I am soooo ready to be out of this apartment. I'm tired of coming home to find dead mice in our mousetraps (the mousetraps we bought, mind you... not our landlord, but us). I'm tired of glancing out of the corner of my eye to find crawling things with exoskeletons in random places. I'm tired of doing dishes every five seconds because we have no dishwasher. And I'm tired of paying decent rent money for it. This summer I finally started to like this apartment and the area around it but enough is enough. December 1 will come as a welcome relief. I'm so glad we're not re-signing the lease on this place.
But that is not what I want to talk about tonight. What I actually intended to come home and blog about before I found the dead mouse is how amazing it felt to go to the free St. Louis Symphony concert in Forest Park tonight. It was awesome. Granted, I didn't get there until about 7:40, since I didn't get done teaching until about 7:20. Then I had to park... with the concert well under way by 7, the park was chock full. I literally parked a half-mile away and ran from my car to the concert (good thing I wear my trail sandals ALL the time for just such occasions lol). And then after the concert, I ran from Art Hill back to my car on Wydown... it was intense. But it was also invigorating and lovely and refreshing. And that was just the run... the concert itself was fantastic and made me miss hearing live classical music so much that I literally ached inside, resolving not to waste this concert season by not going to anything... not that I ever intended to do this in the past, just that when you're a pianist, sometimes you have to prioritize: eating and paying the stupid overpriced rent on your apartment... or going to the symphony.
But tonight it was free and it felt amazing to be alive, sitting on Art Hill in the moonlight with thousands of other St. Louisans, soaking it all in. I arrived half-way through Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre and listened with delight as the orchestra finished their program with music from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, followed by the finale from Stravinsky's Firebird and last but not least, Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. And David Robertson didn't have a clue, but every single one of those four final pieces on the concert held special meaning for me and made me remember why I have such a deep love affair with music: because music grows with you. It stays in your memory bank and collects layers upon layers of meaning as you go about living your life... layers that no one else will ever understand but you, because you will be the only one who lives through all that accumulates. And for a musician, music is big... big enough for you to get angry at, or carry your sadness for you, or speak to you in the back of your mind about that one thing you can't quite put your finger on. It's like anything else that's truly powerful -- it seeps into your soul and reveals things. In other words, for better or worse, music (like all art) has something to say about the truth of our reality. And the truth it said to me tonight is this: there's a reason you miss this... go find it.
Which is pretty powerful stuff...
... I want so desperately to find myself. And I feel like I keep looking in all the wrong places, not to mention way too anxiously for my own good. The striving is killing me. And I'm not sure what the answer is yet. After all, when you're doing what you thought you wanted to do or were supposed to do or are good at and it still doesn't feel right for some reason... then what?
And maybe the answer is that I'm chasing rainbows. Maybe it isn't outside of myself at all. Maybe it all goes back to what Anne Shirley says: I went looking for my dreams outside of myself and discovered, it's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it.
And maybe that's why I miss listening to live music so much... maybe listening makes me shut up long enough to reignite my passion so I can pass it on to my students. Maybe listening makes me... listen and... think... and... rest.
I'm not very good at resting. I ran all over Forest Park tonight. And then I ran into Trader Joe's afterward. And then I ran to Target after that. I run a lot. And I go a lot. And I teach a lot. And I don't really stop, except when I blog. And even then, I'm still talking and spilling out my own opinion. Maybe the reason I miss listening so much is because it's restful, reflective... worshipful, even, since it points my thoughts away from myself and back to the truth in a way that really makes sense to me.
That's all for now since, you know... I have more to think about. And a dead mouse to dispose of...
No comments:
Post a Comment