skblog

15 April 2024

8:20am Monday

I sit in the same place I last wrote. It’s this windowless room on the ground floor of the museum. On Friday I listened to Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn’ on repeat as I wrote, now on loop is that song ‘Camille’ from the introductory scene to Frances Ha.

I don’t usually listen to Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn’, however, the main reason I was eating dinner with E last Thursday was so that after dinner we could walk to Lincoln Center to watch a classical music concert of Juilliard musicians. We ate, walked, and then listened, as planned. For some reason, following the five pieces (of which ‘Autumn’ was not one) I could not stop humming that specific piece of Vivaldi’s seasons. I hummed it out loud, and E looked at me with a quizzical expression, as if to say “why are you humming this piece, it wasn’t even in the concert?”.

During the concert, I wondered what other people think about during classical music shows.

1) I thought about Amelie in the movie Le Destin Fabuleux d'Amélie Poulain, and how she enjoys turning around to look at the faces of those behind her in a movie theater.

2) I thought about other classical music pieces I enjoy: Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2 in E-Flat Major Op. 9 (which I listened to on repeat as I finished reading Elif Batuman’s The Idiot on December 30th of last year), a few songs my mother occasionally plays on the piano (which I cannot recall by name aside from Fur Elise), and Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn’ (which I was only 90% sure was the correct title of the piece I was thinking of).

3) I thought about how, at that moment, the seasoned classical music connoisseurs around me were probably not thinking about Amelie or The Idiot.

I enjoyed the concert as a soundtrack for thinking, in the same way that I regard the Metro North as the ideal setting for certain thoughts.

To be continued ! Hope everyone is doing okay on this first day of the week.