Age of Aquarium (Or, I Love You, Mama!)
It hasn't been too long since my last post, but already there's plenty of new developments to talk about (spoiler alert: most of these anecdotes involve cameos from one or more members of the New Kids on the Block).
Last week I played my last two Conn-affiliated concerts of the year, the first being the Student Composers' concert on Wednesday and the Connecticut College Orchestra concert on Thursday. Both were quite nice, and I'm pretty sure I can pin the success of each on the participation of Anthea Kreston and Jason Duckles, who are the College's violin and cello teachers, respectively. Anthea and Jason played many of the students' compositions on Wednesday night, and I had the pleasure and privilege of joining them on the performance of a piece for violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The following night, both of them were joined by Rieko Aizawa, who together comprise the Amelia Piano Trio, to perform Beethoven's Triple Concerto (contrary to what you might expect, a triple concerto is not, in fact, a mysterious and much-whispered-about high dive maneuver whose grace and difficulty is matched only by its deadliness). I can say without risk of overstatement that the performance was one of the most fulfilling I have ever played on double bass! At the same time, however, it will be nice to have fewer rehearsal for the next three months....
....Last weekend was my 5-year high school reunion (they don't really have reunions for GED recipients, so that's why Sam hasn't posted about his 5th). Though it took place on Saturday, I headed up a day early to have a pre-Reunion gathering at my friend Tom's house so that I could spend some quality time with the people I actually wanted to see. Most of the events of the evening are not appropriate for the blog, so I'll just sum things up with a few key phrases: school song, cell phone tower, 4am, complete lack of anyone female. The next day was equally exciting, but in a very different way (there were girls there). About 20 people from my class showed up, and it was great to reconnect with them and find out what everyone was up to. Surprisingly, one girl actually knows Mitch! I guess when you've got a head full of silky golden hair and dimples that you could plant a sapling in you become pretty well-known with the ladies (plus his personal website shortshorts.com helps get his name out there).
Since I was generally in the area of my parents' house, I headed up to beautiful Nashua, NH to spend Mother's Day at home (if you didn't know I was a thoughtful and adoring son, then educate yourself). We had a nice lunch and got caught up on each other's lives. Actually, all told it was a pretty straight-forward day, so to spice things up I'll add in a few twists. Mid-way through lunch, a gigantic mutated lizard, surely the product of some ill-fated zoological radiation experiment, crashed through the front wall of the restaurant, its eyes red and menacing, its teeth sharp as a knife's edge and dripping with a venom whose potency surely has no match, its claws and tail whipping and slashing throughout the dining room, neither knowing how many injured and dead they left in their wake nor caring for the souls lost. Fortunately, my dad had bought my mom for Mother's Day a military-grade tranquilizer rifle, which he quickly and expertly removed from its lovely pink polka-dotted wrapping paper and white bow, loaded with a quartet of maximum-strength sedatives, aimed carefully at the hellish beast's jugular, and fired with the skill of William Tell and the calm of a Buddhist monk. The monster shrieked in protest, trying in vain to scratch at its neck to brush away the foreign objects filling its veins with sleep-inducing serum, but within a matter of seconds it began to sway and swagger, a moment later finally collapsing in a heap of blood-soaked scales. Those still alive in the restaurant fell silent, unable to sort their myriad conflicting emotions into any sensible order, unsure what to feel first. We stared and stuttered, some of us trying futilely to put the experience of the past few minutes into words. Failing, we wordlessly gathered what belongings had not been turned into rubble and splinters and made our way back to our cars and homes. Our skin and our spirits were both scarred, but we knew that time was the only balm for our still-stinging wounds. We turned, then, to our one source of solace: that ever-dwindling, beautifully blurred, blessedly imperfect human memory that promised to day by month by year by decade to lose hold of more and more horrific details of the nightmare that we had just lived.
That's about all for me! I'll check back in again with stories from the One Year Reunion and Commencement!