June 8, 2022: Snail Music

 I didn’t go to my college reunion this weekend, and I’m okay with that. Instead, I sang in our big spring choir concert, which was a rush. We performed with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, a marvelous guest conductor, and some outstanding soloists. I was nearly a soloist as well, but caught myself in time. The crowd went wild at the end.

We had been working up to this concert for three years (or four, or five, depending on who you ask). I know I got a thickish score with a bright red cover, and a slimmer one in deep pink, in the fall of 2019. And I vividly remember putting my music bag away in the closet in March, 2020. I should have mailed the scores back, but no. I liked knowing they were sleeping in there, talismans for the future.

So the long-awaited performance finally happened! And in another long-awaited gratification, I went away to a wedding. The bride and groom had been together nearly ten years. We were all delighted to be there.

It was a good trip, and a joyous wedding. I got to poke around San Francisco and the Napa Valley, and hang out with my kid – her first trip to the US in three years - and about fifteen old friends. That met my travel and adventure needs for a while.

So with wedding, a chance to see the daughter, and a big concert, I skipped the college reunion. But I have been seeing a lot of posts from people who did go. We are all about the same vintage, and many of us are entertaining ourselves in retirement, making music or art or writing that novel at last. I tried to listen to some of the music. One person had put free samples on SoundCloud, and his stuff was minimalist and electronic - algorithmic in its tiny fluctuations (I don’t know what I mean by that, but he is a math person, so “algorithmic” sounded fitting). (Yes, I researched bands named The Algorhythmics. It’s a deep hole….) 

One piece had a cover shot of a snail. It was snail music.

The other person whose work I wanted to hear had put an EP on Amazon. I found it and even purchased the EP, but then couldn’t play it without downloading Amazon Music, which couldn’t find it. Circles.

In order to get Amazon Music going, I was asked to identify some music favorites, which was a truly algorithmic game. I was quickly more interested in watching the algorithm work than in revealing my actual tastes. There were nine little thumbnail photos displayed at a time. Yes, Beatles. Yes, Debussy. Every time I clicked on anything, the board of photos would blink and then reshuffle. If I said yes to Bach, Liszt would vanish, and up would come Pavarotti. (No, thanks.) If I said yes to The Who, it would serve me Sinatra. If I just scrolled down until I found Chopin, a bunch of thumbnails would vanish as I scrolled, and after a blink, the screen would offer me four choices instead of the usual nine, which felt like it was pouting, a rejected host saying, “You only want ginger ale? Fine. Would you care for some bread and water with that?”

Or maybe it was like an online dating app. I bet it was, wasn’t it? Do those have little thumbnails that blink and reshuffle, or is it all swiping? I must ask a friend for a demo, but not the friend whose dating app filters have begun serving her nothing but white supremacists. Or maybe she’d be the perfect person to play fix-the-algorithm with….

Anyway, that’s news I’m waiting for, from the missed reunion. I’m waiting to hear who, if anyone, is dating whom, after that weekend. Someone is dating someone, I know it. May they make beautiful maximalist music together.