uncultured monsters
This past weekend did little more than to wear me out the very week that I feel I will be scrapped thinner than butter over too much bread. Friday night, after running errands for a couple of hours, best friend K came over and we watched a movie. Saturday my family celebrated Monster niece S’s 4th birthday,—where has the time gone?!—then I babysat for best friend L&K’s two daughters L (6.5 years) and A (nearly 4 years). Then on Sunday Roommate M and I headed to Detroit to see an opera; a first for both of us.
The day was ideal for going to an opera; it was a lovely day with the feeling of magic in the air: as we drove down to Detroit my eyes ate up each of the old buildings in the city. I admired each fat snowflake, downy in its very touch both to face and city surfaces, resting but seconds before melting. Walking in dress clothes along the streets in an old section of Detroit, near what is now known as Greektown, it was hard to not smile as one watched the other opera goers walking toward the same great theater, The Detroit Opera House, a place that one suspects from the outside contains something amazing, but until entering one can guess little of its innards. It was designed in that glorious fashion that old opera theaters and play houses were thus set down: vaulted ceilings, high arches, gilded work, and marble floors, all things that make a person feel wonderfully small and very insignificant.
And yet, in all the beauty and all the wonder I felt craning my neck up, first to look at snowflakes and then to look at the beautiful opera house, my pleasure ended here. Both Roomie M and I were bored with the story of Madam Butterfly and neither of us were at all impressed with the singing, which being an opera we did have such high expectation for. I found that the orchestra, though well playing, played so loudly and the singers sung so softly that I could scare hear them—though I am not sure, if this is something that is normal for the opera?—and though the opera was in Italian and I don’t speak the language, I would still have loved to hear the language lolling and rolling off the tongues and out of the throats of the performers.
Roomie M and I were so bored that before the end of the first act I was dozing and Roomie M was trying to keep her attention on the play. The two of us made eye contact and started the fits of giggling—thankfully neither of us making much noise, rather we were in a shoulder shaking battle—and had to get control of ourselves until the intermission. At the intermission I suggested that we leave, and so we did. And we both wondered aloud as to whether this means that we are uncultured. Ah…well…so much for this trial at the opera, I will have to give it another go 'round ...eventually.
The day was ideal for going to an opera; it was a lovely day with the feeling of magic in the air: as we drove down to Detroit my eyes ate up each of the old buildings in the city. I admired each fat snowflake, downy in its very touch both to face and city surfaces, resting but seconds before melting. Walking in dress clothes along the streets in an old section of Detroit, near what is now known as Greektown, it was hard to not smile as one watched the other opera goers walking toward the same great theater, The Detroit Opera House, a place that one suspects from the outside contains something amazing, but until entering one can guess little of its innards. It was designed in that glorious fashion that old opera theaters and play houses were thus set down: vaulted ceilings, high arches, gilded work, and marble floors, all things that make a person feel wonderfully small and very insignificant.
And yet, in all the beauty and all the wonder I felt craning my neck up, first to look at snowflakes and then to look at the beautiful opera house, my pleasure ended here. Both Roomie M and I were bored with the story of Madam Butterfly and neither of us were at all impressed with the singing, which being an opera we did have such high expectation for. I found that the orchestra, though well playing, played so loudly and the singers sung so softly that I could scare hear them—though I am not sure, if this is something that is normal for the opera?—and though the opera was in Italian and I don’t speak the language, I would still have loved to hear the language lolling and rolling off the tongues and out of the throats of the performers.
Roomie M and I were so bored that before the end of the first act I was dozing and Roomie M was trying to keep her attention on the play. The two of us made eye contact and started the fits of giggling—thankfully neither of us making much noise, rather we were in a shoulder shaking battle—and had to get control of ourselves until the intermission. At the intermission I suggested that we leave, and so we did. And we both wondered aloud as to whether this means that we are uncultured. Ah…well…so much for this trial at the opera, I will have to give it another go 'round ...eventually.
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