
Monday, December 5, 2016
Sunday
It was a full day yesterday. The brunch at ten in honor of the new students in the drama program, and since we are partially supporting one of the guys we were there at a table with his other sponsors, and him, and a few people sniffing around at the idea of shelling out four thousand and up per annum. It's our big philanthropy; many donors take on two or three, other sponsors pony up a hundred thou or more for a production. A few years ago at the same kind of brunch the director happened to mention in his speech that he was only four thousand short of his goal to raise money for audition tours at which some gentleman at my table jumped up and shouted: "Oh, Good Lord, we ought to be able to get that easily enough right in this room. I'll pledge a thousand!" Amid good-natured shouts and pledges twelve thousand was raised in minutes. That's life in high end Sarasota where we paupers just watch from the edges with our mouth open in wonder. So we were at the brunch at a big round table trying to make conversation, always a torture and a triumph since the over seventy set are all hard of hearing and the room is devoid of acoustical proofing. But very few of the people can count on hearing much anyway there is really no attempt at serious communication. After two hours of making nice, and actually everyone shutting up to hear each of the new students make a brief and oh so self assured presentation, we left, went home took a brief nap, and wheeled off to the symphony hall where we heard another sublime program from our Sarasota Symphony. The hall itself is one of those multi purpose places with however very good acoustics. It was obviously built for young people going to rock concerts although its mission is more to house programs for eighty five year olds remembering Edie Gorme and that ilk. It's ossified Las Vegas, I guess. The arena is steep climbing, the passage ways wide and very poorly secured with railings. The rows were squeezed as tightly as possible to increase revenues. The ideal customer is a rake thin kid. Watching elderly over weight people with canes, find their way to their seats is painful and then to know that when intermission comes their bladders are going to be calling out. You go through hell to get to listen to great symphonic music. It is not Boston's Symphony Hall, that's for sure. But, hey, we parked our car easily under the shade of a tree, walked (stumbled) to the building under beautiful sun, fluffy clouds, breezes off the Gulf. All is good, in it's own way.
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