Financing the Hard Stuff.

Goosebumps. I have goosebumps because of magic. What kind of
magic, you ask? Well I’ll tell you.

CLASSICAL MUSIC.

I know. It surprised me too.

Recently a student asked to take me to a classical concert as a
sort goodbye! You are awesome!
I’m so sad you’re leaving! gift.

RELATED: This student had actually only ever had me as her teacher
twice in the entire time I’ve been at this job. When she had a mid-course
appraisal with my boss to talk about the ongoing successes and problems, if
any, with her course, she said to my boss LAURA. I WANT HER AS A
TEACHER AGAIN. When my boss asked why she
basically said BECAUSE SHE’S BALLIN’. THAT’S WHY.

DISCLAIMER: Except Luisa is actually Italian and in her 50’s, so
in reality as opposed to in my imagination, she probably said an approximation
thereof. But still. The sentiment is the same.

Anyway, when somebody asks you to the oldest orchestra in Rome, YOU
SAY YES. So off I went in my checked shirt and bow-tied scarf and boots and
lipstick, to Parco Della Musica, and woah. I wasn’t expecting what went
down.

MAGIC. Absolute… magic.

It was a feeling I was totally unprepared for. As the violinist
played, each movement of her bow drew me into a story she was trying to
communicate with me. But to begin with I was reticent and unsure; I didn’t
understand what she was trying to tell me. It was like we were communicating underwater,
and the signs were there but they were blurred and unclear. I knew I was supposed to react in a particular way-
possibly looking wistful and pensive whilst nodding my head just slightly.
That’s how people in the movies do it, right?

It took me a while to relax.

Eventually, I let myself sink into her melody. I thought All The
Things and nothing at all; love and life and Rome and things I didn’t realize I
knew. All at the same time. It was like a sort of meditation, a reflection. I
bathed in the notes she gave me. I was without body and soul but more alive
than I had felt in a long time. I was there in the room but my senses were
everywhere else. I was peaceful.

It was beautiful. And despite this weekend my friend Anna
declaring to me, ‘You say everything changes your life, don’t you?’ to which I
replied, ‘Hyperbolic rhetoric should be my middle name,’ INTERNET. This
experience changed my life.

And as the violinist stopped playing, and the final peal rang out
across the concert hall, I took a moment to be all in one place again, to pull
myself together and be what I am used to always being- whatever that is.

But. As I did this, as I suddenly came up from out of the water to
gasp for a breath of something more familiar, I realized- slowly- that everybody
around me was doing the exact same thing. We were all on our feet and sharing
the exact same feeling of FEELINGS
WITHOUT WORDS OHMYGOD HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE I THINK I LOVE YOU ALL AND HOW IS
THIS STRENGTH OF EMOTION EVEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT PENETRATION?

I looked around the hall and saw tears in eyes and smiles on faces
and realized that there were tears in MY eyes and a smile on MY face.

And then I thought about football matches and the way all of those
fans feel- what happens on the pitch affects them so strongly and fervently
that they would fight for the team they believe in until death (or arrest,
whatever comes first) and Internet? I was part of something then. I was part of
something bigger than me, with a room of a thousand strangers who felt the same
things as I in that moment, and I knew those seconds could never be replicated
in that exact way again.

And so I let a tear fall, because that is magic. Something unique and special and particular, a sort
of glimpse of God or Buddha or Lady Gaga.

Last
week a friend got last-minute tickets to the same symphony and buggar me with a banana in a hat if I didn’t do goosebumpy-magic again. And no, it wasn’t in the
same way. I was relaxed form the off, and more familiar with the piece, and I’d just eaten rice balls so I was totes in my happy place.

But
as the last note sounded this time, and the audience broke that fourth wall to
applaud, I knew something important.

I
knew I had a new hobby.

A
very expensive new hobby.

And so, in conclusion, then, I suppose what I am trying to say in
an overly verbose but typically LJW way is that I really hope my Christian Grey
likes a good symphony. Because he is going to have to pay. It ain’t cheap.

(Unlike me.)

Can we file this one under date
me if you’re rich? 

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