But I went to BAM's screening of the festivities and watched in a big happy crowd of semi-employed hipsters, complete with enthusiastic cheering at every mention of Bush leaving, and mass waving at the departing Marine helicopter. Buh bye!
Anyway, some thoughts about the inauguration. Predictably(?), they are almost all about the music.
- It's a little bit sad that John Williams is the closest thing we've got to a national composer.
- That being said, his Simple Gifts arrangement was 1) less annoying than Copland, and 2) significantly better than that of Aretha's song. Seriously, wtf was that? The hat made it okay, though.
- Hail to the Chief ain't got nothing on Domine Salvum Fac
- and relatedly, anyone else notice that inauguration is just Harvard commencement on steroids?
- OMG playing reed and brass instruments in 11 degree weather. Ow ow ow.
- The folk who own Yo Yo Ma's cello probably weren't too thrilled either...
- I have an entirely irrational love of Stars & Stripes Forever. I know, wtf right? But I hope that, somewhere, John Philip Sousa is happy that his tunes are still the default for anything patriotic and/or outdoors.
Joking aside, it's so rare that we have an opportunity to actually feel patriotism - and even rarer if you omit patriotic feelings inspired by by 1776 or an episode of West Wing. Today, when the CNN camera swooped past an old black woman holding a WE HAVE OVERCOME sign, I felt that shiver of glee that's usually reserved for fictional or historical politics.
Thank you, President Obama, for making it okay to like our country again.
Yo Yo Ma was supposed to have some fancy, made-for-the-cold cello, but apparently did not end up using it. There was an article about it in the Times and even the oh-so-hipstery Brooklyn Vegan. I have no idea why he didn't use it, but I was flinching when I saw all those instruments out in the cold too.
ReplyDelete-Radhika
(who will start commenting with a google account or her own URL when she revives her slightly dead blog)