mahler's 5th; my first.

so, my 2.5 month vacation from the engine was not planned--it just happened that way. and if it weren't for my husband of all husbandry, the engine may have been down for the count. he told me he was checking every day to see if i had written anything new. well, the idea of his daily disappointment for 71 straight days just became too much for me and i realized i had to do something.

so here it is: the next installment.

i will also tell you that i have been in a crazy stupor brought on by a mad rush of hormones. remember back in december when i said, "i hope everyone gets pregnant"? remember that? well, it worked for me. can you believe it? so, when i haven't been busy eating salt & vinegar potato chips, hot & sour soup, plain yogurt or kale sautéed in almond butter, i have been sleeping. or taking care of the granule, who has now completely lost her sight. but that is another story.

here's another indicator: i did not buy one gallon of gas for the entire month of january. i didn't drive anywhere (but to work and back on my famously brief commute). it turns out that i was sleeping for a month straight. so there hasn't been much time for fun. and by fun, i mean tinyengine.

pregnancy also brought with it some kind of brain collapse. i have only been able to watch project runway, good eats (when he is not making a pork loin or something) and countdown with keith olbermann. and while i have a few actual novels on my nightstand, i unfortunately fall asleep clutching some ridiculous book with recipes for super milk and sketches of what cletus the fetus looks like each week. mon mari of all paris is reading something very heavy and political. it makes me feel pretty bad that my reading material is so, well, dumb. i thought i might read about the siege of budapest for a while and just put away all the pregnancy books. but it's IMPOSSIBLE. it is. ask anyone who is pregnant.

well, back to the point of our little chat here. i want to talk to you about gustav mahler.

now that i am able to stay up past 9:30 without passing out in a puddle of drool, i was able to accept a very gracious invitation from my friend nick. he invited me to a performance of mahler's 5th symphony. now, i have always been a big fan of classical music. i even know more about it than the average bird. but for some reason, i have never heard mahler's 5th.

i picture it like scenes from an old movie:

i am walking down the street and i see a little hat shop. i pop into the hat shop to look at hats. wait, that wouldn't happen. i don't try on hats in hat shops because i got lice 3 times and one of them was from trying on hats. well, those hats were wooly hats in a box in an army surplus store, but still, i don't try on hats anymore.

let's start over:

i am walking down the street and i see a little salt & vinegar potato chip shop. i pop into the salt & vinegar potato shop to see if they have any chips that won't dissolve my tongue. mahler's 5th walks by--at that very moment! i come out of the shop, and mahler's 5th has just turned the corner. we miss each other by that much!

another scene:

mahler's 5th and i are both enrolled in a seminar about the siege of budapest. i show up and then i realize that even though i would like to say that i am interested in the siege of budapest, i am not, and so i go home to eat my hot & sour soup in a cup. mahler's 5th stays and learns a lot. then mahler's 5th goes home and calls my spouse of all spicey and they talk about the siege of budapest. i am asleep and so i don't even hear the phone ring.

and the final scene:

mahler's 5th goes to my soccer game. he watches us lose miserably to a team that is really bad. but that is because we only have 8 people show up. the bad team has a full team with 3 subs. mahler's 5th goes home and we miss each other again, because i can't play soccer anymore because i am pregnant.

well, finally, thanks to nick, i made its acquaintance, at long last. and it was such a profound introduction that i spent 2 days researching the definitive recorded version. i found out that everyone thinks they know everything and that there isn't really a consensus. which is a little bit like life.

enough about all of that, let me tell you what i thought.

it sounded a little bit to me like the final minutes of every war movie ever made, or the final minutes of every war ever fought. or if you put fellini, jeff buckley and the end of the world into a food mill, or if you took an old ocean liner from the early 1900s and wrapped it up in white fondant and then wrapped that up in red fondant and then dropped it from a big building. that's kind of what it sounded like. it was astounding.

and that was just the first movement. i can't even get into the rest of it. and the adagietto with the strings and the harp! and that, they say, is mahler's greatest hit. but again, i had never heard it. apparently, it was performed at robert kennedy's funeral. i think people know all about this. i came late to the party, i guess. not the funeral. i wasn't calling the funeral a party. i mean the mahler party.

this was one of the most magnificent things i have ever heard.

and his use of percussion was so interesting that i could go see it again and just watch those guys in back do all of those things.

i came home and listened to some little snippets on itunes, but it was sort of like going to the grocery store to buy camembert and bread the day after you get back from france. it just isn't the same.

the conductor looked to me like he had really big feet, but nick didn't think so.

i was pretty excited and i was hoping that the prawn (as my sister calls the little baby in progress) was getting every note of the thing. i've been singing this dvorak piece in czech lately and so between that and this mahler, i am sure that this will be one delicious baby.

if you happen to have a favorite recording, do let me know. that would be great. otherwise, i think i might pick up either the abbado or the barbirolli.

boy, that was neat.