Saturday, May 19, 2007
[Later edit - fixed post number. Ignore.]
I'm still proud of me. I attacked the pile of paper on the desk in the living room, the desk where I drop "to do" mail as it comes in, and there wasn't a single thing there that had to be handled. Whoop! Usually there's at least one overdue bill in the heap.
FirstW and I went to dinner tonight at the Madaline in Tivoli. The food was terrific. Get the eggplant appetizer! Expensive, though. We both had a drink and an appetizer, and I had an entree and she had a dessert and coffee, and with tip it came to $90.
After dinner we went to a gamelan concert at Bard, where we ran into Les at the entrance. He was there alone, so we sat him between us and soaked him for information. The concert was interesting. Twenty players, and they explained the instruments, the method of playing them, and the format of the compositions. Some of the music seemed a lot like change ringing (which I love). Some of it sounded like a family reunion, with the kids on the left (the tenor section), the adults on the right (the base section), and the complaining mother-in-law (the conductor's drum) in the middle.
"Gamelan" does not refer to the instruments. It's what the ensemble of instruments is called, and the style of music. Once an ensemble is put together, the individual instruments cannot be simply shifted to another ensemble, because the instruments are all tuned to be played together. Within the major ensemble, the instruments are in pairs, male and female, to be played together, and they complement each other.
Most Gamelan comes from Java or Bali. What we saw and heard tonight is Balinese.
The audience was very small. We three may have been the only people there who weren't related in some way to a player.
After the concert I led FirstW back to the bridge, went home, pulled into my driveway, looked at the passenger seat, saw a bag there, wondered what it was, "Is that something I should take into the house?", and then I shouted "OH NO!" FirstW and I would have been about 15 miles apart by then with the river between us, but she might have heard me. She should have heard me.
I've owed her some CDs for weeks now. Every time I've seen her, the disks made it closer to the door, but not out the door. Last Thursday they made it into my car, but she didn't go to the dinner. Tonight they were in my car, but ... they didn't make it to her car.
Sheesh.
I'm taking the train into Manhattan tomorrow, to meet a fellow Blogger for some favorite places (and favorite chocolate, maybe). The time is getting away from me again, and I don't want to oversleep.
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