San Francisco, May 2009
I'm listening to Beethoven's fourth piano concerto, and am reminded by it of a really good experience I had in San Francisco when I went there with my mother last May for ten days. She was there for the American Psychiatric Association annual gigantic get-together thing, and took me along for the ride. I want to recount one particular experience here, lest I forget it completely. I guess I've already forgotten many interesting, wonderful, or otherwise cool things, but what I remember is still worth telling (although I might not tell it well).
In fact, there are two things worth saying. The first is less a story than a recommendation.
The visual art scene in San Francisco is fantastic. To get the sense of the city, I walked around for a few hours each day. On one of the days - I think the first or second - I walked up to Union Square, which I guess is the centre of the city. Along the south side of this square runs Geary Street. On this street, just east of Union Square, I discovered, spread over two short blocks, five or more small private art galleries. These galleries are some of the most beautiful I've ever been to. They exhibited Picasso, Dalí, Miró, Warhol, Dührer, and dozens of superb artists and sculptors of whom I'd never heard, and whose names I forget. The art was so, so beautiful. But, more than this, the atmosphere in the galleries was intimate and warm; the galleries were carpeted and low-ceilinged; the galleries were virtually empty, and the rooms were small. This atmosphere changed how the art seemed to me. It was closer in a sort of metaphysical sense (Benjamin's?), and seemed more to be expressing something, and seemed more the work of human beings. I felt more affected by the art in these galleries than I ever had done before; indeed, in these galleries I finally felt I got what it is about art that makes people so excited.
I talked to some of the people working in the galleries, and they were willing and happy to talk. They told me what I was missing in one artist, and one took a polite interest in my music. They seemed all to know each other, and were - naturally - young and attractive. Apart from the guy who had crutches from what appeared to be a birth defect, and was likably arrogant and, possibly, giving out about someone else who was probably a philistine.
There are similar galleries on the north coast of the peninsula, if you ever want to check these places out. Which you should.
Anyway. In stark contrast to the art scene, the music scene in San Francisco is balls. I was there out of season, I think; and it is, in fairness, a small city. But the only mainstream events on were a Friday night Puccini opera, and a Friday night Mozart concert, or something like this. I think there might've been some pretty rubbish-looking local pop/rock music, too. I'm not sure any more. But whatever the exacts, I was seriously unimpressed.
However, I did find a classical concert organised by some grassroots-young-person-amateur-classica
I walked straight past the venue when I got to it. I was looking at door numbers as assiduously as I could, but they weren't marked as assiduously. I had noticed the venue, and said to myself that it couldn't possibly be the venue of a classical music concert, and so walked on. But then I noticed that the door numbers had become too high, and so doubled back, and found myself, suspicious, back at the venue.
It was a sort of coffee shop-cum-pub, and absolutely packed. The people there were sitting down and talking as if it was a coffee shop, and were all under thirty like people in coffee shops are; but the drinks on the tables were beers and wines, and the noise was as loud as in pubs. The shop doors, which were as big as the shop-front, were wide open, and there were small round wooden tables spilling onto the sidewalk. As I squeezed my way in and found a spare chair, I noticed an upright piano against the wall; before it was a man belting away at some Liszt (!), but I don't think anyone could hear him over the din. I didn't drink back then, and so sat down with my edition of TIME and waited for something to happen.
Forty-five minutes late, something did: a bloke (probably attractive, young, curly-haired and with a nice smile) cleared a space by the piano, and, after winning a hard battle against the customers for something like quiet, told us about the classical music youth collective whatsit that he was involved with, that was the organising force behind the night's concert. Then a string quintet set up, the bloke sat down at the piano, and the six performers played Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. It was a student performance, and the performers were very cramped, and the audience (generously so categorised) were talking (but not too much) and didn't all have their seats pointed toward the performers; nonetheless, the performance was pretty good, I seem to remember, and had lots of life. And it was good in a non-musical sense: I imagine the première was something not too unlike this performance. (Actually, I know how the première went, and this isn't quite true. But the level of professionalism and audience attention was probably not much different.) There was a lovely friendliness to the whole thing, which in a way lent itself to appreciation of the music.
After the performance, the performers all gave each other high fives and expressed delight at having played so well as we applauded them. Various combinations of performers played some more music, and the concert, if ever it could properly have been called that, descended into something a lot more like a jam session, except with classical music. At one point, near the end, they tried to sight-read a Brahms piano trio (or piano quartet?); for this, I volunteered myself (by appearing by her side and turning pages) as page-turner for the pianist. She was very impressed that I could sight-read, because guitarists are crap at sight-reading (even classical guitarists, but I think she thought I was solely an electric guitarist). The performance of that piece was rubbish, not least because the spine hadn't been properly broken on the pianist's score, so she couldn't read her part very well. Mind you, she was an absolutely phenomenal pianist to sight-read what she did. It was all I could do to follow the music. (I think there's a music conservatory not too far from San Francisco; a lot of the performers were students or alumni of there, I think. That she was an alumni is some explanation of her ability.)
This all took place over the course of a few hours. At some point I took the BART back, very happy and impressed.
---
For the sake of completeness, I should mention that at another point in the holiday my mother and I cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge, and ended up in a beautiful town called Sausalito which had a sweet shop whose sweets were in big barrels. There were about thirty barrels, running down the middle of the shop and along the sides, and each was full with 2c sweets of as many flavours. We then took a ferry back to the city. We passed Alcatraz, and stood on the deck looking around. As we entered the port, we passed all these floating wooden pallet things, and they were covered in seals. The racket they made was especially great.
After San Francisco, we went to Los Angeles (Santa Monica, specifically) for three nights. I swam in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and a friend of my mum's who lives in LA gave me a black book called the "Not For Tourists Guide to Los Angeles", which I gathered is one of a series. (It's a good book, by the way.) I went art-gallery hunting again, but had rather less luck than I had had in San Francisco. One art gallery was an unmarked house with a very verdant garden. I don't know if there was a gallery inside, or if the garden was supposed to be the attraction, of if the book was out of date, or what. I was scared to open the gate and find out by knocking, because in America, they shoot you for setting foot on private property not your own. Another place had closed down, two more were closed for the day, and the final two were not very good. However, it took me hours of walking to find them all, and I walked in glorious sunshine while listening to Joanna Newsom, so I really did not mind in the slightest.
I also had the best porridge I've ever had in a lovely café-restaurant thing near where we were staying.
In fact, there are two things worth saying. The first is less a story than a recommendation.
The visual art scene in San Francisco is fantastic. To get the sense of the city, I walked around for a few hours each day. On one of the days - I think the first or second - I walked up to Union Square, which I guess is the centre of the city. Along the south side of this square runs Geary Street. On this street, just east of Union Square, I discovered, spread over two short blocks, five or more small private art galleries. These galleries are some of the most beautiful I've ever been to. They exhibited Picasso, Dalí, Miró, Warhol, Dührer, and dozens of superb artists and sculptors of whom I'd never heard, and whose names I forget. The art was so, so beautiful. But, more than this, the atmosphere in the galleries was intimate and warm; the galleries were carpeted and low-ceilinged; the galleries were virtually empty, and the rooms were small. This atmosphere changed how the art seemed to me. It was closer in a sort of metaphysical sense (Benjamin's?), and seemed more to be expressing something, and seemed more the work of human beings. I felt more affected by the art in these galleries than I ever had done before; indeed, in these galleries I finally felt I got what it is about art that makes people so excited.
I talked to some of the people working in the galleries, and they were willing and happy to talk. They told me what I was missing in one artist, and one took a polite interest in my music. They seemed all to know each other, and were - naturally - young and attractive. Apart from the guy who had crutches from what appeared to be a birth defect, and was likably arrogant and, possibly, giving out about someone else who was probably a philistine.
There are similar galleries on the north coast of the peninsula, if you ever want to check these places out. Which you should.
Anyway. In stark contrast to the art scene, the music scene in San Francisco is balls. I was there out of season, I think; and it is, in fairness, a small city. But the only mainstream events on were a Friday night Puccini opera, and a Friday night Mozart concert, or something like this. I think there might've been some pretty rubbish-looking local pop/rock music, too. I'm not sure any more. But whatever the exacts, I was seriously unimpressed.
However, I did find a classical concert organised by some grassroots-young-person-amateur-classica
I walked straight past the venue when I got to it. I was looking at door numbers as assiduously as I could, but they weren't marked as assiduously. I had noticed the venue, and said to myself that it couldn't possibly be the venue of a classical music concert, and so walked on. But then I noticed that the door numbers had become too high, and so doubled back, and found myself, suspicious, back at the venue.
It was a sort of coffee shop-cum-pub, and absolutely packed. The people there were sitting down and talking as if it was a coffee shop, and were all under thirty like people in coffee shops are; but the drinks on the tables were beers and wines, and the noise was as loud as in pubs. The shop doors, which were as big as the shop-front, were wide open, and there were small round wooden tables spilling onto the sidewalk. As I squeezed my way in and found a spare chair, I noticed an upright piano against the wall; before it was a man belting away at some Liszt (!), but I don't think anyone could hear him over the din. I didn't drink back then, and so sat down with my edition of TIME and waited for something to happen.
Forty-five minutes late, something did: a bloke (probably attractive, young, curly-haired and with a nice smile) cleared a space by the piano, and, after winning a hard battle against the customers for something like quiet, told us about the classical music youth collective whatsit that he was involved with, that was the organising force behind the night's concert. Then a string quintet set up, the bloke sat down at the piano, and the six performers played Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. It was a student performance, and the performers were very cramped, and the audience (generously so categorised) were talking (but not too much) and didn't all have their seats pointed toward the performers; nonetheless, the performance was pretty good, I seem to remember, and had lots of life. And it was good in a non-musical sense: I imagine the première was something not too unlike this performance. (Actually, I know how the première went, and this isn't quite true. But the level of professionalism and audience attention was probably not much different.) There was a lovely friendliness to the whole thing, which in a way lent itself to appreciation of the music.
After the performance, the performers all gave each other high fives and expressed delight at having played so well as we applauded them. Various combinations of performers played some more music, and the concert, if ever it could properly have been called that, descended into something a lot more like a jam session, except with classical music. At one point, near the end, they tried to sight-read a Brahms piano trio (or piano quartet?); for this, I volunteered myself (by appearing by her side and turning pages) as page-turner for the pianist. She was very impressed that I could sight-read, because guitarists are crap at sight-reading (even classical guitarists, but I think she thought I was solely an electric guitarist). The performance of that piece was rubbish, not least because the spine hadn't been properly broken on the pianist's score, so she couldn't read her part very well. Mind you, she was an absolutely phenomenal pianist to sight-read what she did. It was all I could do to follow the music. (I think there's a music conservatory not too far from San Francisco; a lot of the performers were students or alumni of there, I think. That she was an alumni is some explanation of her ability.)
This all took place over the course of a few hours. At some point I took the BART back, very happy and impressed.
---
For the sake of completeness, I should mention that at another point in the holiday my mother and I cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge, and ended up in a beautiful town called Sausalito which had a sweet shop whose sweets were in big barrels. There were about thirty barrels, running down the middle of the shop and along the sides, and each was full with 2c sweets of as many flavours. We then took a ferry back to the city. We passed Alcatraz, and stood on the deck looking around. As we entered the port, we passed all these floating wooden pallet things, and they were covered in seals. The racket they made was especially great.
After San Francisco, we went to Los Angeles (Santa Monica, specifically) for three nights. I swam in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and a friend of my mum's who lives in LA gave me a black book called the "Not For Tourists Guide to Los Angeles", which I gathered is one of a series. (It's a good book, by the way.) I went art-gallery hunting again, but had rather less luck than I had had in San Francisco. One art gallery was an unmarked house with a very verdant garden. I don't know if there was a gallery inside, or if the garden was supposed to be the attraction, of if the book was out of date, or what. I was scared to open the gate and find out by knocking, because in America, they shoot you for setting foot on private property not your own. Another place had closed down, two more were closed for the day, and the final two were not very good. However, it took me hours of walking to find them all, and I walked in glorious sunshine while listening to Joanna Newsom, so I really did not mind in the slightest.
I also had the best porridge I've ever had in a lovely café-restaurant thing near where we were staying.