Sad of eye

Tonight, I went to a concert in the Old Capitol. Mark, our orchestra conductor, had invited some world class musicians to come perform. They played works by Hummel, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak, and with this vitality that filled the building to the dome.

One of the most notable things about this ensemble was how different the violinists were from each other. One seemed to push sound through his violin, as if he could channel his soul directly through the instrument, with passion and drive, letting us see his innermost emotions. The other seemed to pull the sound; I could almost imagine that he was somehow, through some mysterious workings of his hands, imbuing the violin with a soul of its own, and then coaxing from that soul a line of beauty and nuance. That these two sounds mingled with each other, and with the other instruments, was surprising. The interplay was especially interesting when the "pulling" violinist played first, and the "pusher" second.

Their last piece: Dvorak's second piano quintet (This is the second movement.)

The opening totally gets "Nature Boy" stuck in my head.

It's been a year and a half since I went downtown with Alan the last time. Sitting there tonight, I couldn't help but remember being at the Union with him the night before he died. I teared up a few times during this movement. Eighteen months, and I still haven't gone a day without shedding a tear for him.

A year ago, I posted on Facebook how part of me had been left behind the night we lost you, how the changing seasons took me by surprise. I charged myself with figuring out how to move on and reconnect the two parts of myself. Truth be told, I haven't found the magic salve for that wound, but I'm stitched together and moving forward. Maybe that's good enough.

Echoes

Looking through Alan's Youtube favorites playlist is pretty strange. It's a record of what he was listening to, marked loosely by dates like "2 months ago" or "1 year ago."

Oftentimes, I can find a piece of music we listened to together that soon after made it onto the list.

For instance, on the way back from Sioux City from Christmas last year, I played several pieces that we had played in the faculty-staff orchestra. I gave him commentary on what I thought about each one. We listened to Mendelssohn's first piano concerto, and I told him how I liked the slow movement's beautiful viola/cello parts better than any of the piano parts (6:56).

We listened to the Largo movement from the New World Symphony, and discussed how Dvořák was in Iowa when he was inspired to write it.

He had the whole symphony on his playlist.

The conversations we had, the pieces we shared, the Ravel, the Schubert, the pieces from my concerts -- his playlist is like a recorded echo of his life (and our time together) bounced off, and into the aether of the internet. Now, I find myself trying to hold onto that echo, straining my ears for any sound of him.