TubaOrNotTuba

Another year, another child, another concert, another joining of like minds in a local pizza place. As a parent-in-training (is there any other kind?), I’ve been blessed by three boys who have followed, unwittingly, in my own footsteps, now faded after years of windy weather. Musicians, trained under the hard hand of a band director that will retire from service in the summer, leaving behind hundreds of students who have learned a lesson; nothing comes without lots of practice.

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I managed to avoid the trap by this much (image of a finger and thumb with two degrees of separation come to mind) this evening. Son #3 was due to be on the ice shortly after supper to cue the fans for a rousing chorus of the national anthem. Followed thereafter by three hours of my sitting in front of the ice while thousands of people screamed about the banality of a hockey puck in emulation mode of a Brownian motion lab. Thanks, but no thanks. I stepped sideways (in the same way our dog avoids collaring) and did something much more interesting.

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I’ve attached (for a long time) importance to who makes the music I like. Songs shouldn’t be reduced to a title; the artist did get involved along the way. From back when music was who we saw on Ed Sullivan, through the Teen Beat magazines that my sisters left around the house, across the covers of the LPs which showed up in the radio station; all of these led to there being somebody behind the whole thing. Maybe that’s why I never fell in love with anonymous piano concertos from long dead men played by faceless hands.

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Perhaps it was the music, or the scenery, or the parallel to “my own culture”, but I really enjoyed tonight’s choice on the DVD spindle. Through a combination of luck and perseverence, I managed to find a copy of The Boys Of County Clare starring Colm Meany and Andrea Corr. Trek and eye candy. Don’t look for this one in a video club near me, unfortunately; it seems to have fared better on the other side of the pond than here.

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Maybe this is it. My luck has to change for the better sometime, right? If only… after reading on the web that a server had crashed when too many people tried to log in at the same time, all that was possible was a commiserative moment. There but for bandwidth go  the rest of us; webmasters at large. I read Slashdot; I understand the risks of putting your best face forward.

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The local newpaper has been running a series for the last few days on nostalgia. So right! For a person who hasn’t already forgotten what day it is, the thought of yesterday (so many of them to work with) is good fun. I know, that’s not really a complete sentence, but most memories are like that; incomplete… phrases.

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One of the traps that popular culture sets out is a belief that we recognize “the story” behind the plot of the movie or program or play or book or whatever. Take it from me; that’s just proof that the illusion is working as it should.

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The day is over, and I have been well entertained. Today was “the day”, when son #3 and a host of other musicians gathered on the stage of the new Salle Raoul-Jobin, in the renovated Palais Montcalm theatre in Quebec City. A concert hall that still has the “new car” smell. And, from my point of view, excellent acoustics. I was there, and the concert was memorable.

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This evening, while avoiding reruns of crime programs on TV, I learned that I have been living next to a parallel world. There is no intended oxymoron here. My life as a lonely solo musician who hates to practice has not been in vain. There are others, and they’ve found the answer.

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Somewhere along the way in my mathematics education, a teacher explained the definition of a subset, and I so totally got it! You see, we live in a very musical world, where a hint of melody is somewhere close by all day long. Yes, especially in our heads. Ever suffer from the earworm? I thought so. Back to the subset. Think of the whole world as a set. Now step back and picture those who actually perform. Instant example.

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