It was a warm afternoon here in Portland – the beginning of what promises to be a pretty lengthy heat wave (there was a ‘heat wave advisory’ declared today for the weekend and beyond). I spent the early afternoon working on the Dies Irae movement of Verdi’s Requiem for Saturday’s rehearsals at the Oregon Bach Festival. In need of a practice break (tangent alert) well, more than a practice break, really, I’m in the midst of some typical mid-life emotional messiness, and there is a lot of stuff competing for my attention in my brain these days (end tangent), I decided to take a walk around my relatively new NW Portland neighborhood.
I tend to avoid NW 23rd street like the plague – at least on nice days in the summer months, it’s overrun with tourists and teenagers, and stupidly long lines at the Salt & Straw ice cream store – instead, I head even more north and west to Wallace City Park for my strolls. It’s kind of amazing what a nice park can do for one’s outlook on life. In a quiet neighborhood, a park can be a focus of energy that needs to be expended. In a bustling neighborhood, a park can be an oasis of calm. Wallace Park is a bit of each of these. During the work week, the park is often quiet and serene, the perfect place to read a book, eat a picnic lunch, or just catch some rays in the outfields of its baseball diamonds.
So, on this particular day, as I wandered to the park, I felt a sense of calm returning to smother my earlier agitation. Seeing people relaxing, hearing the birds singing in the trees, and hearing the dogs barking and playing in the dog park, it was a balm for the soul. Nothing profound – but just what I needed at that time and place. So, too, can a trip to the symphony. A hard day at the office, family drama and illnesses, dentist appointments gone wrong – they can all be subsumed by the experience of entering the concert hall. The frenetic activity of the lobby, greeting old friends and fellow patrons as you go to your seats, and finally, the sounding of the tuning ‘A’ that ushers in trips to places that most of us can only imagine. While I spend most of my time within the orchestra, rather than listening to one from the audience, I was reminded today of how essential that special, sacred place is for us – even in our on-demand 21st century media-dominated lives. It’s why I do what I do – I derive so much satisfaction from knowing that I’m providing something that’s often much more than mere entertainment. It’s an admirable calling, and one that I’m glad to answer year after year.