CLAUDE DEBUSSY

Friday night I bike to Carnegie Hall.
I want to to listen to the classical pianist Katya Grineva.
I want to experience LIFE LOVE TRUTH.

I sit in the highest balcony for $25.
Section DC1, row/box FF, seat 112.
I notice that the audience is mostly Russian. They are there to support their Russian daughter.

The balcony I sit in is for the noisy types.
Phones go off. Cameras flash.
The ushers (in red costumes) are finger pointing ill-mannered policemen.
They lost patience with us before we arrived.
They know our type. The type that sits in the highest balcony.

I sit (alone) stuffed into my seat.

The pianist enters wearing a beautiful black gown. She has piled up blond hair and lovely arms.
She could be from any era.

After each piece she bows just so, (like a princess).

I listen. Steering my oddball physical complaints toward the perfection of the music.

The pianist is stunning. She is as masterful as any athlete or famous intellectual.
We should all be artists (I think to myself) , masters of our talents.
To share with the world a language that can't be spoken. A language with no words.
To recognize it, we all have to be there for each other, smiling. or grimacing,, sharing in something that we recognize, but words can't describe.

The music is complicated and intricate. It always hits emotionally but sometimes it's confident anti-melody challenges me and I loose my place.

It's troubling to me sometimes.

But it can soar.

At one point during Debussy's "Clair de Lune" the corners of my mouth go up and my head rolls like I am getting a sorely needed back massage.



The concert ends with two encores, the last one by Chopin. Her hands are everywhere at once and my ears cannot make sense of the music. It is a triumph.

I bike home. And as I bike down a carnival-like noisy 9th avenue, I stop at a red-light.
Tommy, an actor I have known for 20 years, calls out my name.

"Charlie!"

"Where's your brain cage?"
(he means my bike helmet)

" oh, I have worse problems." I say nonsensically, I say reflexively.

(Sometimes I speak the thing nearest at hand ( a nervous impulse) because my body/mind can't get it together to (listen- understand - and then respond) My reactive answer often expresses a silly crude simple self apparent idea of my general circumstances)

" You'll have even worse problems if you don't wear a helmet." Tommy persists.

But the light has changed to green for me,

and I bike away without responding to him or wrapping up the conversation in any particular way,

...the music of Debussy still in my head.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

cut and paste

http://www.superopera.com/mp3/debussy/r_clair%20de%20lune%27_44.mp3