Today's Performance

Well, it didn’t express an opinion or an idea but it was definitely…unique? Is that the word I’m looking for?

She is a young performer and her mind seems to wander at every performance but her delivery never lacks in character or color. She isn’t a bad performer but she doesn’t seem to have a climatic point in her piece. I cannot find a central focus to her music.

And where were the dynamics?!

She has good pitch but she needs to work on dynamics! I know that fortissimo is a dynamic but you need to have contrast like piano and mezzo piano.

I use to teach music so I should be able to critique today’s performance.

Let me back up a bit. Every morning at work, my cubicle neighbor performs for three hours by clicking her mouth, smacking her lips and yawning.

For three hours.

She performs for three – solid – hours…without interruption, commercial break or intermission.

Is this humanly possible?

Some people write books, others paint and still others compose a symphony. This could be her life’s work – her true masterpiece.

Some say that a person needs to be tormented in order to be a great artist. I’m not sure what is tormenting her but, from what I can tell, it is something huge, grotesque and nasty. It probably smells bad too.

I cannot define her masterpiece of sound but I will do my best as she is relentless in constructing it. It is a cacophony of percussive tones. These tones waft through the air and are accentuated by the smells of burned popcorn and cheap coffee. My college professors never discussed how food could blend with sound to form something unique and full of meaning for the listener. In my old college days, some musicians performed their recitals while dancers expressed the music through movement. The two performances would blend together to form something unique.

The percussive sounds discharged from my neighbor’s cubicle blend with the smell of burned popcorn and cheap coffee to form a unique harmonic experience that both smells and sounds like crap.

I do not have an audio of this performance but I did transcribe an atonal phrase below:

“Click, click – slurp – smack – slurp – yawn…click, click, click…smack – click – slurp.”

As I mentioned before, she tends to wander and perform everything at one dynamic.

It is a relentless barrage of sound that I must regrettable decline. Sadly I must trade the magic of live performance for pre-recorded music of modern times. It is a shame but I am forced to use my iPod at work. I received it last year as a gift. I thought it would bring me joy but unfortunately I did not understand the full ramifications of this gift. While an iPod can never replace the experience of a live performance, it will severely hamper my ability to listen to my neighbor’s daily performance.