Last night I went to the symphony concert in Midland. As weblogs are (sometimes) supposed to be an account of experiences, I'll set some of these in here.

I'm keeping this blog in part about visuality, but concerts are heavily auditory. As I was late enough in deciding to go that I didn't get in on the most highly desired seats, many of my locations are very close to the stage (which I prefer to being Wayne de Back--it upsets me a little that the sound of the orchestra, when heard from the back of the hall, is so much out of sync with the conductor's movements). At times this is very good: the concert in October (I think) featured a young Russian pianist who was very good to hear (and see) up close. In this case I derived a great deal of pleasure from hearing a piece I know very well, Dvorak's 7th symphony, close enough to detach the first and second violin section, to hear the particular counterthemes being played by the cellos, etc. I couldn't watch the percussionists or wind sections, so there are always trade-offs. But a live performance has much more nuance and detail than a disc can ever have.

The featured performer this time was a flute player doing a Mozart concerto. This was not good to be close to. I don't much like Mozart: he's too orderly, too Apollonian, in general, and I much prefer some dissonance brought into my classical music. Give me Bach or Beethoven or Prokofiev. (There are exceptions, of course.) And I'm not used to hearing flute as a solo instrument, as I am piano or violin or even cello. But this performer was exceptionally distracting, visually (she played fine): she was perhaps mid-40s, but wore a shoulder-less dress that put me in mind of possible wardrobe malfunctions. The top part was patterned, in such a way that reminded me of bad upholstery material. She moved and swayed with her flute, adding emphasis and letting us know how hard she was working by moving her eyebrows--perhaps she's been watching Peter Jennings for her news--and kept leaning over and looking coquettishly up at the conductor. The Midland crowd gave her a standing O, of course, which enticed her to play a piece by Gabriel Faure, which I liked better than the Moz.

On a completely different subject (perhaps I should start a new post), Bush has done something I support. This is a first: in more than four years now I've been waiting for this moment, and apart from retaliating against the Afghan hosts of Osama bin Laden, I've not found it. Lying about going to war, cutting taxes on the rich, gutting the EPA, going back on plans to limit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, sucking up to the religious right (when I doubt his sincerity in this area), pissing off the rest of the world through his and his subordinates' arrogance--there's a long list which I could make still longer of things that I believe are short-sighted at best and evil at worst. Of particular danger is his habit of governing through propaganda and surrounding himself, at campaign appearances and in press conferences (cf. the MediaMatters piece about the plant from so-called Talon News Service, "Jeff Gannon"), with carefully screened supporters so as to present good backdrops. But in pursuit of trimming the deficit, he's proposed cutting huge agricultural subsidies (New York Times link--registration required, and access after 2/12 will cost $). We'll see whether this pisses off some of the red state rubes who voted for him enough to erode some of his support--but it's a hopeful sign that he is actually serious about the deficit, enough at least to tick off some of his corporate welfare clients.

Now, let's wait for the Daddy Warbucks faction, e.g., Halliburton . . .

Later addition (2/8): I shouldn't give Bush's team too much credit here. Proposing doesn't mean enacting, and the reactions of red-state congressmen seems to mean this part of the budget will be DOA.