Putting the Pop in Boston Pops

You may have heard about the fisticuffs in the balcony last night at the Boston Pops. It was opening night. This must've been the undercard. Maybe it was part of the fireworks accompanying "The 1812 Overture." Maybe it was all a stunt for a night of movie themes ("Fight Club" or "Rocky").

Why am I so amused by this? It could easily have been me. It has almost happened, once in New York and most recently in Berlin, Germany, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, on Easter Sunday no less. From what I understand, the reasons for the real brawl and my would-be brawl are similar: talking.

Well, it's no shock that any blogger would be a talker. Certainly no shock to anyone who knows me. (Sorry to disappoint anyone whom I had fooled into thinking I had any sense of refinement or decorum.) But my excuse is personal. Our hushed murmurs (not hushed enough for some) typically consist of these excited words in reference to my daughter on stage as a ballerina:

"There she is. Where? No, there. Oh, yes. I see her. Now. There. Wait. Third from the left. Right in front. Shhhh. I see her. Wait; I lost her. There. Cool."

All of which sounds like a Samuel Beckett play, which would be perfectly apt, because the Berlin ballet we saw was a portion of Richard Wagner's "The Ring" ("Ring um den Ring" in German if you must know) as choreographed by Maurice Bejart. It might just as well have been by Beckett, in German, for all the comprehension I was able to conjure up. The shushing disdain from the well-dressed gent on my right was palpable, splendidly Teutonic, and dripping with condescension that hung like lead in the atmosphere, until I silently announced to myself, "Screw it, get over it, Horst." I still wanted to kick his ass, though. As if I could.

So it could easily have been me banging it out in Berlin instead of brawling in Beantown. And because these two fellas really went at it, instead of politely dancing around it, I have a certain existential "Fight Club" admiration of their pure rage. For them, it wasn't "What would Kierkegaard do?" [WWKD?] but "What would Hemingway do?" [WWHD?]

I sent a link for the news story about this to a colleague, formerly of Boston. She emailed back to say, "Just because you can afford the symphony doesn't mean you don't have 'Southie' in you." Something like that.

As if I'd know. As if my housing-project past couldn't erupt from me like the alien coming out of the chest in "Alien," the 1979 sci-fi thriller.



Sometimes I wish it would. Maybe things would've been a tad less frustrating at work today.