A Night At the Opera

One of the more obvious advantages to being a grad student, apart from the poverty-level income and institutionalized servitude, is the flexible schedule; working yourself into a blurry, caffeine-fueled, jargon-filled haze can be done at any time of the day or night. (Who am I kidding? Night. Night before it's due.) This means that when a friend emails mid-afternoon and says something along the lines of, hey, I'm free tonight, let's go to the opera, you can think, well, I was going to sit here in this chair all day transcribing Sundanese...so, sure, why don't I go into the city and buy some opera tickets? And then, in the space of an hour, you can throw on a fancy dress, pack up your laptop, hop on the train, and move the whole analyzing-Sundanese-front-vowels operation to another chair, this one in the San Francisco Public Library, to wait for the opera to start.

My friend Steve is the opera fanatic; I'm the one with a student ID card. Last Thursday, it was a match made in heaven: I wandered into the San Francisco opera house shortly after he emailed and wandered out with two tickets to that night's performance of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), in the 9th row of the orchestra section, for $25 each, thus saving us--well, him--$125 a ticket.

I was quite excited about the evening, partially because I got to wear my fancy black cleavage-baring dress, partially because I do love me a Stevening, and partially because I have always wanted to go to the opera. And, really, if you have to start someplace with opera, where better than Die Zauberflöte? This was especially true for me, since I spent a large portion of my childhood falling asleep to "Mozart's Magic Fantasy," a version of The Magic Flute adapted for children, which means that I entered the opera house with a knowledge of the plot, a love for the music, and a strange subconscious expectation that all the songs would be in English. (Childhood habits die hard, apparently.)

Not, of course, that a cursory knowledge of the plot helped me anyway--I spent about the first half of the opera thinking, huh? before I realized that it wasn't my fault: The Magic Flute is, as far as I can tell from reading about it later, trippy. Maybe it was partially the fault of the performance, which emphasized the bright and happy fairy tale aspects to the piece, at the expense of the moralistic good-and-evil tone that it acquires in the second half; while Papageno's comedy bits were spot on, by which I mean brilliant, and had the audience--at an opera!--laughing out loud--at an opera!--this tendency to laughter whenever Papageno was on stage made the meaning behind the tragic arias of the young lovers, and Sarastro's preachy bass solos slightly, well, risible.

This may be a pity, perhaps, if you go to the opera for your moral education. For the rest of us, though, and you may decide I'm a total Philistine for saying this, the entertainment and musical value of such a piece matters far more. The tragic arias, particularly Pamina's solo "Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden," were beautiful, and Sarastro's bass rumbled appropriately in songs like "O Isis und Osiris," accompanied by a chorus dressed in shiny golden robes and purple plastic wigs, like ancient Egypt as envisioned by the costume director for Star Trek. That may sound strange, and I know it does, but it was strangely beautiful, all that gold and purplish-blue floating about on stage. Also strangely beautiful were the gilded boat floating high above the stage and carrying the three young boys whose light young voices acted as a sort of chorus ex machina, preventing characters from suicide and despair; the enormous pyramid in the center of the stage, whose between-scene transformations set the stage, quite literally, for varying aspects of the plot and music; and the host of enchanted hybrid animals who appeared as Tamino played his magic flute, the crocoguin, and the giraffestich, and the whole pride of upright lions, prancing and swaying their way across the stage to the rhythm of the music. Strange, yes, but it was beautiful, all of it, and magical indeed.

And not strange at all, of course, was the beauty of the Queen of the Night's famous aria "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen." I know my love for this song probably marks me as shallow and inexperienced, but I will freely admit to being the sort of opera neophyte that is utterly blown away by a human voice singing notes that high. If the stage design was the magic, this aria is the flute; even while watching Erika Miklosa's diaphragm move during the coloratura passage, I could hardly believe it was her singing that. And during every single one of the many minutes since Thursday I've devoted to watching YouTube videos of the piece, I've thought the same thing: incredible. Simply incredible. I get chills every time.

Whatever else I could say about the performance--the acting was good, the pace maybe could have used a little work, the singer playing Pamina was upstaged in nearly every scene--let me end with this: I sat through the entire three hours without once being bored. Sure, the little grad student voice inside my head was whispering the whole time, "Sundanese! Sundanese! Why aren't you transcribing?" and the little Bruce Willis fan voice inside my head was whispering, "Why isn't she blue, à la The Fifth Element?" and the little linguistics grad student voice inside my head was whispering, most insistently of all, "Listen to those people mangle their palatal fricatives! Palatal, people, palatal! Not post-alveolar! Aaaargh!" but, really, what are a Protestant work ethic, a love for action movies, and a trained ear for fricatives when compared to Mozart? Nothing. The performance may not have been perfect in every way, but the opera is, and, in the end, my evening was. Thank goodness for a flexible schedule.

In Rainbows

Slightly over four years ago, while I was in throes of a major Radiohead obsession, Margaret and I stood in line outside a record store in Boston, waiting for the midnight release of Hail to the Thief. Later that same summer, I saw Radiohead in concert twice, once in Boston and once in Salt Lake City; when my car broke down on the highway on the way to the Boston concert, I called a tow truck and then a cab, choosing to abandon my car at a gas station in Hopkinton for the evening rather than miss seeing Thom Yorke dance around the stage singing "rats and children follow me around." I have never regretted it.

Had last Wednesday been four years ago, I would have been nearly hyperventilating with excitement. Wednesday marked the release of the newest Radiohead album, In Rainbows, a welcome gift to fans who have waited four years, amidst rumors of the band breaking up, the album coming out in 2006, and the band changing their tune, again and again. And, as if that weren't exciting enough, the band only announced the album ten days before its release, and, and, and announced a new marketing strategy: the album would, at first, be distributed online, with customers paying whatever they wanted. Yes, that's right: whatever they wanted. On the official site, the "price" line was kept blank, with a small hyperlinked question mark next to it; when clicked, a small window popped up that said "It's Up To You." When clicked again, another small window popped up: "No, Really, It's Up To You."

My corners of the internet have been abuzz since then. Pitchfork, the usually staid bastion of indie hipper-than-thou superiority, announced the new album with the headline "NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM AAAAAAAHHH!!!!" Before the album's release, economics blogs discussed the price discrimation model, Pitchfork gave a song-by-song breakdown of the history of the new album, several friends emailed me to chat about the news, and a Google blogsearch brought up roughly 14,000 hits for "In Rainbows" between October 1 and October 9. After the album's release, "how much did you pay" polls abounded, several friends geeked out about the music, and the internet hype machine went crazy.

At the moment of the album's release--and remember this was all done online, so I can pinpoint a moment; I got my download code at 11.50 PM on October 9--I was still awake, finishing--okay, fine, starting--some homework. When I saw the email come into my inbox, I forgot all about the structure of wh-word questions in English and got downloading. A few minutes later, I was listening to the new album and reading reviews of it online. These weren't professional reviews: all over the internet, people were live-blogging their first listen, or sometimes their second, telling us where and when they first listened: in the middle of the night, after waiting up for it; early in the morning, while getting ready for work; on their lunch break. When I learned the new album would be a download, I lamented, a little bit, for the loss of the zealous-fan camaraderie I experienced at that record store four years ago, but I realized, while trying to load a message board for a Radiohead fan site, that digital media don't destroy community, they create it. It just happens to be virtual, and far-flung. Listening to Thom Yorke wail "It is the 21st century," I reveled in the fact that, in this hyper-accelerated modern world, a band can build hype, release an album, and get reviewed by thousands of loyal/ardent/obsessive fans, all within the space of ten days and twenty minutes. Thank you, Al Gore.

Abler minds than mine have weighed in on the implications of the new marketing model--some say it marks a death knell for the record industry, others point out that just because Radiohead can get away with this doesn't mean it's the wave of the future; Radiohead, despite being, by some definitions, an indie band, consistently tops the charts, and even 2000's Kid A, which was widely (and illegally) leaked on the internet before its release, went to #1 in the U.S. on the week of its release, even though the band didn't release any singles. I will say, though, that whatever you think about the future of this model, it has succeeded for the present: as of today, the day after its release, Radiohead have sold 1.2 million copies of In Rainbows. Kid A, by comparison, sold 1.3 million copies in the first three years after its release. Now, that "sold" should probably have quotation marks on it, as many people were paying only the 90-cent transaction fee, but still, I'd say the band's probably doing pretty well, financially speaking--especially when you consider that they're taking most of the profits themselves, having cut out the record-company middlemen.

(Oh, and if you want to know, I paid about $7.)

I hesitate to turn this into a full-blown album review, partly because it usually takes me longer than a day to really make up my mind about an album, partly because, though my obsession has abated since four years ago, the very mention of the name Radiohead still makes me a bit dizzy, so you know I'll be biased, and partly because, well, there's only so many synonyms for "depressed" one can find in a thesaurus before one needs to take Prozac and a break. I'm not sure if I agree with the "best album yet" judgment--it's pretty hard to compete against what is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest albums of all time, and don't even get me started on Kid A--but, so far, I think it's the best album I've heard all year, and definitely better than Amnesiac or Hail to the Thief. (Not that I'm saying they're bad, Oxford forbid!) The album as a whole is muted and mournful, with Yorke's trademark voice used as an instrument every bit as much as the piano or drums or guitar. (Fans will be delighted to note that there are guitars in this album.) I can't name just a single highlight; "House of Cards" caught my attention right away, for its opening line "I don't want to be your friend/I just want to be your lover," because in most Radiohead songs romantic themes are usually suppressed, subverted and carefully covered in symbol and metaphor; I love the transformation of "Reckoner" into a quiet, drum-driven piece rather than its original incarnation as a crunchy guitar anthem, just like "Electioneering," only bad; I shrieked with excitement to realize that "Nude" was just "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," which has long been one of my favorite unreleased live tracks; and the understated "Videotape" easily rivals any of Radiohead's other piano ballads for beauty, as Thom, playing the piano and accompanied by stuttering percussion, croons "When I'm at the Pearly Gates/This will be on the videotape, the videotape." I'm trying not to gush, but I can't help myself: when I'm at the Pearly Gates, this will be on the soundtrack.

Okkervil River

Way back in March 2005, I went to see The Decemberists in Salt Lake City, with an opening act called Okkervil River. Since opening bands are generally hit-or-miss, and since I had never heard of them, I showed up late, catching only about three or four songs at the end of their set. They were decent enough, but didn't really catch my ear on the first, live, listen. A few months later, though, I heard a song of theirs on internet radio, downloaded a few more, and soon was in the throes of a buy-all-their-albums, listen-to-them-daily, tell-all-my-friends obsession that hasn't yet abated. I've been kicking myself, these past two years, that I missed the chance to really listen to them live.

Well, no longer. In support of their new album, The Stage Names, they played a show in San Francisco last night. I've had my tickets for over a month, the 5th was marked on my calendar with tons of exclamation points, and the thought of the concert was the only thing keeping me alive during my seven hours in a row of grad classes. (Have I mentioned that I have the world's worst class schedule?)

I left for the concert a little later than I wanted, mostly because I burned the Campbell's tomato soup I was going to have for dinner, and was forced to throw together a different sort of instant meal at the last minute, and I just barely missed the train I should have gotten on, forcing me to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one. I didn't want to miss the opening act this time, because, hey, you never know how you'll feel about them in a year's time, so when I got off the train in San Francisco's Castro District, I was feeling hurried, and decided to run the ten blocks from the train station to the club. I took off my favorite pair of flimsy sandals, which are comfortable but hard to run in, and sprinted uphill past a quick cross-section of San Francisco society: gay and lesbian couples, then gentrified yuppie types, then clumps of hipster 20-somethings waiting outside the club. No one turned to look twice at the girl running down the street, alone, at nine o'clock at night, sandals in hand, purse bouncing with every step. This is a big city, after all, whose motto should be "San Francisco: We've Seen Weirder."

I'm sore today, both from the uphill run and from the fact that I spent the entire hour and a half of the concert standing on tiptoe, but, let me tell you, it was worth it. They began with my current favorite track from the new album, "Plus Ones," which I love for its numerical wordplay, and it only got better from there, as they went through a setlist that included a generous amount from older albums (including, to my great delight, "Black," "It Ends With a Fall," and "Okkervil River Song"), as well as the highlights from the new album, like "Unless It's Kicks," which Will Sheff, the lead singer, declared was the band's new anthem, with its focus on "some midlevel band" which has "been driving too long," and "John Allyn Smith Sails," whose transition into the Beach Boys's "Sloop John B" was like a descent into a dirge, given the way words like "I feel so broke up" are woven into a song about failure and suicide. And, of course, they played their latest single, "Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe," prefaced by an amusing story about how, for their appearance on Conan O'Brien on the same night as Jeff Goldblum, they rewrote some of the lyrics of the song to reference movies like Independence Day and Jurassic Park. They were told they couldn't play them for Conan, apparently, so they played them for us. Throughout the night, I had my fingers crossed for some of my other favorites, like maybe "The President's Dead" or "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks," and was slightly disappointed not to hear them, but the last song changed that: hearing "Westfall" live, and having the concert finish with the entire crowd singing "evil don't look like anything" along with the band, was quite enough bliss for one night.

At no point in the night, though, did I even feel a trace of disappointment with the performance itself. The cast of instruments was varied--guitars and drums and piano, of course, but also a mandolin and an accordion and a trumpet and maracas and a tambourine--and all six band members were full of energy, especially Will Sheff, who got more and more casual as the night went on, shedding first his suit jacket, then his tie, then his crisp white button-up in favor the T-shirt underneath, as he jumped around on stage, his always-emotional voice nearly a histrionic wail as he sang lines like "wish I could remember why it mattered to me/It doesn't matter to me anymore." With that sort of on-stage enthusiasm, I believed him when, later, he claimed, in song, "I'm doing what I really like and getting paid for it."

Given my love for this band, I'm glad to hear that from them, and I hope they will continue doing what they really like for years and years, as long as, of course, that implies they'll continue putting out hyperliterary albums as good as Black Sheep Boy and The Stage Names and giving concerts as good as the one last night. Laugh at me all you want--my friend Emily certainly did--but I had a giant grin on my face all through the concert, and the high still hasn't left me today. Will Sheff may sing that he "[doesn't] know what notes you want to hear played" and "can't think what lines you'd like me to sing or say," but I say, don't worry, Will, you're doing just fine--you've got great reviews, an upcoming international tour, and the undying love of this particular fan. Sing whatever you want, and I'll be listening.

Home (Where My Music's Playing)

I dreaded coming back to Indonesia, I’m ashamed to say. I spent the last few days of my vacation abroad surrounded by cranberry juice, a fast internet connection, English novels, and Monty Python episodes with my brothers. How could I leave all that? My heart sank at the thought of it.

When I first returned, on the day before New Year’s, I stayed with a friend, an embassy employee in Jakarta. Her place was, for me, a sort of halfway house: cranberry juice but no fast internet, English books but no loving family. I spent my time there sleeping (one night, for a record fifteen hours), reading books (seven novels in two days, my idea of heaven), and eating American snacks from the commissary.

I came back to Semarang on Wednesday night, on a ghetto little plane (insects crawling on my seat: seven) with a ticket I had purchased for twenty dollars the day before. I spent the flight planning my lessons for Thursday and Friday only to discover, when I landed to a flurry of text messages from my school, that the students had testing on Thursday and I didn’t have to teach. Fine, I thought, another day in the sun, reading novels and finishing my grad school reapplication. Friday morning, I woke up bright and early (or, at the very least, early, since the sun isn’t quite up at 5 A.M.) and headed in to school, only to find out that testing extended to Friday and therefore I still didn’t have to teach. No one told me because, as my favorite teacher put it, they missed me. It was rather sweet, really, except that it meant I wasted an entire week in Jakarta and Semarang that I could have spent in Bali. (I forgive them. See what I sucker I am for people who miss me?)

Now that I’m actually back, I am, to my surprise most of all, glad to be here. Between a church activity where I was greeted, loudly and enthusiastically, by the missionaries, the entire Relief Society, and the children to whom I teach piano lessons; time spent exchanging vacation stories with my favorite teachers; the new Decemberists CD to obsess over; a random school trip to Kudus, two hours away, simply to tell three middle schools there that we would like to visit later in the week; and the exciting discovery that I’m suffering several of the major symptoms of pinworms, I’ve realized I really do have a life here. It may be different, sometimes to the point of surreal, it may not be what I expected, it may not even be exactly what I want when I wake up every morning, but it is my life and I’m happy with it, parasites and all.

Radio Head

So, thanks to the U.S. Embassy and its magical powers of networking, my friend the Short Loud One (not her real name) and I have our own radio show. (Or, rather, our own regular guest spot on someone else's radio show--it's practically the same thing, right?) We are supposed to, once a week, lead a discussion, in English, about American culture and whatever else we can think of. We've only done it once so far, but, seeing as how it was a blast, we're planning to set the regular schedule in stone just as soon as I'm done travelling to Yogyakarta and Vienna and New Delhi and the SLO is done travelling to Burma and Cambodia and Thailand--that is, sometime in February.

In any case, our first attempt at a show was, as I saw it, excellent. We explained the history of Thanksgiving, talked about different traditions--in the South, apparently, they deep-fry their turkeys--and developed a fun rapport with the actual hosts, two very hip-yet-pleasant twenty-somethings. With the exception of a suggestive joke on my part--"size always matters" referred to turkeys, people, turkeys--our wit was nice, safe, and culturally sensitive, all that "Congress pays me to be a nice American" sort of stuff. What's more, since our interview was interspersed with music, our hosts allowed me to choose a song; I think that's the first and last time an Indonesian audience will hear Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely" played on air. I just hope they appreciated it.