USD’s Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. It always starts with a roof: a small corner of control in which both the sheltered and the sheltering feel warm.
But the need is different. With water and food, there is no choice. Without them, human beings can’t survive very long.
Humans can go indefinitely without shelter, but we don’t want to. Without a pressing need – extreme cold or heat – we still choose to provide ourselves shelter.
That’s why, years ago when kids still played outside, they loved the box more than the gift. Out in the yard, or on the front porch, they turned the box into shelter. In winter, in yards piled with warm brown leaves, kids burrowed in, pulled the leaves around and over them, and peered out from this sanctuary at the world.
At my house, we had a covered front porch, as most houses did, in West Texas before central air conditioning. When I heard thunder, and the sky began to darken, I would pull two porch chairs together back-to-back, run back to the bedroom for a quilt, throw the quilt over the chairs, and climb inside as the storm broke. I didn’t need shelter – I already had the porch – but I built one anyway, and in my sanctuary lightning lit the darkness, and thunder roared harmlessly, and the cool, wind-driven mist off the rain was just enough to wet my face, as I leaned near the entrance and watched.
That was the ancient shelter instinct rising. I didn’t need it, but in a raging primeval world of elements and survival demands, I wanted it, because it was something I could do to protect myself. Against all that raw power, it gave me a small corner of control.
That is our real need for shelter. It is evidence that we do in fact have some control.
Then, sometimes, control can get away from people. It slips away, in a million different ways, and always the last thing they want to let go of, until they have no choice, is shelter. And then control is gone.
When that happens, people, all sharing the same ancient instinct, are moved to help each other restore that choice, to have control. Tomorrow night, San Diego’s Interfaith Shelter Network will celebrate its 20th year of bringing people into shelter, step one, they say, “along a path marked ‘self-sufficiency’.”
The Network is a program of the Ecumenical Council of San Diego County and is supported by the city and county of San Diego, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and private donations. It works by obtaining agreements from church congregations, mainly, to use church buildings to provide “rotational shelter,” and it is powered mainly by volunteers. In 2004-2005, 110 countywide congregations participated, organized into seven regions, sheltering 281 people for more than 8,113 people-nights. Volunteers during that year provided 24,000 meals, including a hot supper family-style, breakfast, snacks, drinks and a sack lunch for every person every day.
The largest group served (47 percent) was families, 44 in all, comprising 133 individuals. Others were single men and women, and couples without children. All were referred to the Network by one of 10 local service agencies, whose referral criteria included the individual level of motivation to end their homelessness.
From their base in the Shelter Network, 57 percent of the people found and moved into more permanent housing, 41 percent were working when they departed the Network, and 62 percent of the adults had developed an income stream, either from jobs or other entitlements. The Network also provided career planning workshops and budget workshops. In 19 years, the Network had sheltered more than 6,500 men, women, and children, for 155,000 nights.
Friday night, the 2005-2006 figures will be announced, at the Network’s 20th anniversary celebration at USD’s Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. It always starts with a roof: a small corner of control in which both the sheltered and the sheltering feel warm.
May 17, 2006
Looking for a domino
Yes, I know, if circumstances bring about the resignation of George W. Bush, that means you-know-who becomes president.
It reminds me of Spiro T. Agnew. Remember him? He was Richard Nixon’s vice-president and chief spokesman. That administration, like the present one, didn’t much care for the media, whom Agnew called, “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Or maybe that was Democrats, and the media was the “effete corps of impudent snobs.” They all started to run together.
We always loved to see Spiro T. Agnew coming. But he resigned the vice-presidency in 1973 because of trouble with the law involving tax evasion and bribery while he was governor of Maryland. Imagine the nation’s relief, the following year, when Mr. Nixon resigned and Spiro T. Agnew did not become the President of the United States.
We – people like me – now are learning to hold our breath about Dick Cheney, whose sole contacts of any kind with our world are Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and, in emergencies, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. If the best thing that can happen for people like me is Mr. Bush’s resignation, what do we do about waking up the next morning and being addressed by President Dick Cheney in a Fox News exclusive?
Mr. Nixon presents our only workable precedent, choosing resignation as the lesser of two disgraces, and claiming loss of his political base in Congress as the reason. I remember many of us wishing he had just gone on and admitted knowing about the break-in and obstructing justice, but it was good enough for us, and bad enough, really traumatic, that he was gone and we could move on. As spanking new President Gerald R. Ford said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”
People like me have a hard time imagining President Dick Cheney saying something like that. Then again, we don’t know what Cheney would say, or not say, as president. He works, after all, for the President of the United States, whose attributes do not include a frankness in speaking, or an even temper. It would be very interesting to see the extemporaneous Cheney, with the Bush bubble lifted and blown away.
Bush’s baggage is his baggage. Whatever disgrace surfaced that would encourage Mr. Bush, like Mr. Nixon, to choose the lesser disgrace, would remain in place the day after Mr. Bush’s departure for Crawford, sitting there for President Cheney to explain, on the stage of an appalled nation and a hostile Congress. If I were Cheney, facing that, I might go ahead and resign, too, citing the hostile Congress, and fly off to Halliburton and a book contract, and let Dennis Hastert take care of the mess.
“Take care of the mess.” Those are inviting words, traumatic as it promises to be. Underneath the mess, the Constitution still works, and the Republic is only temporarily a government of men and not of laws. We just need a domino to fall.
It reminds me of Spiro T. Agnew. Remember him? He was Richard Nixon’s vice-president and chief spokesman. That administration, like the present one, didn’t much care for the media, whom Agnew called, “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Or maybe that was Democrats, and the media was the “effete corps of impudent snobs.” They all started to run together.
We always loved to see Spiro T. Agnew coming. But he resigned the vice-presidency in 1973 because of trouble with the law involving tax evasion and bribery while he was governor of Maryland. Imagine the nation’s relief, the following year, when Mr. Nixon resigned and Spiro T. Agnew did not become the President of the United States.
We – people like me – now are learning to hold our breath about Dick Cheney, whose sole contacts of any kind with our world are Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and, in emergencies, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. If the best thing that can happen for people like me is Mr. Bush’s resignation, what do we do about waking up the next morning and being addressed by President Dick Cheney in a Fox News exclusive?
Mr. Nixon presents our only workable precedent, choosing resignation as the lesser of two disgraces, and claiming loss of his political base in Congress as the reason. I remember many of us wishing he had just gone on and admitted knowing about the break-in and obstructing justice, but it was good enough for us, and bad enough, really traumatic, that he was gone and we could move on. As spanking new President Gerald R. Ford said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”
People like me have a hard time imagining President Dick Cheney saying something like that. Then again, we don’t know what Cheney would say, or not say, as president. He works, after all, for the President of the United States, whose attributes do not include a frankness in speaking, or an even temper. It would be very interesting to see the extemporaneous Cheney, with the Bush bubble lifted and blown away.
Bush’s baggage is his baggage. Whatever disgrace surfaced that would encourage Mr. Bush, like Mr. Nixon, to choose the lesser disgrace, would remain in place the day after Mr. Bush’s departure for Crawford, sitting there for President Cheney to explain, on the stage of an appalled nation and a hostile Congress. If I were Cheney, facing that, I might go ahead and resign, too, citing the hostile Congress, and fly off to Halliburton and a book contract, and let Dennis Hastert take care of the mess.
“Take care of the mess.” Those are inviting words, traumatic as it promises to be. Underneath the mess, the Constitution still works, and the Republic is only temporarily a government of men and not of laws. We just need a domino to fall.
May 14, 2006
What do we do now?
The best thing that can happen for people like me is for President Bush to lose his political base in Congress. He seems to be doing a good job of this.
Richard Nixon, a smoking gun aimed at his heart, used the “power base” option when he resigned the presidency in 1974. “Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate,” he said in his resignation speech, “I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me . . . however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. . . From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.
“I have never been a quitter,” he said. “To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.”
Losing his political base in Congress gave Richard Nixon an out. It is the best hope that we – people like me – have, to be rid of President Bush before the 2008 election. It is not a happy option for us, or anybody. We wish, instead of hoping for his resignation, that we were cheering his presidency.
Instead, we believe that President Bush does not care about us. We are the people in the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution. We are Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who write letters to the editor – I read one this morning – thinking that creation of a third party, a party dedicated to democratic process, is our best resort. We are not polarized politically, or even ideologically. After five years of Mr. Bush, we are polarized chronologically. We are polarized against the past, and for the future.
For us, “the future is now” could not be soon enough. We know Mr. Bush does not care about us. We also know that is the second-worst thing about it. The worst thing is if he DID care for us. It is no solace to us if his millions of supporters are getting nervous. They are no less stuck with his incompetence and, worse, his indifference, than we are. They are no less betrayed than we, who are mobilizing in an unprecedented way to the news about the phone call database.
His rationale is national security. Whose? Ours? If the principle of six degrees of separation is valid, the millions of us are connected, in this database, to target numbers. How do we feel about that? Are we ready to trade privacy for inquisition? What is the price paid, in lost freedom and confidence, in Mr. Bush’s effort to find a needle in a haystack? In the summer of 2001, according to the analyses, his administration couldn’t find a needle in a candybar. That must be a difficult reality for a president to live with, but not justification to end-run the checks and balances that are the real source of our security.
God knows George W. Bush is not a quitter. He may, though, after the phone thing is weighed against the Fourth Amendment, be nearing the point where the political base convinces him that the easy way out, for him, for them, and for us, as traumatic as it may be, is, as Mr. Nixon counseled, “to put the interests of America first,” and get the hell out.
Richard Nixon, a smoking gun aimed at his heart, used the “power base” option when he resigned the presidency in 1974. “Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate,” he said in his resignation speech, “I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me . . . however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. . . From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.
“I have never been a quitter,” he said. “To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.”
Losing his political base in Congress gave Richard Nixon an out. It is the best hope that we – people like me – have, to be rid of President Bush before the 2008 election. It is not a happy option for us, or anybody. We wish, instead of hoping for his resignation, that we were cheering his presidency.
Instead, we believe that President Bush does not care about us. We are the people in the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution. We are Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who write letters to the editor – I read one this morning – thinking that creation of a third party, a party dedicated to democratic process, is our best resort. We are not polarized politically, or even ideologically. After five years of Mr. Bush, we are polarized chronologically. We are polarized against the past, and for the future.
For us, “the future is now” could not be soon enough. We know Mr. Bush does not care about us. We also know that is the second-worst thing about it. The worst thing is if he DID care for us. It is no solace to us if his millions of supporters are getting nervous. They are no less stuck with his incompetence and, worse, his indifference, than we are. They are no less betrayed than we, who are mobilizing in an unprecedented way to the news about the phone call database.
His rationale is national security. Whose? Ours? If the principle of six degrees of separation is valid, the millions of us are connected, in this database, to target numbers. How do we feel about that? Are we ready to trade privacy for inquisition? What is the price paid, in lost freedom and confidence, in Mr. Bush’s effort to find a needle in a haystack? In the summer of 2001, according to the analyses, his administration couldn’t find a needle in a candybar. That must be a difficult reality for a president to live with, but not justification to end-run the checks and balances that are the real source of our security.
God knows George W. Bush is not a quitter. He may, though, after the phone thing is weighed against the Fourth Amendment, be nearing the point where the political base convinces him that the easy way out, for him, for them, and for us, as traumatic as it may be, is, as Mr. Nixon counseled, “to put the interests of America first,” and get the hell out.
May 11, 2006
A night at the opera
Karen, my wife, asked if I was going to wear my tuxedo to the opera.
“No,” I said, “I’m going to save the tuxedo for the Met.” We already knew, when we were married last December, that one of our destinations would be the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Karen likes opera more than I do – she even had season tickets once – but what’s not to like about walking into the plaza from Columbus Ave. on a sparkling New York evening, in a tuxedo with a gorgeous woman on your arm?
“No,” I said last Saturday, “I’m going to wear my eggplant t-shirt and gray suit.” The t-shirt was a nod to Zandra Rhodes, designer of the costumes for the opera we were going to attend. To Rhodes, who has pink hair, an eggplant-purple t-shirt wouldn’t make a decent funeral shroud, but it was the best I was willing to do.
The opera was “The Magic Flute,” which opened last Saturday night at the Civic Theatre in San Diego. I don’t hit many operas. I have seen “Die Fledermaus” and “Madame Butterfly,” and I would go again. At opera, you just let the music and the pageantry fold you in. No sense paying attention to the story, which is in a foreign language and written in a strange, slow-motion meter. In opera, to sing, “I love you, why don’t you love me?” takes about 20 minutes.
The tickets were a wedding present from our dear friend Sue Diaz, who knew of our Met aspirations and presented the San Diego tickets as a warmup. We got downtown early, about 5 for a 7 p.m. curtain, parked in the Civic Center garage, and strolled across the plaza toward C Street. Already there were concessionaires and a few people milling near the theater entrance. Two or three of them were wearing pink boas, a Rhodes signature. I felt smart in my eggplant t-shirt. At least I had dressed for the party.
We walked past the Westgate Hotel and across Broadway to Dobson’s and slid right into seats at the bar. Just in time, too; half an hour later it was packed. It is just the best experience, when nice evenings work out in unstructured ways. I had not been in Dobson’s probably in 10 years, and I regretted it. It’s a great spot (“The old Press Room Bar,” I told Karen), and before we left, we had added it to a short list of our places to hit about 5, sit at the bar, have a cocktail, and then wine and something savory to eat.
At Dobson’s, Karen had a Scotch, I had a martini, and then glasses of wine, some brie, and Dobson’s mussel bisque. Satisfying, but not so that you will snooze through the big aria. Then a five-minute walk to the theater through cool night air and the sounds of the city, thinking that, for opera, San Diego is a pretty good town.
The crowd was large now, sipping drinks or coffee, talking and laughing in groups, a few tuxes and lots of pink feather boas (but no other eggplant t-shirts, that I saw), moments of civil conviviality before the kickoff. What envy the artists in the crowd might feel, for a man to compose a work of art in 1791, that in 2006 will still call citizens together to enjoy it, in polite, enthusiastic audiences of 3,000.
The production was beautifully dramatic, the costumes imaginative and colorful, the music Mozart, and the story silly and in German but fun to follow on the Interprovision above the stage. The company was both professional and good-natured. At one point they delivered a line in English. Pamino, a man trapped in a bird’s body (don’t ask), says, “I think I have the flu.” A character across stage – it might have been the hero, Tamino – says, “I hope it’s not the bird flu.” Cracked us up.
Both of the night’s big moments belonged to the Queen of the Night. First, she floated earthward from the loft in a huge cradle of crescent moon and cascading bows of purple gossamer (color of eggplant, I thought), like a brooch you would see Zandra Rhodes wearing on an airplane.
Later, she sang an aria into which Mozart had inserted a lightning series of notes placed sort of like tiny footstep leaps of faith across a yawning void. Hit them all, he is saying, live to sing another day. Miss just one, just slightly, and down you go, into the void, falling until the end of time. She hit them all. I don’t know how. Imagine a hockey goalie, stopping eight shots in three seconds, left, right, up, down, middle. And then doing it again, a couple of minutes later. At the end, she got the night’s loudest ovation.
It was a heck of an evening. The Met and New York will have to go some to match it.
“No,” I said, “I’m going to save the tuxedo for the Met.” We already knew, when we were married last December, that one of our destinations would be the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Karen likes opera more than I do – she even had season tickets once – but what’s not to like about walking into the plaza from Columbus Ave. on a sparkling New York evening, in a tuxedo with a gorgeous woman on your arm?
“No,” I said last Saturday, “I’m going to wear my eggplant t-shirt and gray suit.” The t-shirt was a nod to Zandra Rhodes, designer of the costumes for the opera we were going to attend. To Rhodes, who has pink hair, an eggplant-purple t-shirt wouldn’t make a decent funeral shroud, but it was the best I was willing to do.
The opera was “The Magic Flute,” which opened last Saturday night at the Civic Theatre in San Diego. I don’t hit many operas. I have seen “Die Fledermaus” and “Madame Butterfly,” and I would go again. At opera, you just let the music and the pageantry fold you in. No sense paying attention to the story, which is in a foreign language and written in a strange, slow-motion meter. In opera, to sing, “I love you, why don’t you love me?” takes about 20 minutes.
The tickets were a wedding present from our dear friend Sue Diaz, who knew of our Met aspirations and presented the San Diego tickets as a warmup. We got downtown early, about 5 for a 7 p.m. curtain, parked in the Civic Center garage, and strolled across the plaza toward C Street. Already there were concessionaires and a few people milling near the theater entrance. Two or three of them were wearing pink boas, a Rhodes signature. I felt smart in my eggplant t-shirt. At least I had dressed for the party.
We walked past the Westgate Hotel and across Broadway to Dobson’s and slid right into seats at the bar. Just in time, too; half an hour later it was packed. It is just the best experience, when nice evenings work out in unstructured ways. I had not been in Dobson’s probably in 10 years, and I regretted it. It’s a great spot (“The old Press Room Bar,” I told Karen), and before we left, we had added it to a short list of our places to hit about 5, sit at the bar, have a cocktail, and then wine and something savory to eat.
At Dobson’s, Karen had a Scotch, I had a martini, and then glasses of wine, some brie, and Dobson’s mussel bisque. Satisfying, but not so that you will snooze through the big aria. Then a five-minute walk to the theater through cool night air and the sounds of the city, thinking that, for opera, San Diego is a pretty good town.
The crowd was large now, sipping drinks or coffee, talking and laughing in groups, a few tuxes and lots of pink feather boas (but no other eggplant t-shirts, that I saw), moments of civil conviviality before the kickoff. What envy the artists in the crowd might feel, for a man to compose a work of art in 1791, that in 2006 will still call citizens together to enjoy it, in polite, enthusiastic audiences of 3,000.
The production was beautifully dramatic, the costumes imaginative and colorful, the music Mozart, and the story silly and in German but fun to follow on the Interprovision above the stage. The company was both professional and good-natured. At one point they delivered a line in English. Pamino, a man trapped in a bird’s body (don’t ask), says, “I think I have the flu.” A character across stage – it might have been the hero, Tamino – says, “I hope it’s not the bird flu.” Cracked us up.
Both of the night’s big moments belonged to the Queen of the Night. First, she floated earthward from the loft in a huge cradle of crescent moon and cascading bows of purple gossamer (color of eggplant, I thought), like a brooch you would see Zandra Rhodes wearing on an airplane.
Later, she sang an aria into which Mozart had inserted a lightning series of notes placed sort of like tiny footstep leaps of faith across a yawning void. Hit them all, he is saying, live to sing another day. Miss just one, just slightly, and down you go, into the void, falling until the end of time. She hit them all. I don’t know how. Imagine a hockey goalie, stopping eight shots in three seconds, left, right, up, down, middle. And then doing it again, a couple of minutes later. At the end, she got the night’s loudest ovation.
It was a heck of an evening. The Met and New York will have to go some to match it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)