Put your shirt on and drop the knife

Have you ever watched a symphony performance and thought the only person doing what they want to do is the conductor? The conductor is the only one who is allowed to publicly go crazy with music. The rest of us have to, maybe, do a little stirring movement with our right hand.

If you took the sound away and watched the stirring movements of the little hands of symphony goers you’d think it was a rehab group for coffee addicts who like lots of cream. Why make the stirring movement with the right hand? Everyone knows that tempo is conducted with the right hand. Come on now. Do it correctly.

The other option is the “eyes closed head bob.” I’m not talking about patrons falling asleep. I’m talking about the patron who is really feeling it but can only manage a gentle bobbing of the head so as to not disturb the other audience members.

If there’s a pianist I guess you could play the “air piano” on your legs but that might lead to your neighbor asking you if you play. You would then have to sheepishly say, “Weeeelllll, I play a little.” This may or may not be true.

There’s no way to get around it. Moving to the music at a classical concert just doesn’t work.

I wish to God it did work because as it is right now I’m relegated to tromping around my home impersonating Sir Georg Solti with Siegfried’s Funeral March blaring as I shout “Hier kommt der allmächtigen!” and wave my arms to the heavens.

This makes the cats nervous not to mention my children who are crying and begging me to put my shirt back on and drop the knife. I usually come back to my senses at that point and dissolve into tears promising to never do it again.

I then explain that daddy is just a little sick and needs help. We can clearly see here that repressing musicality at the concert hall leads to musical deviance at home and ruins lives.

Or maybe I'm just a little envious of the conductor at a concert because he or she is allowed a freedom of expression in their bodies which the rest of us just aren’t — in public.