Rude awakenings and Symphonic sounds

On Thursday of last week, my landlord's mother stayed overnight with us, in addition to their daughter who is actually moving in on April 1st to my great sarcastic delight. Her mother stayed with us due to some sort of spell she experienced at home. She has advanced Alzheimer's and some dementia. Anyway, they told me that she was spending the night and that she would be going back to her own house where she rambles around alone, apparently, the next morning. On Friday morning at about 5:30AM, I was awakened by my door being opened and my light being turned on. Apparently, grandma was ready to go and was looking for Léa (her granddaughter who was supposed to take her home that morning). Needless to say, Léa was not in my room and I was a bit confused as to what was going on. I told her Léa wasn't in here and she left. At about 6:15AM, my door was again opened and my light was turned on. Léa still wasn't in my room and grandma left me alone. When I did actually get up, after returning from the bathroom, grandma was just standing in my room asking where Léa was. I had no idea where she was and no one was actually in the house which was weird because who would leave grandma alone and especially, leave her alone with me, who doesn't know her? After locking my door so I could change in peace (yes, she tried to get in again while I was changing), I explained that I didn't know where anyone was but I was sure they would be back shortly and I had to go to work. I did actually lock my bedroom door before leaving because I didn't want grandma stumbling into my room and falling on my computer or anything.

Meanwhile, apparently later that morning, Léa came to get grandma and she was nowhere to be found in the house. Apparently, she had just left the house in her housedress and slippers and started wandering around the neighborhood. Several blocks away, a kind neighbor found grandma and took her into her house while calling the police to tell them that she had found this confused old woman wandering the streets. I guess Léa called the police too and eventually Léa and grandma were reunited. That's what they get for leaving poor grandma all alone in an unfamiliar place. I am glad that grandma was found safe and unhurt but how irresponsible of my landlords and their daughter, right?

Moving on, this weekend was full of symphony. Montpellier was host to the Quebec orchestra who had 4 free concerts that Dawn and I greedily took advantage of on Friday, Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Friday night's concert was a modern rock interpretation type thing. The first half was all music set to conincide with a crazy video montage. There were 4 pieces in the first half and most of them were not so great actually. I actually didn't pay too much attention to the music because I was so busy watching the crazy trippy video montages. There were a lot of blinking flashes and honestly, I am surprised people didn't go into epileptic seizures. Dawn said it was giving her a headache. One of the most notable videos was this artsy video of a girl. It was mostly just a closeup of her face. Sometimes she blinked, sometimes she smiled, one time she pulled her hair back, but mostly she just stared at the camera. And they set music to that!! The last video montage interested me the most but that's because I am a fan of horror movies. There were a bunch of flashes of red & black images of a disturbing nature. They were all close-ups of eyes blinking or teeth snarling or scary faces. I liked it!

And now for the second half.... where to begin? Well, it was definitely not at all the same as the first half. For one thing, the second half had no video. It also involved what they considered "singing". If only the people in the 2 pieces could actually sing. The first piece of the 2nd half was supposed to be in English (though I really only understood about 5 words in the whole 20 minute piece). There was one guy singing with the orchestra backing him up with music. Unfortunately for this guy, the music was about 2 octaves below his range so the whole song sounded forced and unintelligible. Besides a normal orchestra collection, they also used a wide array of random instruments/noise-making devices including crumpling newspaper, a kazoo, popping brown paper bags and those tube things you swing over your head that make a faint "woo" noise. At least the diversity in the instruments detracted from the fact that the singer was clearly out of his element and he had these crazy body movements he was using in order to poorly convey his message/lyrics.

The second piece was simply ridiculous. The singer was also the conductor. The singer was a soprano with a great range but besides that, she was not much to speak of. First of all, her "costume" was completely inappropriate. She was easily in her late 40's yet wearing these knee-high patent leather black boots with ridiculous heels that she couldn't really walk in. Her skirt was the length of a wide belt and that too was black patent leather covering hideous fishnet stockings. Her bodice, made of course of black patent leather, wasn't any better and it was topped by a long black jacket (of different material so it really looked out of place). At one point in the "song", she decided to rip off the jacket and throw it to the ground. Ridiculous and completely unnecessary! I say "song" because I don't think I actually heard any intelligible words. Dawn claims to have heard some but I'm not convinced. I felt like I watched a 15 minute piece where all the woman did was sing scales. She was also conducting the orchestra that was set up to her right so every few seconds she would make some random hand movement that I am supposing was conducting. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy her performance and yet she came out to bow 4 times. Good God!


Saturday night was definitely better...well, the 2nd half was. A funny thing happened to us while waiting for the symphony to begin. We were sitting in a box seat on the balcony (which was an amazing seat!). The crazy high-strung old woman usher felt the need to slam the door behind us when we got in and again slam the door on Dawn's face twice while we were trying to get out to use the facilities before the show. For whatever reason, you couldn't leave the door open to the box at any time. Which is fine and we could understand. But then when we tried to get out, she was standing at the door and closed it right behind me as I was exiting, meaning that she closed the door on Dawn's face. Then she had the audacity to ask us where we were going. I was like, uh, I don't need to explain myself to you at all. Let me pass. It was really ridiculous and she definitely had some sort of power trip for no reason.

After settling into our box seat (there were 4 of us, Junko, Dawn, Cathy and I), these 2 women came in and sat behind us. The box is big enough for 6. Meanwhile, they asked if their conductor friend from the 1st half would be able to sit in the front when he came at intermission. We said ok but it seemed a bit odd. About 3 minutes later, they had the audacity to ask to see our tickets because apparently, they were promised to sit in the front of the box and figured we had just snuck in. Now, remember that this was a free performance and it was first come, first serve tickets. You just had to go to the box office and say how many tickets you needed and at random, you got a spot. Apparently, the box office printed duplicates because we had the same tickets as these women. They left in a huff because we weren't going to leave the front of the box. And why should we? We were there long before them. Then! About a minute before the performance began, 4 people piled into our box and brang chairs with them. They sat in the very back of the box and surely wanted to move forward but we weren't about to move so they just complained behind us, thinking we didn't understand them since we were speaking English. Fools! Incidentally, they also felt the need to discuss the show or whatever on occasion during the perfomance of the piece. Real considerate, right?

The first 2 pieces in the first half were lifeless. I felt like they kept building up and building up and nothing ever came from the symphony. The 2nd piece of the first half felt like a soundtrack for a movie. Someone's running through the forest and then BAM! Something jumps out. They continue running through the forest and they all meet up. It was really weird and didn't actually come to an end. It just sort of stopped without any kind of finale. Very disappointing!

The 2nd half was great and, in my opinion, the best we saw all weekend. It was all percussion and wonderful. There were all sorts of drums, gongs, cymbals, etc. on the stage and very, very entertaining. There was even a female percussionist which made me happy to see. The pieces were upbeat, toe-tapping and great!

Sunday involved 2 performances. The first performance at 10:45AM was a string quartet. Now 4 of the 5 pieces were contemporary and the other piece was Beethoven. The contemporary pieces were really bad! I mean, really bad! The first one sounded like a screaming cat and the same chord for 12 minutes. We were super close to the stage and I kept watching their music, praying for them to get to the end of the piece. It couldn't end soon enough. The other pieces were about as bad. The Beethoven piece was great and it proved that his work is still wonderful and especially when put up against contemporary crap!

The 2nd performance on Sunday evening was a bit lopsided. The first piece was an orchestral piece written for a guitar soloist. That piece was first and fantastic. The guitarist was really talented and the piece was well-written to show off his talent. There were a couple full orchestra pieces that were pretty flat and lifeless. I found myself watching my watch, timing out how much longer the piece was. The final piece was an orchestral piece written for a violin soloist. The violinist was quite talented as well and the piece was well-written to display her talent as well. In general, I didn't think the pieces were all that good but the soloists, in their own respective performances, did a great job in trying to make the piece more interesting and lively.

Your British word lesson of the day: sore head = headache In a sentence: This video is giving me a sore head.