Work and Dvorak

I set off on a mad dash to make it to the whole foods grocer prior to their closing this evening and wound up with something to say. Prior to hopping in the car I was pooped. A little about my job. I have an on-call rotation with four others which involves taking every problem great and small that comes our way and fixing it. Immediately. For 168 hours. I work with network infrastructure which means that every little problem appears enormous to our corporate customers who in some cases have created the problem from the start. Essentially, it's like throwing someone out of the city gates for a week to fight off, placate, or confound the Mongol hordes and repair the damage they wreak upon said walls while the rest of the troops focus on designing better walls and weapons ostensibly to make guard duty easier. There are sweet times when very little is happening, but this week isn't shaping up that way. I couldn't even describe how I felt I was so worn out from ten hours of non-stop multi-tasking, troubleshooting, and downright arguing with a little bit of line-in-the-sand drawing for emphasis. I looked at my cat and said, "I have nothing of interest to report." and decided to do some shopping chores.

As I was pulling out of my garage the gentle voice of a WFYI announcer was describing the beginnings of the serious pursuit of formal music education in the US which was the lead-in for Dvorak's 9th symphony. In the past I have described my ear as unsophisticated and immature. I rarely linger on the 2nd and 3rd movements of any orchestral work as they are -slow- which has always meant -boring- to me. Few first movements light me on fire (although I can listen to the first five notes of Eroica and turn off the stereo), but tonight I was in the car and it was on the radio. I enjoy D's Ninth quite a bit although the piece definitely falls into the category of skip to the fourth movement.

The weather was warm, the sun was thinking about setting, and I was listening to some of the most beautiful music ever written serving the double purpose of a sonic mirror for a young nation which wrote its own rules still simple in so many principles and of a driving overture for the most tumultuous, historically significant, scientifically advancing, catapult ride that has been the 20th century. For a brief moment I thought it would be a pity to get out of the car to hit a grocery store. Chance kept rolling sevens, and as it turned out the store was closed. I would continue my listening.

Indiana is at its most beautiful in the late summer at sunset. For reasons I don't comprehend the sky can light up with every color of the spectrum between dusk and twilight. At the point the 2nd movement intoned through my speakers with clear opening chords the evening had large patches of pinkish red against light blue streaked with wisps of clouds.

I turned back to my street telling myself I'll listen to this when I'm not working on something else. I have a good copy of it. Now I can listen to the whole thing. But I'll probably hold off until next week.