Weighing

The risk? The program might be modern, melody-phobic, snooze-inducing, you said; in which case, a possible waste of time. On the other hand, you had a movie in hand about food-truck cuisine, one with Latin music, touching moments, and jokes, a sure winner. So I went to the concert alone.

Your assessment of risk vis-a'-vis mine, our respective judgments of the value of possible losses, possible gains: how individual.

I went because I was unfamiliar with but curious about the pieces, and I wanted to hear live music, piping hot, made on the spot at the moment. The actions of the musicians are non-dramatic, a fact counterbalanced by the gesturing of the conductor, but what really matters is the immediacy of the encounter; before bow is put to string, there are only notes on a page.

At every moment, we assess what we already have in terms of what any proposal for the future is likely to bring us. If continuation or augmentation of our current situation in terms of its levels of personal affirmation, freedom, control, efficiency, convenience, life seem probable, we often go with it. Otherwise, the gain won't outweigh the irksome waste or even more serious loss. Chekhov's schoolteacher Byelinkov, 'The Man in the Case', is convinced that the benefit of any risk is never more than a small fraction of its inevitable cost.

What are the potential gains? The lottery tickets a former student keeps pressing into my hands when I meet him before class are full of possibility but thin on probability. Would I buy them myself? I don't. But I do check them to see if I've won; after all, how much would I regret passing up fabulous wealth there for the having on the off chance this scrap of paper has the bingo! sequence of numbers.

I think of you, God-in-love, initiating this universe. Before that moment: uniqueness, absolute autonomy, vistas of untrammeled future possibility? Afterwards, clutter, division, conflict, failures and frustrations, uncertainties. On the other hand, there's the possibility of surprises, interesting distinctions, dramas, novelties, and, not least, companionship. And here we are; it must have been a risk worth taking.

The Resphigi tone poems based on scenes of Botticelli were sweet: twitterings in the Primavera, carols (beautifully worked) in the Adoration of the Magi, and heaving seas in the Birth of Venus. The Elgar symphony: very long, gnarly, beginning, returning again and again to and finishing with a processional theme that reminded me of a BBC glorious heritage scene. (How much of the past is spoiled for us by what uses we've put it to).  I remember overhearing one musician telling student friends in the audience during the intermission that the symphony coming up was worth listening to: 'You won't sleep through all of it.' I heard another remark that Elgar was a favorite composer of hers, this piece in particular. Leaving Kresge, a student in black formal suit in the crowded lobby, violin case slung over his shoulder, said to another, 'I've just survived an hour of...'

The piece was hugely popular when it debuted early in the last century and it's obviously well-wrought. Maybe because it was a Friday night, I lost consciousness a couple of times in the adagio movement that so moved the conductor. Once is usually not enough to appreciate the specialness of something new. I need to, want to hear it again.

So, did you make the right risk-decision? I think you would have loved the Italian and been exasperated by the Englishman. And what I saw of the movie with the infectious rhythms looked good; I'd like to watch it.