![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Girls don't all wear specs
Jul. 1st, 2002 12:11 pmI didn't really want to go to Boston again this weekend, just because I've become tired of traveling. I extracted a promise from her not to make me get back into my car the whole weekend, though, and a few days of Harvard Square laziness actually served me rather well.
Friday night's amusements began with a play at the A.R.T titled "George Gershwin Alone" . A biographical piece, with music, done in the first person, and researched and written by the performer, Hershey Felder. The beginning and end, in which it was clear that the person talking was dead, felt extremely corny, like one of those weird field trip performances you saw in elementary school in which Abraham Lincoln came out to talk to you. But the middle was wonderfully conversational, and full of music, and stories of old New York.
(The show actually just finished a run in New York, but it's not atypical of me that I didn't see it there.)
I love Gershwin's work. Ira Gershwin at least as much as George, though Ira usually gets less of the credit in most people's minds. Kind of for the same reason I love Paul Simon's work, and why in general I'm a fan of the singer-songwriter genre. Because I love lyrics. The kind of lyrics that are brilliant because they seem simple, sound oh-so-obvious by the time you hear them. I especially enjoyed a description in the play of the Gershwin brothers' use of "mock lyrics" during the composing process, in which the tune to "I Got Rhythm" had a placeholder lyric that began: "Roly-poly/Ravioli/Eaten Solely…" If I could only transform my filks and doggerel into eventual genius!
The end of the show was a quintessential Harvard experience. Felder came back out to the stage to lead a singalong. Gershwin, over the years, has become cultured comedy, cultured sentimentality. People sang well, people knew the words. He performed "The Back Bay Polka", a mocking little obscure, Boston-relevant song. (Why does even being mocked appeal to our vanity?) And then, the operatic soloist, who seemed to think that calling attention to herself was worth destroying the singalong for the rest of the people there. Real musical performers know how to blend into a group. I'd personally rather hear a hundred people enjoying themselves than one impressive-sounding boor.
I do love Boston. My on and off desire to move there one of these days is definitely in 'on' mode right now.
******************
I'm hitting one of the reasons I didn't want to start a livejournal, in the first place. A big piece of me wants to spew poorly-written venting about my frustration with intentionally and unintentionally mood-adjusting medications all over the page here, rather than musings on American lyricists. But most of me is more private than that. Insincerity, or discretion? You decide.
Friday night's amusements began with a play at the A.R.T titled "George Gershwin Alone" . A biographical piece, with music, done in the first person, and researched and written by the performer, Hershey Felder. The beginning and end, in which it was clear that the person talking was dead, felt extremely corny, like one of those weird field trip performances you saw in elementary school in which Abraham Lincoln came out to talk to you. But the middle was wonderfully conversational, and full of music, and stories of old New York.
(The show actually just finished a run in New York, but it's not atypical of me that I didn't see it there.)
I love Gershwin's work. Ira Gershwin at least as much as George, though Ira usually gets less of the credit in most people's minds. Kind of for the same reason I love Paul Simon's work, and why in general I'm a fan of the singer-songwriter genre. Because I love lyrics. The kind of lyrics that are brilliant because they seem simple, sound oh-so-obvious by the time you hear them. I especially enjoyed a description in the play of the Gershwin brothers' use of "mock lyrics" during the composing process, in which the tune to "I Got Rhythm" had a placeholder lyric that began: "Roly-poly/Ravioli/Eaten Solely…" If I could only transform my filks and doggerel into eventual genius!
The end of the show was a quintessential Harvard experience. Felder came back out to the stage to lead a singalong. Gershwin, over the years, has become cultured comedy, cultured sentimentality. People sang well, people knew the words. He performed "The Back Bay Polka", a mocking little obscure, Boston-relevant song. (Why does even being mocked appeal to our vanity?) And then, the operatic soloist, who seemed to think that calling attention to herself was worth destroying the singalong for the rest of the people there. Real musical performers know how to blend into a group. I'd personally rather hear a hundred people enjoying themselves than one impressive-sounding boor.
I do love Boston. My on and off desire to move there one of these days is definitely in 'on' mode right now.
******************
I'm hitting one of the reasons I didn't want to start a livejournal, in the first place. A big piece of me wants to spew poorly-written venting about my frustration with intentionally and unintentionally mood-adjusting medications all over the page here, rather than musings on American lyricists. But most of me is more private than that. Insincerity, or discretion? You decide.
