18 September 2000 ~ Bach and roll, baby; or, the roar of the tampon...

I am exactly where I want to be... in my house, with my stomach full of Spaghettio's with meat, and the world's most amazing peach tea (with real peaches and lemons in it) sitting next to me.

I watched the sunset this evening. It was the most brilliant pink and blue I've seen in a long, long time. Two random hippies were standing on the corner of my street, staring at the sky and clutching at each other. "Just watchin' the sunset," they told me. "It's beautiful," I replied.

I was returning from Norman's apartment... We'd spent the afternoon watching Twin Peaks and kissing. Both are highly addictive. We'd spent the previous night telling secrets and kissing.

We went to a Bach concert at SUNY the other night. ("Bach an' roll, baby!") I can honestly say I've never been to anything like it. Oh, I've been to a number of concerts, seen a number of people play instruments and sing and whatnot, but this was somehow very, very different... Norman was supposed to write a paragraph about it for one of his classes... I think I'll write a few paragraphs of my own...

We'd just gotten dinner at Denny's. And the Denny's people were moving kind of slowly, so we were almost late. My companion kept muttering, "I'm going to be so pissed if we're late... I hope they don't do the Brandonberg Concerto first..." I wasn't all that concerned. My main concerns included:

"I hope if we're NOT late, this isn't going to be boring, because if I get bored and fall asleep, I'm going to feel SO dumb..." I've been known to do that before. I once slept through an entire performance of "Carousel," as well as numerous high school band concerts, several college poetry readings, and "2001."

"Gahd, he's sexy..." We were both wearing leather jackets, and Norman was wearing this leather hat... We both looked like we'd just stepped out of some freaky-art-kid bar. We looked kind of like we belonged together. We looked like the kind of nauseating couple that always grosses me out when I'm not with somebody. I don't think Norman noticed. I think Norman was too concerned with the Brandonberg Concerto. I smiled, having no idea what the fuck a Brandonburg Concerto was... except that I hoped I wouldn't fall asleep during it.

We weren't late. We sat amid numerous older couples who looked like they needed surgery to remove something large and ugly from their rectal cavities. My anxiety grew. I was certain I'd fall asleep.

Now, I like good music, honestly I do. Good music of any sort is great and I can appreciate it, even music without words that was written a bazillion years ago. However, that doesn't mean I can stay awake to watch it...

When the pianist took the stage and began playing the first piece, I stared at her, transfixed. It wasn't the music so much as the way her hands moved that fascinated me. As a matter of fact, I found that when I TRIED to pay attention to the music, I got bored again. Oh, I DID try... But I guess I don't really know much ABOUT music, first of all... As in, "gee, it sounds like she's playing a lot of those little number-sign-thingies and little thingies shaped like "b"'s..." I don't think music looks like that, or SHOULD look like that... So, for the rest of the concert, I thought about what it SHOULD look like...

That first woman, the pianist... her arms looked like cobwebs blowing around in a storm... You could see how strong and thin her muscles were. I kind of wished she was totally naked while she played, just because it seemed like her whole body was full of the notes she was playing... So sensual... It's no wonder they say musicians are good in bed...

And then there was the Brandenburg Concerto... Suddenly, I forgot all about falling asleep. I even forgot about how sexy Norman was in leather. The Brandenburg Concerto didn't just sound like music, or even pictures or ideas... It sounded like a whole story; one with a big gold parlour and some stuffy-looking women in long, long dresses, and maybe a king or something... And maybe the king or whatever has a daughter, and the daughter's sort of crazy, but maybe she's in love with this guy who's some kind of servant or something... And maybe one day, he's in the big gold parlour, and he plays something like this, and the crazy daughter lights a candle in front of him -- a red one -- and sits and watches... Only, she's not supposed to be in love with him, because he's like, the servant or something... So when nobody's around, she calls him, "my prince."

Whew... I don't know where I come up with this crap... But it was beautiful... Afterwards, I had to go outside and have a cigarette and sit down.

I didn't fall asleep. I sat and made up stories for the music to go with.

"When you see music in your head," I asked Aaron a few days ago, "what does it look like?"

"Like... music," he said.

"Like notes and stuff?"

"Yeah..."

I felt truly sorry for him. Music looks to me like... well, sometimes it looks like highways, or people making out in deserts, or big gold parlours, or sunrises, or picnics, or... well, just about anything, really... I can't imagine listening to something so beautiful and seeing line after line of black and white lines and dots and little number-sign-looking-thingies...

One night, maybe a year ago, Aaron and I were walking around Binghamton late at night, and it seemed that everywhere we went, there was music. There was the ghastly cacophony in the Studios on Front Street. There was the roar of the tampon ("Tam-tam, Helena; it's a tam-tam, not a tampon") in "Carmina Burana" in Aaron's car cassette player. And then there was this high, mellow guitar music drifting out of a third-story window someplace downtown -- we stood in an alley and listened to somebody singing along with their guitar... I happened to look upwards in that alley, and I could see one star between the roofs of the buildings. Even though the guitar guy wasn't that great, everything was sort of perfect that night...

I'm tired; I'm kind of losing my train of thought... I think it's bedtime...

Goodnight,
~Helena*