Tanglewood

It's America's first music shed, summer home of the Boston Symphony, I went there Sunday with my mother.

But almost not.

You see Dark Sky said it was gonna rain. I already told my mom that I couldn't sit on the lawn, you see I take this pill that makes me uber-susceptible to the rays of the sun. You know how you go to the pharmacy and they always warn you? Well, this time they were right. But getting from the car to the shed is quite an ordeal, you see my mother is handicapped, she uses a walker, so we went to bed saying we wouldn't go.

And then we changed our mind.

You see I was uptight about her car. A '99 Lexus with 156,000 miles that she no longer drives. With different tires on the front and back and enough lights on in the dashboard to illuminate a Christmas tree. I'm a safety bug, and it makes me uptight to have something imperfect. Driving this far in this car had me uptight, and if it was gonna be in the rain...but then I thought if we crashed we'd both die and that would be fitting. After all, she's aged and I'm too old to die young.

But obviously we lived through it.

Actually, it didn't rain at all on the way up.

And what I love about the east coast is everything's so close. You can have a complete change of scenery on a whim. And since I was here last there's so much more foliage. You can't see what you once could. What's end game, everybody living under a canopy? I'm not sure, but Siri took us there.

Yes, without an iPhone we wouldn't be sure how to go. But now with no direction home you can fire up your maps app and end up where you wanna go. Like the Boss we took the backstreets. It made my mother uptight, the roads were unfamiliar.

But then we ended up right there.

And I was flummoxed. How was I going to get my mom from the parking lot to the shed?

You see it's grass. And a wheelchair doesn't roll that great on that. As for using the walker, it's too far.

But it turns out Tanglewood is prepared. There's a fleet of golf carts, that ferry you to the entrance, where they call for wheelchairs, with pushers, who not only get you to your seat, but back.

And this audience needed them. Wheelchairs, that is.

The classical scene is kept alive by the aged. When they die, what happens? I'm not sure. But our moms and dads, at least those still with us, venture to hear the symphony, as they did in their youth. Did I tell you my parents met hitchhiking on their way back from Tanglewood? My dad picked my mother up. So they could never tell us not to put out our thumb.

We got pretty good seats. This is not rock or pop, not something so popular you can't get a ducat at the last moment.

And I was confronted by a full orchestra which played Mozart's last three symphonies. Did I know them? No, but I wish I did. Still, the music set my mind free.

I first went to Tanglewood 45 years ago, to hear Duke Ellington. I'd like to tell you I got it, but the truth is the coolest thing that happened is they ultimately released a live disc. My parents dragged me to cultural events all over the northeast. But they also provided money for events in my wheelhouse, like concerts at the Fillmore East.

And the music is playing and I'm staring at the landscape on the sides of the stage and I'm wondering...how did I get here?

By car, obviously, but what I truly mean is what happened in all these decades.

I wanted some time back. I wanted some choices back. I was so lost in a way I'm not sure kids are today. I went to college because it was expected, after that...who knew what to expect. I had girlfriends and I got married and I never made a pile of cash and as time wore on the whole world changed.

But not the music.

Mozart's career was history after these three symphonies. He couldn't work, no one would book him. I read that in the program. Funny how the artistic legends are financially-challenged and the business titans are forgotten. Not that this kept Wolfgang Amadeus warm at night.

And the food was expensive and good. That's another change, it used to be hot dogs and soda. Our whole country has moved upscale, and McDonald's didn't realize it. Millennials want fresh and their parents want nothing formula. The parking lot was littered with foreign cars, German iron, whereas in the old days Detroit predominated, hunks of junk that had to be replaced on a regular basis, fallibility was built in.

And when it was all over, we reversed our ride. Literally. Hit that icon in the maps app. And I got a hankering to go to Otis Ridge, where I went to ski camp back in the sixties.

And thanks to said maps app we found it. At the same time the heavens opened and a five star thunderstorm began. You know, the kind where you've got the windshield wipers on high and you still can't see.

And we're cruising the back roads. And we're talking about not only the way it used to be, but what will forever be.

And I was in touch with who I was and who I've become.

And I realized I'm the same damn person. The alienated iconoclast who resonates with art and landscape, who likes the feeling of sliding on snow and is eager to share the experience, assuming I can find someone as into it as me.

Is there anybody as into it as me?


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