Friday

Went to go see the Daedalus Quartet earlier tonight.  They played two Beethoven pieces (Quartet No. 3 and String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 18, No.3), and a world premier by local composer Huck Hodge in the middle, before intermission, called The Topography of Desire.  Hodge came up to introduce it beforehand, explained how he had a string on each instrument tuned slightly off all the others so that the tones could come close at times in the music, but never quite meet up, leaving a dissonance, and an unfufilled desire.  And he said something about "The poetics of..." which I wanted to remember, but had forgotten by intermission.  My mind wandering to wonder about what a relationship would be like with someone, playing it forward in time, and realizing that we don't actually end up together, we want different things in life, at least in my head (but what do I know?)  This may be why I am single.  I was telling all this to the woman who gave me the comp, during intermission, she thought maybe that's what it was supposed to do.  I don't know, I did listen as well, it was an interesting composition, there wasn't an obvious "thru-line" (or theme) that you could follow (there was one, but it was underneath the other sounds.)

I saw three plays earlier this week: Chorestia by Beth Raas-Bergquist, dir. by Jenifer Ross and Steven Sterne, at The Ballard Underground/Ghost Light Theatricals; Eat Cake by Mx Seth Tankus, dir. by Catherine Blake Smith, at Annex; and Force Continuum by Kia Corthron, dir. by Malika Oyetimein, at The Jones Playhouse (UW), PATP.  In the final scene of Eat Cake, where everything has gone to hell, and the couple (Ariel, played by Kamaria Hallums-Harris, and Addison, played by Julie Hoang) who were about to be married call it quits, the mother (played by Amontaine Aurore) asks them (and all of us, really) to imagine life going forward into the future after the break-up, what about the next day, and the next month, and ten years from now, and...and they realize that on their death beds, they would want each other there, and I'm thinking, "man, if everyone thought that through, would anyone ever break up?"  This was still fresh in my mind when I was listening to The Topography of Desire.

With lobby lights flashing their final warning to go back to your seats before the second half of the program begins, I made a reach for a final slice of cheese and found myself next to the composer so I asked him to repeat what he'd said earlier about the "poetics of..." because I wanted to remember, and he said, "The poetics of the near miss (because that's more interesting than the far miss.)" Or something to that effect, and I ran to get back to my seat before the music started again, because I had to crawl over people.  For the remainder of the concert I tried to remember, and chided myself for not thinking to bring a pen with me.  Also, fantasized about cheese.  Not to disregard the music, the music was lovely.  I just like cheese, and the taste was lingering in my mouth.