09 April 2003

On the Town

It will be a challenge to get through today, since my head did not hit the pillow last night until nearly midnight. I rose unwilling, head swirling with the news from Iraq. I looked out and saw that it is wet and cold and thoroughly nasty this morning. The commute is going to be awful this morning. I am happy it was not like this last night.

As US Marines entered Baghdad from the east, greeted as liberators by the Shia minority in the capital, I was looking for my car in the parking lot of the Kennedy Center for the performing arts. A friend of mine sings for the renowned Washington Choral Arts Society, and they had an opportunity to be directed, in concert with the Baltimore Symphony, by the astonishingly talented singer Bobby McFarron. You may recall his nonsense pop hit "Don't Worry, Be Happy" of a few years back, a loopy neo-calypso tune that was as contagious in its time as SARS is today.

He has spent the years since redeeming himself through an exploration of pure vocal sound. Round and long and keening sounds, wandering where his voice and microphone might take it. Tonight's program featured Bobby conducting the Baltimore Symphony and the full chorus of hundreds voices of the Arts Society. It was a thing of wonder, improvisation married to high art, skills of discipline and whimsy joined in joy.

Oh, I won't complain about the fact that it is a weeknight in Washington. Oh, hell, I will. The days are too long here. I left early at 6:00pm to hit the "will call" ticket window, thinking the show was at 7:00, but it wasn't. It was at 8:00. That left an hour to kill, all dressed up and just wanting to go home. I wound up at the Brasserie across the street, at the Watergate, eating a plate of happy-hour calimari and drinking some dry white wine. The barflies were interesting, professional people out on the town. The bartender was from Budapest, in the States for a lark. I asked her about the Red Army siege of her town as a way of viewing what was likely to happen in Baghdad. But it didn't work. Her father was six when it happened and her mother was two. Interesting, I thought, that the reduction of an ancient city was to her something as remote as World War One is to me. It hit me then that Communism was something that was in the past for her, too. I asked and she smirked. "Of course" she said. She had been a member of the Young Pioneers, and had the neckerchief that she saved as a souvenir of old times. There was no insight to be had at the Brasserie, at least not about the relativism of the fall of great cities. The Red Army reduced the place to ash and in two generations it was irrelevant.

Maybe time does heal some things.

The Kennedy Center is a mess, and I am hoping that in less than two generations the repairs will be compolete. We woke one morning a couple years ago to realize the the whole edifice was slipping into the Potomac, and that is considered a bad thing. What's more, they realized that the place was a cultural fortress, islocated by the Saudi Embassy and the sprawling Watergate complex. The place was a ruin, and particularly bad when slabs of the white marble facade slipped off the concrete facing and crashed down on the roadway under the western front. So they are embarked on one of those endless projects that is intended to fix the place. The same firm that designed the place got the contract for the US Embassy in New Delhi, hoping no one would notice they had recycled the design, and so there is a sort of déjà vu about walking into the great hall. Walking down to the concert hall, in the soaring hall and elegant chandeliers, the space reminded me of the pictures of some of Saddam's palaces.

When the performance was done, and I was free to go home, I found that the construction down in the parking area had rendered the place unrecognizable from where I had entered just hours before. As I paced the three levels of the garage, looking for my faithful steed, I considered life in Washington, life at the zenith of the American Century.

I really wish they would just finish the construction and make things look normal. I think there are a lot of people who were thinking that last night, not all of them at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.