Riot Rhythm

Going to concerts always makes me feel better, although the variation on musical remedy can be radical.  Last night I saw the Emerson String Quartet.  This is my fourth time seeing them, but the first since the addition of their new cellist, Paul Watkins, who is incidentally the quartet's first personnel change in 34 years (of their 37 year existence).  David Finckel, their original cellist, is much missed but Watkins is lovely.  In the third movement of Felix Mendelssohn's opus 80, there is a repeated motif of two accented measures.  Every time it happened, Watkins' toes would jerk up with the first accent and then his heels would lift for the second accent.  It was utterly delightful.

This is notwithstanding, how gorgeous the Emerson Quartet is.  I was extremely privileged to have a front row seat and I could feel every bow stroke.  I would say that it seems at times that all of their bow arms are attached on a string, providing that perfect synchronicity, but that would be undermining the beauty of each pizzicato pluck and movement.  I know I'm gushing, but I love them so dearly.  I spent most of the concert with hands clasped so tightly that they lost circulation.  Never have I seen musicians share a conversation so clearly using their instruments as their words, feelings, and motivations.  I love how they move together too, and even if one musician can't lift his eyes off the page to catch the glance he's being sent, he still lifts and eyebrow or gives a nod to confirm that the message was received.

People ask me constantly what I want from the future or where I want to be a year/five years/ten years from now.  If I could, I would tell them that.  That connection, that look...however it translates to work, career, relationships.

I couldn't help thinking during the concert though, how different it was from the show I went to this past Saturday -- Sleigh Bells at Showbox.

The Emerson String Quartet in a nutshell.

Sleigh Bells in a nutshell.

Sleigh Bells represents a different kind of music therapy.  One time I had Sleigh Bells blasting in my headphones and I was dancing around in the elevator...before I turned around and realized that the elevator doors had opened and there were people waiting to get inside.  Who knows how long they had been standing there.

I found quite quickly that were layers to the audience at Showbox, much like in a symphony concert hall which has designations such as "Orchestra/Dress Circle" (super close to the stage), "Mezzanine" (Kinda close, but the sound is usually muddy), "Balcony" (aka "I really wanted to come to this concert, but I'm poor so I'm stuck in the nosebleed area"), and "Gallery" (the seats in elevated boxes on the sides of the concert hall.  These look cool, but you usually only see one side of the orchestra).

Here's how it breaks down:

Gallery -- this is the bar area of Showbox.  You pay extra for the booze, you're a little elevated because you're on tables or a platform off to the side/back of the theater (or buzzed ha ha)...and yeah the view isn't optimal, but really you're there to look cool, not necessarily for the whole concert experience.

"I say, Jeremiah, are you enjoying this band, Metallica?" "Capital, Archibald, it's just Capital."

Balcony - These people got tickets, but are the poor saps that came a bit late, so they're on the outskirts of the standing crowd.  Or maybe they just want to enjoy the music at a distance.  The floor at Showbox is a sort of sprung floor, so you can feel the vibrations from people jumping around.  People in the "balcony" area are a little non-committal with their movements.  They're swaying side to side or bobbing their heads.

Mezzanine - This is probably the most perilous area of the floor.  It's like the moat to the castle.  Like in a symphony hall, you're relatively close to the stage but your perception of the music is bound to be muddy because this is where all the moshing happens.  There's some moshing I can get into, which is fun and therapeutic.  And then there's some that's just crazy where people are throwing each other around like mad.  Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I don't see what the enjoyment of this is.  Maybe it's because I'm small so any attempt to engage here usually gets me on the floor or an elbow in the face.  It's dangerous to navigate, but if you time and position yourself right, you can actually use the force of hurling bodies to propel yourself further into the section ahead.  Good luck.

Dress Circle - this is it -- the inner circle around the stage.  Close enough to high-five the performers.  Usually the first ring doesn't have too much of the crazy moshing, just a lot of body mashing and jumping around.  The low point of this experience for me was when I was smashed next to a guy that was sweating so much it was like he was in a wet t-shirt contest and behind a headbanger with such long hair, I would get a face full of it every beat he whipped to.

I'm a relatively small girl, which has some definitely pros and cons.  The pro is that I'm small enough to maneuver myself through the crowd and I can usually get pretty close to the stage.  The con is that because of my limited height, unless I'm way up in the front or at a window between two people, I'm more often than not blocked.  On further thought though, I've always preferred to be blocked than to be the one that is doing the blocking.

Sleigh Bells was definitely a fun show though.  Great energy and singer Alexis Krauss was every bit as charismatic as you'd expect.  She jumped into the crowd at the end of the show and a big group of us fell sideways while she was surfing...but the nice thing was that even though I fell, I was helped up to my feet by the person next to me and I hoisted the next person up too.  There's some deep parallel between mosh pits and life here, but I'll let you guys configure that out.