Mondays are weird. It's hard not to ponder the weekend just ended — though, really, does it matter?? Isn't it more important and/or relevant to look ahead?? To move on?? To Tuesday, at the very least?? I suppose one must look both forward and backward to make sense of anything ...
Truth is: I don't want to forget this past weekend, starting with the Chopin concert on Friday. It was amazing (if hot), and there are many more such concerts to come, as this amazingly talented (and hot) young pianist Gergely Bogànyi — who looks something like Roger Federer to me, or maybe that was just the association of the tennis tournament going on down the street — is playing the entire "oeuvre" (ten concerts' worth) of Chopin from memory (that's right, without music) ... thus eliminating the need for assistance by the official page-turner of the Newport Music Festival ... whose name is Elmer Booze ... with whom my friend and I chatted outside the Elms after the concert (he was wearing a purple shirt) ... and who, according to the program, has turned 2.37 million pages in his page-turning career.
It's really something how one thing leads to another (isn't it??). And how miscellaneous stuff seems (emphasis on "seems") to connect. Like how a woman holding both parasol and fan outside that hot concert — where I sat beneath an umbrella-shaped chandelier — stood gazing upon the feet of a century-old sculpture. And how the tennis tournament was won by Mardy Fish, as I heard at the crosswalk of Bellevue and Memorial yesterday afternoon on my way home from the grocery store, where I had just bought some fish to throw on the grill (as they say, though that sounds rather rough) then stopped at the liquor store for a six-pack of beer — Newport Storm, of course. I just-so-happened to be walking along the bricks as all the fans were filing out of the Casino, hence the conversation about Fish as we all stood waiting together for the "walk" signal.
So that's over ...
And while in the liquor store I had just heard the announcer on the TV behind the counter say, amid raucous cheers (both on TV and in the liquor store), "Spain wins the World Cup!"
So that's over ...
The resolution of such outstanding questions and events does feel good to a certain extent (doesn't it??), like checking something off a list as having been "done," though it (and the end of each and every weekend) also leaves a certain emptyish "it's over" feeling ...
But what better end to the weekend than running (as we were late) down the hill (after wolfing our grilled fish) to the Yachting Center — where for some reason it amused me that a security guard was standing tough at water's edge making sure stylish loafers didn't get wet — to hear B.B. King, now 84, play the blues?? It was a benefit for the Tennis Hall of Fame, actually. You see?? Things do connect. And, before the concert, as we were standing around having drinks, we ran into some friends, one of whom was sporting a very cool-looking shirt along with the age-verification bracelet everyone must wear after having IDs checked at the Sunset Music Series (if only we really looked under-age).
When I commented upon it — the fancy shirt, not the ID bracelet, certainly not the age issue — the friend said, "Hey, this is B.B King."
Then B.B. played ... from a sitting position (can you blame him at 84??), after which we found ourselves with so many other fans back outside on the bricks, where I was amused by a lost sole — high-heeled, no less. As I stood gazing at it, another post-event passerby, asked, "Hey, is that Cinder-drunker-ella's lost slipper??"
What do you think — will it fit??
All weirdness (and lack of focus) aside, here's B.B. .......
