Good enough

 

November 13, 2023

The concert went off well, I suppose (from the front is not the best place to judge). Admired K's attention to every detail, his radar alight when anything goes wrong. I wondered if my faculties are as alive to my own disciplines, and I sadly conclude, probably not. In my writing I can enforce perfection, as I see it in the moment, but in collaborative efforts such as theater I often decline to let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough.  I thought as I looked out into the gray crowd there couldn’t be much they actually liked other than the Brahms. I ended up liking the Bardos quite well, and even sing it as I walk. T played some difficult (they sounded difficult) modern organ pieces. I could find something to admire in each one, but nothing really to like. Is “modern” concert music destined to be unlikeable? It seems to have rather taken a vow not to please, pleasing being somehow contrary to advanced political aesthetic. Will our ears someday attune to it, as they have to others who presumably jarred expectation when they first were heard? I think likely not. Music written on an impulse not specifically musical cannot succeed. Big J and my companion D– on whom I depended for correct pronunciation– were both absent. I croaked like a frog for the most part, though the sopranos in front of us were kind and said we sounded great. Limped home on my preposterous legs.