Hope You Get Off in Time to Enjoy Some of this “Sunshine”

Here’s a post on everything that has happened since I went to Seattle; later I’ll say more about what happened prior to that.

First, I’m going to try to get up to Seattle about twice a year, now that I know how very excellent it is. (It also takes, like, no time to get there, all told: four hours. It takes me two hours to get to Carol Joy’s in Novato, 28.7 miles away.)

Some activities that have been proposed: visiting Victoria and Vancouver, going cross-country skiing, and taking to the water in a rowboat. David was saying maybe he’ll take a class, and then we three can go out in a rowboat on some future visit, “and you can row.”

“I can row? I thought you were going to take a class,” I said.

Lisa explained, “The class teaches you how to get other people to row.”

“Right,” agreed David. “It’s basically a rowing management class.”

That reminded me of a time my mother made fudge that refused to fudge. My father cheered her up by saying that what she had studied back in her home economics days had actually been fudge theory.

Lisa, apropos of a conversation we had while I was there, sent me a link this past week to the Uptight Seattleite column, which runs in the Seattle Weekly. I came upon a column in the archives where a woman said she felt weird having someone else (you know, the Bag Boy) carry her groceries to her car for her.

The U.S. advised her to make friendly conversation with the fellow so it wouldn’t seem as if she thought he was of the lower classes. He writes: “A good line for this is, ‘Hope you get off in time to enjoy some of this sunshine!’ But—and this is very important—make sure this doesn't sound like some kind of inappropriate invitation. You might want to practice beforehand until you've achieved just the right tone of casualness.”

This past Friday night, I skipped watching a DVD so I could get up at a reasonable hour yesterday morning, which was one of those dazzling ultra-paradise days. Many days here are utterly gorgeous, and then there are some that are completely over the top, where everyone is in a happy daze; yesterday was one of those.

I made it to Rainbow soon after it opened, and came home to rinse fruit, chop veggies, and make black bean and tomato soup, and a barley-mushroom pilaf which is very nice reheated in olive oil and served with avocado slices.

While I was cooking, “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me” was on the radio, and they were on quite the roll. The host said, “Sarah Palin has reset the bar—and now we’re all playing limbo trying to get under it.”

The host referred to the Obama administration as the O-ministration, and started the show by saying something like, “We’re here in the Oval Office with two men, one of whom many people still feel is not quite ready to sit behind this desk. But he’ll be leaving in a couple of months.”

He also cited Obama’s post-election meeting with Bush as evidence of Obama’s stated willingness to meet with unstable leaders without preconditions.

So: many opportunities for comedy during the transition period, another wonderful thing about Obama being elected I hadn't even thought of.

When cooking was over, I met Eric G. for a stroll around Dolores Park. While we were walking, a woman who had briefly interviewed me at Rainbow for a radio piece she was doing about healthy eating recognized my voice—I would never have recognized her, so that was serendipitous—and told me that the segment will be on the radio next Wednesday, also the day my latest KQED Perspective will be on, as it happens; the other thing will be on KALW. I don’t think my radio goes there. I think it only goes to KQED.

Then I took the bus to the church at Van Ness and Sacramento to meet Sally N. for the second of three Messiaen-inspired recitals. Some of the pieces required a renewed resolution to pay attention every few seconds, as there was nothing one might call melody or harmony to hang one’s hat on. They were pure timbre, pitch and duration, but after sufficient effort to attend, the pieces became engaging, which is not the same thing as pleasant to the ear, but has its satisfactions.

None of these was by Messiaen himself. In the second half, there was a soprano. Normally I don’t like people to sing in classical or contemporary classical music; it’s like, “Can you stop singing? I’m trying to listen to music.” But this woman, Lara Bruckmann, truly sang like an angel, and had a lush, generous, expressive presence. I was swooning. It was as if she opened her mouth and molten gold effortlessly poured forth. I would definitely go across town to hear her sing again.

She sang some Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972), from Cuatro Canciones Andinas (Four Andean Songs), which was beautiful and melancholy, and then finally some actual Messiaen: excerpts from Harawi, which also draws on Peruvian folk music.

Normally when I hear mention of Peruvian folk music, or any kind of folk music (or bluegrass, for that matter, and also reggae or ska), I say, “I think I hear the dinner bell!” and rush off, but both of these pieces were so great, I believe my fear of Andean folk music is utterly gone. The excerpts from Harawi were absolutely mesmerizing. I’m going to buy the whole thing.