from "darkness" into...

light---that would be a good title for today's post. Yesterday, all things that could go wrong did. By that I mean I was tired, during most of the day, ate little, had stomach cramps, and generally felt trapped in the apartment. Then around 7:00 something happened. I stumbled upon a streaming of a Carnegie Hall concert from the Fall. It was the Schubert song cycle Wintereise, sung by the mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato, accompanied by the Met's music director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin.  The song cycle is brutal, it begins with the narrator being rejected by the young woman he loved, and descends into a kind of lonely horror. What warmth there is in the cycle comes in in short phrases that interrupt the coldness of the music. But Schubert's music is brilliant, yet frightening to absorb all at once. When I stumbled upon it  I thought, maybe I will just hear the first few songs, but once into it, I decided that I wanted to experience the whole thing--even if it meant "descending into hell" with the protagonist. And that I did, mostly riveted for the next hour and fifteen minutes. The narrator of the cycle is a young(maybe middle aged) man, Miss di Donato created the dramatic vision of a woman reading the notes or diary of the young man. This worked brilliantly--she was deeply moved throughout, as she read the story of the man's terrible journey Nezet-Seguin, her accompianist, was totally with her---a partner all the way, always in sync with Miss di Donato. Watching the song cycle, and committing to its sadness focused me in a way that I had not been all day. By the end I felt centered, and that made it easier to continue my own journey into the night.
  This morning I discovered a blog my a movie expert who also happened to be raised in the Bronx. One post is a study and remembrance of all the Bronx neighborhood movie theaters from the 40's, 50's and 60's---yet many of them lasted into the 70's. That was the time the neighborhoods changed, yet the movie theaters mostly continued their "establishment" features. As usual, I was fascinated byt the street addresses of the movie theaters. Again, trying to understand the past. Should visit that blog many more times.
     So I am experiencing a kind of optimism this morning--a nice day ahead, will try to go out
for much of it. Will report soon