Hairy House

Hairy House

Sunday 3 March 2013

Aging, cynicism and weddings.

There's no two ways of looking at it. I am growing old. 
I have a fourteen year old son who is hairier and taller than my husband, have started having to hold things further away from my nose in order to read them, and am nearing that dread age - 3010.
However, it's not all bad. The one thing that has surprises me is that, whilst getting older, I am also getting far less cynical and far less judgmental of others, which is funny, because I always used to think it was meant to be the other way around.
Music is one area in which this particularly stands out. I have recently started playing regularly in a gigging string quartet again, as I used to as a student and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Back in the days when I was a student, my friends and I could be very scornful about playing for endless weddings.
"They only want us for the look of the thing," we used to say, and "oh no, not another Canon, not another Eine Kliene Nachtmusik," we would groan.
Nowadays, I just enjoy playing the music. So what if it is Eine Kleine? It is still Mozart is it not, and how many people have the opportunity to play Mozart and get paid for it? And instead of thinking, "nobody can hear us, doesn't matter how we play," I have started to realise what good practise it is to play when you can hardly hear each other - it takes new ways of communicating, that's all.
And there might be the odd gig when you're not sure whether anybody noticed you were there. But the last gig we did, at a launch for Fiat, an old man joined in to sing Sole Mio with a beautiful baritone, and his wife had to drag him away. A few months ago, we had people fighting over the microphone so that they could join in with our Merry Widow rendition. What price that, eh?
And, when it comes down to it, there is no such thing as "just another wedding." Even if, on the surface of it, things might look similar; another bride in another white dress, more pink bridesmaids, another golf club, another flowered bower - at the end of the day, each bride, each bridegroom is different. For them it is a unique occasion, for their guests, their friends and families, it is a special time  and you can feel it in the air, in the nervous giggles of the guests, the tears of the mothers. And, if anything, it is a privilege to be part of something so momentous, to be adding one's own little piece of confetti to the shower.

And by the way, if you want to support the Brisbane String Quartet, please go to our facebook page and like us!!

No comments:

Post a Comment