Maybe you know what I mean. The septuagenarian B.O. from the next row. The suppressed esophageal eructation from the early diner one seat over. The program’s cover art dispiritingly generated by A.I. instead of by the hand of a student.
But then, there I was Monday night, in back of the Pierson auditorium, having arrived just as the middle school kids were wrapping up their set, and I ate those thoughts as I found myself smiling and goofily waving to my daughter onstage, a senior stylishly dressed in black to contrast with the gleaming silver of her flute, and out front, enthusiastic and sincere, her music teacher, Austin Remson, as conductor and M.C.
When the band unleashed the doleful opening strains of Radiohead’s “Creep,” the slyness of the pop-infused playlist dawned on this listener, his wits restored by having left his phone in the car. The sweetness of youth, the cuteness of the golden-haired flute section, was cut with this choice of what is one of the great expressions of modern alienation, one so effective it’s known to be of deep significance to the incarcerated and the homeless. (“What the hell am I doing here?” Thom Yorke asks in a plaintive upper register. “I don’t belong here.”)
And then there was Queen. To me the most interesting thing about those stadium rockers was Freddie Mercury’s overlarge teeth, the misaligned and protruding nature of which he believed enhanced his singing. And yet if the average American has heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” about one hundred times too many, how quickly this is refreshed when a few teenage flute players take up those sotto voce sections of the front man’s theatrical stylings.
Enjoyable performances aside, by the time this appears in print, my senior will have exactly three days left in her high school career, with athletic awards, the academic awards of Senior Night, and then graduation. It’s a transition, and thus the marking of that transition is appreciated, like when Mr. Remson, who has taught my daughter since sixth grade, presented her and four other seniors with bright red gift bags containing music trophies and, among other things, boxes of Swedish fish, one of which will soon be diverted my way.
While that’s all well and good, you’ll have to excuse me if about a half-hour later the prospect of an empty nest had me white-knuckling a $16 margarita downtown as I gazed unblinking through plate glass at the boats bobbing in the harbor.