I feel like I'm late to a meeting; the writing of this entry was delayed 15 minutes due to looking up old blog entries from 2013: from my 26-year-old self, indeed a pivotal year as I predicted back then; too bad I only wrote 31 entries, which makes sense considering the monumental nature of moving into my new career, beginning my long journey to find a partner. The posts aren't too bad, actually, and with some work and editing I could become Amy Schneider, Jeopardy superchamp and trans activitist and now writer; quite an awesome story of how she got to where she is now. She's also very humble and realistic about her own abilities and some of the breaks that she's gotten (as well as setbacks) so it's a refreshing take contrasting with some actors and celebrities' memoirs that have some arrogance and "of course I made it in this world, I'm just that good!" underlying their stories of their own life (I understand MJ's boss kind of has that attitude now too, unfortunately). I'd like to think IF (and when) I become that successful I would also be able to keep a level head about it like Amy; all I need is to win like 40 games on Jeopardy and get to be as famous as her.
The "Danse Macabre" is a famous classical music masterpiece by Camille Saint Saens, a French composer who was a genius in his own right but just had the misfortune of coming just a few decades after Mozart, Beethoven, and all the most famous classical composers that became household names, and perhaps accordingly his pieces don't get their proper due (as you might gather from some of my posts, I'm a big fan of people who don't get their due from the public eye). Last night MJ and I went to a "Halloween fusion musical concert" with classical music intersperced with other forms of music like rap, pop music, ("Uprising" by Muse was somehow prominently involved in a Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 Finale piece. Whether you agree with the decision to have "fusion" music can be debatable (I persoanlly liked some of the pieces but thougth others were jumbled excessively to become cacophony) it reminded me how much I like classical music and how many movies, songs, operas, cultural events, etc. is shaped by classical music. I was proud to have once by a classical musician again; I often am when I go to any classical music concert, but especially where there's a long violin solo or prominent violin parts. That's my jam; those violinists are my people.
Danse Macabre is a piece that most people wouldn't be able to place, but you've probably heard somewhere before. (Google it now). For MJ, she was immediately reminded of a Yuna Kim skating program in 2009 (Yuna Kim is the most famous South Korean figure skater of all time, the GOAT really). It has like a 2-minute violin solo at the beginning where the first violinist can just go crazy as a "Macabre Dancer" would....and at our concert the soloist definitely did. I was never that expressive when playing violin, and I never had a chance to do a solo at a concert, which suits me just fine, I was always one of the "backup violins" towards the back who just tried to make sure I didn't stick out like a sore thumb. It reminded me, though, that I once played Paganini's No. 24 Caprcie as part of a solo competition and did it.....OK, especially for a high school violin player. It's one of the trickiest violin parts in history, and Paganini really proved that violin is the devil's instrument; he created music that only he could get through and his rivals wouldn't be able to play due to just how hard it was. (For bonus points, listen to "Paganini's La Campanella," which I have humming in my head all the time now because it's the beginning of a Blackpink song called "Shutdown." More pop music songs should try to use some classical music if only to throwback to an earlier time and hook some classical music lovers; instead we get Doja Cat and "Paint the Town Red." Sigh.
But yea, anyway, 2013, 2023, 2033, whatever comes my way, classical music will always be my jam. I was embarrassed to tell peopel as a kid when other kids asked me what my favorite type of music was (I think in 7th grade I HAD to say Eminem in order to not be bullied) but the great thing about being an adult is that things deemed uncool in middle school are flipped and become really cool........classical music, learn it! Also it might come up on Jeopardy (Jeopardy writers get it).
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