I sleep in until 10:00 a.m. So I miss the storm’s 9:00 a.m. landfall in New York City. Waking and dozing off since 8:00 a.m., I register somewhere in there that if I’m reading the time on the digital alarm clock, the power’s still on.
Irene lost some punch and came through New York as a tropical storm. At least for me on West 16th Street in Manhattan, the wham and the bam seemed minimal.
The Weather Channel is showing photo tweets from the area, including flooded streets and a big downed tree leaning against a brownstone in Brooklyn, its root system now perpendicular to the sidewalk. Hard to tell if the building was damaged.
My tree held. Now, when a gust on the back side of this storm blows through its dense leaves, it showers the pavement like a wet dog.
Facebook and Twitter are full of comments about the media and government overblowing the storm. But all I have to say is “Thank you, Irene,” for not being worse than you were. You can drain the tub, you can unpack the go-bag, you can put away the flashlights, and go on your merry way. But if things had been worse and you weren’t prepared, you’d only have had regrets.
I spent three days last week in a digital training class, the Hyper Island Master Class. The class itself wasn’t digital; I was physically there, as were my classmates and the instructors. It was about the digital world and how it’s changing our lives and, specifically, the business I’m in — advertising and marketing.
Professionally, we’re all struggling to understand, incorporate and profit from digital venues like Facebook and Twitter to which consumers (you might know them as ”people“) have flocked in such numbers. It’s a challenge; there’s a lot to learn. Or perhaps more appropriately, there’s a lot to explore and discover. It’s all so new and immediate that the lessons to be learned from experience are few.
That said, personally, I’m not exactly a digital babe in the woods. I blog, I post to Facebook, I check-in to Foursquare. (In fact, I just earned the Sixteen Candles badge for having five birthday shout-outs on Foursquare. So there, you geeky digiscenti!)
But every once in a while, I’m made delightfully aware of how my ”digital life” enhances my ”real life;” in fact, how the two are now really both of one piece. I guess I’m becoming “post-digital.” It’s only the fact that I can remember a time when I had no “digital life” that I’m able to be aware of a distinction.
And here’s a great example of the richness of being post-digital.
Several weeks ago, I went to see Joshua Bell perform the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. I’ve seen him many times. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a fan. I once stood in line for thirty minutes after a concert with what seemed to be a bevy of 15-year-old girls to get an autograph on one of his CDs. (He is young and cute, after all; something which 15-year-old girls and 50+-year-old gay men both probably appreciate to a greater extent than does the general population.)
Most people would not like the seat I have for this concert season: it’s in the very first row, dead center. I understand why. You can’t actually see the players toward the back of the stage, and you’re probably hearing a bit too much of the violins relative to the other instruments in the orchestra. But if you like to watch the soloists as much as hear them, this seat is heaven.
At this performance, Joshua (I think I can call him that, can’t I?) was no more than six feet away, directly in front of me. If I concentrated, I could block out the audience around me, and it was as if he were performing only for me.
It’s always a mesmerizing experience to watch and listen to him play. It almost seems silly to attempt to describe it, so I won’t, other than to say it’s more like he dances with the violin with his eyes shut, and amazing music comes out.
Unfortunately, there’s no video of him playing the Sibelius concerto on YouTube (it’s a wonderful piece of music), but if you’ve not seen him perform and want a taste, here he is doing the first movement of a Bruch concerto.
At the intermission, I turned my iPhone back on and checked into Avery Fisher Hall on Foursquare, letting the check-in post automatically to my Facebook page. This was my post.
Don Hogle Just heard Joshua Bell play the Sibelius Violin Concerto after L’Apres-midi d’un Faun. Preparing for Lindberg’s “Kraft”.
Don just checked-in @ New York Philharmonic – Avery Fisher Hall (w/ 9 others) (New York, NY) October 12 at 8:48pm
I settled back in for the second half of the program, a wild performance of Magnus Lindberg’s Kraft, which included percussion made with found junk, musicians blowing air bubbles into tubs of water, small ensembles scattered around the perimeter of the concert hall, a huge gong suspended in the middle of the hall, and Alan Gilbert directing in Converse sneakers and a polo shirt.
After the concert, I got on the M5 bus at Broadway and 65th Street, and checked emails on my iPhone. There was a notice from Facebook; I had a message from Jud Cairns, my sister’s former next-door neighbor in Chantilly, VA with whom I’m friends on Facebook, now that we’re no longer in proximity in “real life.” Here’s Jud’s post:
The link is to an article in The Washington Post about an experiment they conducted with Joshua Bell to answer a philosophical question. As the article states, “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
Someone has conveniently posted a video on YouTube about the event, which describes it as well. (One of the comments to the posting says, “Woah [sic] there, I don’t think this clip needs a loud douchebag to introduce the video like that.”) Personally, I sort of enjoyed the douchebag’s narration (he’s also kind of cute in a douchebaggy sort of way), but if you don’t have the time or inclination to watch the video or to read the article itself (it’s lengthy but great, and contains several clips of the performance), I’ll give you the bottom line on the experiment below.
Joshua played six masterpieces for violin over a period of 43 minutes. Of the 1097 people who passed by, only 7 stopped to listen for at least a minute. 27 people gave him money; he made $32.17, which is a bit more than $1.19 per paying customer. Actually it’s considerably less, when you note that the one person who recognized him, having just seen him give a free concert at the Library of Congress, gave him a Jackson.
The article is quite worth the read, if you’re willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes to do so. I was able to read it in its entirety before I got off the bus that evening at 17th and 5th around the corner from my apartment. More than just a human interest story about what happens when one of the world’s most famous musicians plays a few tunes anonymously in the DC metro, it’s a marvelous essay on the role of beauty in our modern lives.
I go to watch and listen to someone like Joshua Bell play a gorgeous piece of music like the Sibelius concerto, because I crave those moments of exquisite beauty. Even though my father told me when I was in high school that I should never use the word “exquisite” (which I’d just used) because boys didn’t use that word.
I love the beauty of an exquisitely crafted, thought-provoking essay like the one Jud shared with me on my Facebook wall. That I consumed this one courtesy the internet, social media and a mobile phone while I was still reflecting on an immediate experience of beauty in the “real world” made it all the more potent.
I’ll close with a poem about beauty. I wrote this many years ago, after watching a college friend toss a frisbee in the dying light of a late spring evening on the expansive front lawn of the campus. Fireflies were pirouetting in swarms over the lawn. My friend was not only physically a quite beautiful young man, he also moved with the incredible grace of a natural athlete. We were crazy about each other; in love with each other’s mind, really. But I was deeply in love with him as well in a way I was frightened to reveal for fear of losing him. But you can always write poetry instead.
The poem is to him, but the title is my answer to a broader question that underlies The Post’s experiment: should we care about Beauty wherever we happen to find it? If you are a student of poetry, you might appreciate the precise and tortured rhyme scheme. You might find it beautiful in its own tortured way.
Art for Art, Man for Man To Brock
Though I be censured, forced to face
A foe insensitive to grace,
Incensed that I see no disgrace
In worshipping your graceful beauty;
Though they may chastise, purge this page
For unchaste words, with saintly rage
My choice deny – such saints enrage
And worship your courageous beauty;
My love will not succumb to fear.
My love, I fiercely will revere
Our love, and I will persevere
In worshipping your virile beauty.
Lexington, VA 1975
Perhaps, if I ever own a car, I should have a bumper sticker made that says, I brake for beauty.
