(Howell Creek Radio Address for August 4, 2012 -- ) The Sound of Music ================== Trixie and I really are having a wonderful summer getting out, seeing people, enjoying things, and especially: not spending a single evening at Home Depot. There's this lovely castle-like bandshell on Lake Harriet, a few stories tall with pennants flying and an elaborate sound system, and the other night the Minnesota Sinfonia was giving a free concert. We parked on one end of the lake and strolled our way down to the other end where the bandshell was. The air was comfortably warm -- it already had that humid pink glow around the edges, even though sunset was a couple of hours away -- and there were a lot of people out: walking along the paved paths, swimming along the sandy spots on the shore, and of course gathering for the concert. Children ran past us in swimsuits, and an old lady walked by -- trim, but old -- with a fanny pack to which she was constantly referring for some reason. The evening had the peaceful quality of a respite that everyone had _earned_ in some way, and which seemed like it might go on forever. I told Trixie, imagine what this scene would be like if we had just come through a long war: how we would feel, all of us strangers out enjoying the evening; perhaps stretching our legs and arms for the first time in a really long time, and all of us seeing each other as more than just strangers -- as fellow sufferers and survivors. I don't know why that thought came to me just then. I might have forgotten it too, except that, later one, we heard the sound of the airplanes overhead. Lake Harriet lies on one of the main approaches into the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, and the orchestra's music was frequently drowned in the drone of a passenjer jet flying in low, halfway into a descent for landing. There are some scenes which do not attain their full significance until seen in retrospect, in the light or darkness of what followed. It was only a flight of imagination that made me think I saw a premonition of horrible war in the utter serenity of the summertime crowds listening to Dvořák in their flip flops, or in the noise of the planes. But why oh why must it take death and devastation to make a city of strangers feel true gratitude for one another? In my heart, I wished for the same premonition to be flashed into the minds of everyone else in the crowd too -- and wished that it might indeed only ever be a vision. * * * After the concert, the orchestra packed up, and the staff inflated a huge movie screen and set up a projector. The sun set, the remaining swimmers and sailors came out of the water to join us, and all one thousand of us settled in to watch the movie of the evening on the big screen. And it turned out to be _The Sound of Music_ -- a movie about joyful events seen backwards through a war. And so I like to think that my wish was granted. Synopsis -------- Radio address for August 4, 2012, about an outdoor concert at the Lake Harriet bandshell, and the planes flying overhead. This episode was field-recorded and produced on my phone, which had its own challenges but seemed to work pretty well. Now that I've ironed out a few wrinkles in the process, I'm hoping to make more use of it now and again, especially since we'll be on the road for most of August. The music is the _Symphony No. 9 from the New World_ by Dvořák, and was recorded live during [a performance by the Minnesota Sinfonia][1] on July 20, 2012. [1]: http://www.mnsinfonia.org/scsii2012