Diamond-Cut Life

Last week in Part I of Nights of Passion I noted that the arts make our lives richer and juicier, more soulful and joyous . . . . . definitely diamond-cut life attributes. I wrote this essay in the past while listening to the Portland Symphony Orchestra at Arlene Schnitzer Auditorium — but it’s set in the present tense. Please forgive my brass chauvinism — I grew up playing the trumpet.

Brazen salvos are coming now from the brass section, boasts of heroic deeds done and deeds to come. Stirring stuff . . . no self-esteem problems there. Having grown up in a brass-playing family, it’s hard for me to take the strings seriously. They don’t have any breath supporting their sound! Brass players do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a daily basis, breathing their oxygen into their instrument to give it life and voice.

The strings are so flippant in comparison, just twitching their arms to and fro, such a minimal investment, really, like fly-by-night lovers, with none of the brass players’ intimate panting, kissing of the mouthpiece, wiping of saliva, going blue in the face to hold the sustained notes. You can break a brass player’s front teeth if you accidentally bump her instrument when she’s playing. It’s a brave and vulnerable position to be in, holding a trumpet to your mouth.

The French horns, after a long, still silence, enter and voice a mournful, haunting statement, seeming to come from the other side of the space-time continuum.

Now all the instruments are shouting and exclaiming, lots to say, major outrage, now switching to supplication, now to general unrest.

The strings start chattering busily, frantically, getting their opinions out lickety-split before the big-mouthed trombones stomp in and shut them up. Lots of conflict between these factions, the strings and brass, like the age-old tension between predators and prey.

Only one tuba and one bass drum to hold the dozens of high-voiced strings together at the bottom. It’s a reverse pyramid around here, top-heavy like the wedge haircut of the eight year old acolyte at my church, whose red hair looks too big for her wrist-sized neck to support.

The music swirls around us like a roiling ocean. All this emotion tyrannizing the room, me writing hell-bent for leather like a journalist witnessing a war. The percussionists have now exited the room save for the timpani. What desertion is this? Oh, but that drummer is thundering on those three heads to beat the band, a defiant last holder of a fort, while the trumpets are triple-tonguing their strident replies. They gallop like a cavalry to his rescue, and everything erupts in a crescendo, a final resolution of the epoch conflict.

I leave Schnitzer Auditorium spent and satisfied, the world’s passion and my own expressed with only invisible violence, not a blow struck. Where would we be without music to defuse and express our emotions for us?

P.S. To all the noble string instrumentalists of the world – feel free to write rebuttal comments.

Related Posts:

• Nights Of Passion, No Regrets In The Morning
• Being Guided Across the Divide
• Man And Machine On Mount Tabor