Mahler: you don't have to hit us over the head with it

This weekend, I went tothe Des Moines symphony. They played Mahler's 6th Symphony, known as "The Tragic", because it tells the story of a hero who is destroyed by fate. Now, a lot of musical pieces have symbolic elements that help tell the story. Messien's Quartet for the End of Time has clarinet trills which represent birdcalls. Vivaldi's Summer has a repetitive cello motive which represents a dog barking in the distance. Literal, yes, but charming. Mahler can't be bothered with this sort of subtlety. To represent the "crushing blows of fate", which "fell...(the Hero)... as a tree is felled," Mahler uses not a percussive motive or a ringing brass chord, he uses...

A GIANT HAMMER.

That's right, the guy you see here picks up this 38-pound monstrosity that he apparently stole from a Klaus Oldenberg sculpture garden, and whacks it against a table. Mahler calls it the "Hammerschlag", which translates of course to "hammer blow" or hammer hit." (Click on the picture for a video) It happens three times during the last movement. Before one of them, I had started to doze off (the 6th symphony is long), and I imagine I would have jumped straight out my chair had my quick-thinking friend Matt not said "Hammerschlag!" in my ear just before the big moment.
I'd like to add that in a less -depressing portion of the symphony, Mahler depicts the Hero's childhood with a lovely pastoral scene. He uses lush, rolling melodies and major tonalities. Then, just in case you're not yet convinced that we're on a farm, a percussionist walks forward with 5 cowbells attached to a stick, with a look on his face that says, "why me?" Luckily, he just shakes them lightly, rather than busting full-on into a rendition of "Mississippi Queen", but the moment (and his dignity) has been lost.

perspective

In an 8-story hospital on a busy road in Virginia, a man lies alone in his private room. It's his 39th birthday, one he spent enduring waves of pain, nausea, and constant fatigue. A few relatives filtered in and out throughout the day. He struggled to communicate with the sympathetic faces, the somber birthday wishes. He knew why they were uncomfortable - what kind of birthday greeting can you give to a man who will probably not see another one? Before she left, his wife gave him a used paperback, which lies on his bedside table, surrounded by half-empty cups of water and ginger ale, straw wrappers, tissues, and vials, the hospital miscellany that seems to build up around a person who can't leave his bed.

On his "good days", reading is one of the things he can still do - he can skim escapist fiction, play video games, watch TV. Funny how the things that we who are on the outside do for relaxation are the very things the hospital inmate learns to resent. The rest of us spend so much time trying to forget our days. We read, listen to, and watch anything we can to deaden our senses, and detatch ourselves from the world. A world this man would give anything to rejoin.

dream

Last night I dreamed I went to London with Carolyn. It was really odd - there were all these people dressed up like nineteenth century circus freaks.......or maybe cirque du soleil people. And there was a great deal to do with public transportation that I can't remember now - we took some sort of odd horse-drawn contraption through town, and there was a weird guy with a top hat who was sort of like our tour guide. We rode this thing to this really ridiculously beautiful golf course and I kept mentioning how mild the weather was, considering it's winter. Ugh, and there was something about a doll in an attic? I swear, some people have normal dreams, and me, I have Moulin Rouge acid trips.

New Year's Revolutions

My New Year's celebration this year was a weekend with Leeann and her friend Andrea in Iowa City. After a wonderful fondue supper, we got dressed to the nines, and went to the Moose Lodge for their free New Year's dance. As you might imagine, the crowd wasn't exactly young, and the band played strictly oldies stuff, but the dance floor was full. It was classy - halfway through the dance the flourescent lights came on so we could enter the raffle for the "wagon of booze" (yes, you got to take home the Radio Flyer wagon). We were lucky enough to share a table with two rambunctious 80-something ladies. They took the dance floor repeatedly, one bringing her cane, the other her walker, wearing sparkly clothes, occasionally shouting "whoooo!". While we were sitting at the table, the lady next to me described her friends' talent for making animal sounds. Without missing a beat, her friend across from me began demonstrating her abilities. You should have seen Leeann's face when the little old lady bleated, "NEIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHHHH" at the top of her voice. The enthusiasm was infectious - soon we were all on the dancefloor jumping around to covers of Beatles and other 60's rock tunes.

Which brings me to my New Year's resolution, inspired by a poem that ends with: "I wonder if I'll ever have the courage to be that/ferocious/again?" My resolution is to be ferocious - which I'm defining not as mean but as purposeful and catalytic, a force of righteous anger and girl power. It's the courage to be positive in a world that is so far from what it could be, it's nearly comical. It's a celebration of singleness as a healthy perpetual state, and an embracing of individuality. Think of it as the new "fierce." (Tyra Banks, eat your heart out.)