There's No Going Back
Bear with a very extended and winding metaphor....
In my bedroom, I have a very old stereo, or "Boom Box" as my parents still call it. 
The tape deck hasn't worked since Clinton's first term in office, the radio is harder to tune than my 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera ("Mama Olds," as I call her, really has nothing to do with this post... I just wanted to show off my beaten-up little baby), and the CD player, though still functional, can only go in one direction. The fast forward, rewind and pause all stopped working a few years ago, leaving only Play functional. Therefore, CDs can only be listened to straight through, and if I want to hear a song again, the entire CD must be restarted.
Now. I happen to love Bobby McFerrin - in general, but particularly his album, Paper Music, a collection of classical pieces which he either conducts, performs in, or both. And there is one song on the album which moves me to pieces every time I hear it: his recording of Faure's "Pavane." Though I studied music theory in college, frankly a lot of classical music still bores me; but this piece to my ears is endlessly, tirelessly sad and beautiful, and his vocals on top of it are ethereal.
This CD has been putting me to sleep almost nightly for the last few years, and this summer, whenever we've had one of those spectacular thunderstorms, I've taken to sitting in my bay window to watch, accompanied by this CD. Whenever I get to Pavane, a seven-or-so minute piece, I want to sit there and replay and replay and replay it. But with my busted stereo, I am forced to experience it in forward motion, there is no going back, only the existence of the piece itself in space and time.
I was thinking about this as I stood backstage awaiting my first entrance for The Boy in the Basement on Thursday. The end of this show would leave us more than half way from completion of our time with the Fringe. I tried to be present and revel in that feeling of being backstage, in the darkness, enjoying the anticipation of a performance's beginning without sinking into the melancholy of a its close, and it reminded me of Pavane on my stereo.
This beautiful song - any piece of music - functions only with time and space. Its existence is predicated on its ultimate demise, and it can only exist in forward: you can't have the vertical resplendence of chords without the relational horizontal passage of time, careening toward completion.
Maybe this is all a little lofty to think about in regards to a live-action trashy romance novel, but it's more about this career and in turn to life itself. Time passes in one direction (Ok, Einstein had his theories otherwise but at least as we experience time in this dimension, it is mono-directional) and it determines our constant demise and rebirth. Each show we do is only possible due to the passage of time, and by its nature must end and never exist again. Each day we pass, no matter how wonderful or terrible, will always come to a close, never to return.
Oddly, the speed at which it all occurs, however, is drastically variant. As my buddy Albert said:
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."
Congratulations on the extension Lynne! Looks like the Blogstagers triumph. I'll be sure to check out Boy in the Basement this round.
Posted by: Halley | August 25, 2008 at 11:54 AM