Notes working alongside other notes

I recently finished Find Me, André Aciman's sequel to Call Me By Your Name, mostly because of a typically impassioned interview with The Book Worm (it is my now not secret dream to be interviewed by Michael Silverblatt someday), and though I cannot say I loved it, it really excelled in its illustration of classical music. I recently did some writing for a musician and I realized how difficult writing even about a lyric-heavy ballad can be, nevermind classical music without a degree in composition.

Despite abandoning Twitter about 3 years ago, I recently happened upon this tweet, a truly delightful video compilation of Dutch conductor of Baroque music Pieter Jan Leusink. The passion with which he leads his singers and his ensembles is nothing short of sublime. You can actually see his corporeal form embody the instrument, the swell of music as a whole. Computer tests have shown that an instrumentalist's playing follows the predictive movements of the conductor, and not the other way around. This fellow Leusink shows us how it's possible: he moves the music along in waves, a portly Zeus blowing rhythmic wind onto his brother's seascape. It's funny, it's jaw-dropping, it's inspiring.

I've had the video open in my tabs for a month now, and I come back to it daily to re-watch as a re-set to my day, a reminder to go about things with even an iota of the feverish (trigger-warning) vehemence this man has for Baroque music. I love classical music (especially Baroque), more than most people my age and younger, I think. It has been a goal of mine to learn more about it, and commit to memory certain movements, suites, and requiems. I recently purchased A Year of Wonder as a way of being guided through a different classical song everyday. It seems to me an endangered species of a language, judging by its agèd DJ's alone. When driving through jammed streets on my way home and KUSC classical radio host Jim Svejda attempts a joke, tears often spring to my eyes that are also simultaneously rolling. I could either fall asleep at the wheel or be carried off into a meditative reverie by his unparalleled voice (speaking of UNPARALLELED VOICES -- see: Michael Silverblatt, above!!!).

While we are holed up inside for the next couple weeks, we will have TV, sure, but that holds my 15 month old's attention for approximately 1 minute and my son's for maximum 1.5 hours, but we will also have radio. I will be teaching Rowan and Zoe what a conductor does, and they will be forced to imitate one for my viewing pleasure alone. Voices will infiltrate our walls, and though those people will not be in coughing distance, they will be our quarantine companions, as they have become my commute companions and my literary and musical teachers over the last decade in LA.

In a period of forced (be it self- or, eventually, government-) isolation, I'll be looking to those among us that are trying to make the connections between us ever smaller. I hope that video made you smile, and I hope this tiny letter has closed a gap between you and something delightful and perhaps foreign to you, however gaping or minute the maw may be.