Come Tuesday

Day four of vacation and endless lazing aside, two valuable lessons learned already.

Seashell collecting in Islamorada is not like seashell collecting on the Outer Banks, a lesson learned the hard way. After yesterday's lunch on the downstairs patio, mere feet from the ocean, we decided to check out the ocean temperature.

It was warm, which wasn't surprising given how low the water is along this stretch, which is referred to as "ocean flats," which seems to be code for "ridiculously shallow water that laps at the shore with no whitecaps." The beauty of that depth is the variety of colors that result from the slightest change in depth, so at any given moment, there can be bands of four different shades of green and just as many variations of blue.

As we're wading through the crystal clear water, we make our way around seaweed, sea sponges and the like when I spot a 3-inch whelk shell and scoop it up, then another and a couple more. All are striking in their markings so they're scooped up, brought back to the house and put in a bowl.

Mid-afternoon, we hear clinking in the bowl and by evening, we realize the biggest one still has an animal in it. He's returned to the sea with best wishes, but the others remain bowl-bound because there's no sign of animals in them.

Except that when we wake up today, only two of the three remain. Oops. We start looking for the escapee, but it's a big house, two levels with an open center staircase and he's a little guy with a shell the color of the floor. So not easy to spot.

Finally, Mr. Wright spots him lurking near the refrigerator.

Before breakfast, we're wishing bon voyage to all three, tossing them back to the mother land ocean and wishing them godspeed.

Okay, so no more shell collecting.

Then there's the music challenge. Sure, we could resort to music off of Mr. Wright's iPad, but where's the fun in that when Leila's house comes equipped with such 20th century accouterments as a CD player and a cache of CDS?

No, we're going to see what the house has to offer in terms of music, besides classical, which it seems to have plenty of.

After requisite Buffet (no doubt a mainstay in every Keys home), we hit pay dirt with a 2007 Paul McCartney album I've never even heard of: "Kisses on the Bottom." Like one of my favorite Paul Weller albums ("Studio 150"), it's Sir Paul doing classic songs from his youth, with arrangements using upright bass, vibes, children's choirs and even the London Symphony Orchestra. Diana Krall plays piano on most songs, if that tells you anything.

Then there are the songs, such as "It's Only a Paper Moon" and "Get Yourself Another Fool," Granted, anything would sound wonderful when listened to in big, cushioned chairs on the deck overlooking the ocean, but he also did a masterful job with the material.

Ditto Miles Davis' "Cookin' at the Plugged Nickel," which felt like we were in some smoky basement dive listening to Miles blow. Yves Montand's two disc "Montand" - the cover photo shows only his head, a match inexplicably clenched between his teeth - put us in a smoky Parisian club after hours.

Both, we have decided, are music for evenings, not sunny afternoon tunes.

The John Scofield Quartet gave us "Meant to Be," while Little Feat's "Waiting for Columbus" took me back to 1978 and Yes' "Fragile" to 1972. I picked "Sommer Smash Hots '92" expecting grunge or alternative and instead we heard a succession of bass-heavy club mixes of songs like K.C. and the Sunshine Band's "Please Don't Go" and Bread's "Make It With You."

And while I'm no fan of the milquetoast Bread, hearing that song with a thumping bass certainly improved it considerably.

After seeing a VW van with a Led Zeppelin bumper sticker on my walk earlier, it was only appropriate to get home and have Mr. Wright put on Robert Plant's "Now and Zen." And, frankly, Hendrix's "Axis: Bold as Love" was meant to be played loudly to ocean breezes.

And if it's not, too bad because we've learned that we're choosing the soundtrack to this vacation, with a little help from an Islamorada music lover and endless blue skies.

Bold as love, indeed.

Happiness Comes in Waves

I'm going to live forever.

At least, that's been the consensus for a while now among friends and family. With the exception of getting mowed down by a bus while I'm out walking, everyone seems to think my lifestyle will ensure that I join the centenarian club, thus continuing to annoy others with my sass and optimism for decades to come.

Back in the '90s, I read of studies confirming that people who flossed daily lived two to six years longer and that day took up daily flossing after a lifetime of merely brushing. I seem to recall telling Lady G about my discovery and how quickly I'd taken up the habit and her responding, "Of course you did."

Mock me all you want, but I don't leave the house at night without having flossed. Just ask my brother-in-law, who was giving me floss brand recommendations at his daughter's wedding last fall.

And just in the last couple of days, Facebook friends have provided the latest findings from the medical science community, providing still more validation for my lifestyle choices.

Leave it to Gallery 5 (where I've seen more shows than I can count) to let me know that behavioral scientist Patrick Fagan has come out with a study saying that attending a concert once every two weeks adds nine years to your life. Nine years. When I told Mac this momentous news at lunch yesterday, she barely stopped chewing, instead deadpanning, "Wow, you really are going to live forever, aren't you?"

Seems that live music increases a feeling of self worth, closeness to others and mental stimulation, all of which go toward upping our sense of well-being. And here I thought that happy feeling I get when the lights go down and the band starts playing was just me.

And now I learn from a posting by the drama queen that neuro-scientists strongly recommend that we go to the beach frequently. Seems that the sense of calmness and peace you have at the seaside is now officially called "blue space" for what the combination of soothing smells and the sound of the waves do to your brain.

Well, duh. Since my parents first took me to the beach at two months old, I have known that nothing makes me feel as completely unwound and at ease as hearing and smelling the ocean. The interesting part of that equation is the absence of sun in it.

As I was pointing out to my favorite lake person just yesterday, a rainy day at the beach is better than a sunny day at home any day. Even when an umbrella is necessary to walk the beach, I can still take in the briny air. Even when a thunderstorm has interrupted an afternoon reading on the beach, I can still be soothed by the sound of the waves.

That's because science has concluded that it's a change in the way our brains react to our environment at the beach that results in us feeling relaxed, happy and re-energized.

So next time I'm sitting on the porch swing at the beach having poetry read to me, know that I'm doing it for my health. Ditto going to shows. I can't believe I ever entrusted my longevity to merely flossing.

Apparently, I'm going to need all three to stay healthy enugh to avoid that bus.

Like a Telegraph to Your Soul

This woman knows how to wear out a CD player.

I went through the original one in my car in about four years. Its superior replacement died last week. Given all the CD playing I've done in that car, it's amazing it hung on that long. Yes, smartypants, I'm aware that the rest of the world has moved beyond playing CDs in cars, but not me.

This new state of affairs isn't exactly dire when I'm in town because I can listen to WNRN and occasionally WRIR while I'm tooling around town. But neither station does me a bit of good once I hit the road.

Because I never have to listen to commercial radio, I find it insufferable. Commercials? Corny and overly talkative hosts? Endless repetition of the same 30 songs? Spare me.

But here I was, on the road again, where my usual M.O. is to take time to select CDs based on the weather, my mood and the destination and instead, I was reduced to endlessly pushing the seek button to find something I could bear to leave on.

It's hard.

Naturally, the first station I stopped on was playing Adele's "Hello." While that wasn't surprising, it was particularly hilarious because I'd just seen a video mocking the song, with a guy in his car hitting each radio button, only to find "Hello" being played on every single one. Eventually he stops and buys a Britney CD - "Baby, One More Time," natch - to escape Adele on the radio.

My karma must be better than his because I only hit on it twice today and a Britney CD would have done me no good.

I didn't recognize the next song but lyrics such as, "You been creepin' round my Instagram" immediately signaled that it was of no interest to me. Turns out it was Chris Brown's new song "Zero," which was about what it rated in my opinion.

My goal for the drive was simple yet challenging: avoid Christmas, country and obvious auto-tune. Good luck with that.

One fact about present-day radio was soon apparent: you're going to hear far more '70s than '80s.

With the exception of U2 (three different songs), for every Wham! ("Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go") or Human League ("Only Human"), I had to put up with loads of the likes of "Hotel California," "Rocky Mountain Way," "The Wall," and "Burning Down the House."

How about we just burn down these radio stations?

That said, I had no problem with Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman," while Gino Vannelli's "I Just Want to Stop" took me straight back to 1978 in the first three notes and "Just What I Needed" is actually my favorite Cars song.

So much successive button pushing resulted in some interesting juxtapositions. When I heard the DJ announce Joan Jett's "Little Drummer Boy," I quickly moved on, only to hit on Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll" a few clicks down. Clearly I was meant to commune with Joan.

Hardest to find, it seems, was anything soulful beyond George Benson's "Turn Your Love Around", the Commodores' "Lady" and Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'" and, let's be real here, not one of those is an especially strong example of R & B.

It's not like I didn't occasionally hit on something I might have actually heard on my preferred station, say, Greg Lazwell's "New Morning" or Elle King's "Ex's and Oh's" or The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face."

Sadly, it was always short-lived.

I take my river crossings seriously, always rolling down the window and cranking the tune-age, so I was thrilled when the music gods delivered me John Waite's "I Ain't Missing You" just after I hit a bridge.

Every time I think of you, I always catch my breath
And I'm still standing here and you're miles away
And I'm wondering why you left

There were some absolute delights, totally unexpected gems I hadn't heard in eons, songs such as Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" or Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors," along with guilty pleasures like "You Give Love a Bad Name" at top volume.

But for every Temper Trap, there was something cringe-worthy (Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now"), occasional grunge (Soundgarden) and always, the cliched ("Anyway You Want It"). I heard a DJ gushing about winning tickets to see Queensryche and who even knew they were still a band?

Granted, I would no more play a Scorpions CD than put a red-hot poker in my eye, but when I'm sailing along and "Rock You Like a Hurricane" comes on, I don't even try to fight the flashbacks to 1984.

Difficult as it may be not to get to choose my traveling soundtrack, it was amusing to allow the universe to provide a random one.

CD player, with or without you, I will have music for my road trips. I'm only human, after all.

Some Like It Hot

If last night's date was all about the literature, tonight's was all about the music.

He was craving spicy and suggested Lemon. I countered with Curry Craft since I hadn't been since practically the first week they opened.

You have to appreciate a guy who asks you out and then lets you dictate the destination.

It was our first date, although not our first conversation and although it had been a while, we picked up where we'd left off.

First he cracked wise about being intimidated about my superior food knowledge but I assured him eating was the surest way to learning.

"You have the best job in the world," he told me.

Well, maybe, unless you like expensive houses and jewelry but fortunately I like neither.

Although now he's a banker, he's been a musician for far longer so we had loads to talk about.

Our waitress suggested we order an appetizer to tide us over since she'd already picked up on the fact that we had much to discuss and weren't in any hurry to order.

We asked for Juhu beach-style chaat (puffed rice, potatoes, green chili, red onions and pomegranate and spices), requesting it medium-hot, plenty of heat for me but my date was left wanting more.

Twenty minutes into the date and I already know he can handle more heat than I can.

We talked about some of the music we'd seen at the National, his years as a sound engineer and why 21st century bands are lucky to have decades worth of influences to pull from.

In one of those "we know we're the same generation" moments, we discussed the pleasures of album art and liner notes and how reading them can lead to discovering other musicians.

His tangent about "X" was exquisite.

After the third time our server came back to take our order, we took a minute to look at the menu and choose.

He went with chicken-mushroom dhaniwal, a Kashmiri-style chicken stew, while I got chicken khubani-zafrani for its spicy sauce boasting saffron, iris essence and apricots.

After enjoying tender chicken morsels with the sweetness of the fruit over basmati rice, I used garlic naan to sop up some of the beautifully fragrant sauce.

It didn't take us long to discover some of our shared soapboxes - iPods, photographing food, people not willing to pay for music - and I teased him that we sounded like fist-shaking blue-hairs.

Where we differ from true old folks is a shared passion for new music and smart-ass attitudes.

"I've always liked older women," he tells me.

I recognize a kindred geek when he tells me about his upcoming trip to Las Vegas and his intention to visit the neon museum, a place I would surely go should I ever end up in Vegas.

We talk about Chicago, a city we both enjoy, agreeing that walking it and looking up is enough to occupy entire days there.

I was impressed to hear that he'd made a record with a group of British musicians and he was impressed to hear what my first concert was.

He kept making obscure music references and I kept getting them while our poor server kept stopping by unnecessarily.

Eventually we let her box up our remains, mainly to give her something to do, but we continued to camp out.

Fortunately, it's the second night of a three-day weekend and the restaurant wasn't full, so we had no guilt about taking up space.

We did get mango kulfi, a creamy ice cream studded with cranberries and two kinds of nuts, a decadent ending to the meal, if not the conversation.

That didn't end until we looked up and realized four hours had passed.

Now he knows. Older women can go on and on.

Fortunately for the newly-dating, some men seem to like that.

Music Framed by Absinthe

The average museum-goer spends 40 seconds in front of a work of art.

So today's program at the VMFA, "Art Framed with Music," intended to extend that to give us four to five minutes with nine selected works.

Virginia Wesleyan's artist-in-residence, Lee Jordan-Anders, had chosen the pieces from the museum's collection and then selected music to accompany each in hopes of firing up our imaginations.

A grand piano sat onstage and she wasted no time in showing us Degas' "Little Dancer," saying it was the only one of his sculptures exhibited in his lifetime, and playing Debussy's "Danse," a perfect match to exemplify the marriage of art and music.

That Debussy had been only 28 when he wrote it explained the youthful vibrancy of the piece.

Next she showed Pomodoro's "Rotating Sphere," and my music-loving companion and I gasped.

It was the sculpture that used to sit in the circle in front of the VMFA's entrance before the renovation.

The one I passed every time I went to Jumpin' in July. The one that greeted you at the entrance to the sculpture garden. The one I passed on a first date 20 years ago.

I hadn't seen it in years, so its unexpected presence was a complete surprise and memory trigger at the same time.

Leaning in to me, he said, "Wow, does that ever take me back."

Jordan-Anders had brilliantly chosen Prokofiev's "Prelude in C, Opus 12, No. 7" to accompany it, a piece that began by shimmering like the brushed surface of the sphere before breaking into dissonance and staccato notes to suggest the jagged edges of the sphere's center.

My music buddy and I looked at each other like two cats who had swallowed the canary. This was so up our alley.

Watteau's "The Gazer" got us a Couperin piece and lots of symbolism.

"Les Folies Francaises" was a series of colors set to music and the colors in the music (white for virginity, pink for modesty, red for ardor, green for hope) were reflected in the painting.

Very cool.

For the painting everyone knows, "Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog," Jordan-Anders shared a photo of her dog at her piano.

But it was what she said that was interesting.

In 1805, Beethoven had played ten performances in England, an extraordinary amount for the time and especially compared to how much he played in his native Austria.

In gratitude for the welcome, he'd written all kinds of stirring variations on "God Save the King," the sheet music shown in the painting.

Gratitude music, so to speak.

Manet's "On the Beach, Boulogne sur Mer" depicted a serene beach scene, so she sorted through a lot of dramatic water music to find Cras' "Paysage Maritime."

Explaining that Cras "had a day job" (he was an admiral in the French Navy), this lesser known composer may have had limited time to work on music, but this piece showed how well he knew the sea, with layers of sound to match Manet's layers of paint.

As my companion noted, "By the end, I forgot where I was." And how.

For Monet's "Field of Poppies," she chose another Debussy, "Mouvement" from Images, Book I.

"I felt like the poppies needed life," she explained. The music was just moody enough for the cloudy day depicted.

We moved on to Americans with Robert Henri's "Spanish Girl of Madrid" and Gottschalk's "Souvenirs D'Andalousic," originally an improvised piece.

Henri's painting got music with bits of what sounded like Spanish folk songs, probably the kind that Spanish girl might have danced to in a tavern.

"Spring Song" by Paul Sample showed a man at an upright, cigar in mouth and beer on piano, with a bartender looking on, a testament to the artist's attraction to the common man.

Paired with Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," it was a suitable soundtrack for a very American looking scene.

Last up was one of Mark Rothko's many "Untitled" paintings, this one color fields of bluish-green, pure line, shape and color.

Jordan-Anders made the point that the advent of photography had freed artists from the constraints of depicting reality, leading to much of 20th century art.

Accordingly, she'd chosen Aaron Copland's "For Leo Smit, No. 1 from Piano Blues" because it was pure sound, with no set meter and unusual harmonies.

My only complaint with it was that it was too short, but then I'm a Copland fan.

It seemed like our visual and sonic journey through the imagination had just begun when it ended.

Unwilling to let the mood go, the musician next to me and I climbed the stairs to Amuse for a sip and a long discussion of what we'd just experienced.

It was surprisingly lively up there for after 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon and even included my Princess Di friend, who spends every Sunday afternoon there conducting his own little salon with a rotating cast.

He invited me to join, but I had music geek talk to attend to.

It was also happy hour and I do appreciate weekend happy hours, so I ordered an absinthe drip in part so my absinthe-ignorant companion could watch the process.

Okay, and because it's just the thing to savor after being bathed in music and art.

I was lucky to have attended the show with someone even more of a music geek than me because happy hour allowed us the time to go back through the program, discussing the pairings and the musical selections.

Both of us were amazed that Jordan-Anders had used no sheet music for any of the pieces she played.

We'd both been terribly impressed with the Jean Cras piece, marveling at a man who could sail the seas and capture them in music, too.

It was his first time hearing Debussy live and he couldn't wait to get home and start doing his musical research.

One thing that puzzled us both was that during the introduction, they'd said that the museum was testing out Sunday afternoon programs to gauge interest.

Are you guys kidding?

2:00 on a Sunday is a perfectly wonderful time to have a program.

It allows me a culture fix and time to make it upstairs for Princess Di's Sunday salon and a drip.

I think I'll wear red to show my ardor for the idea.

The Big "If"

I had lunch with a music lover today. And not just any music lover, but one who read my blog profile with its endless list of bands I love and actually wrote me that I have perfect taste in music (meaning it mirrored his). Wow, people actually read my profile?

If this doesn't sound monumental, you're not reading between the lines. My music taste is all over the place and plenty of people who love Muse wouldn't be caught dead listening to Teenagers. So when someone is impressed with my eclectic taste and tells me so, I need to talk about it...and maybe see what such a rarity looks like.

We tried messaging about music, but as I told him, I'm much better at face to face conversation than typing. And that's how the plan was conceived; we'd meet for lunch to talk music and if we hit it off, we'd each have a new concert buddy. Of course that was a pretty big "if."

He let me pick and I chose Lamplighter because the food is always good and it's so well priced. After the bacchanalian eating and drinking of my weekend away, all I was craving was salad, so I got the Lamplighter (mixed greens, seasonal fruit, red onions, nuts and Gorgonzola) with chicken salad and the other music fan got the tuna melt.

My salad was delightful in every way with incredibly fresh greens, an abundance of nuts and strawberries and plenty of onion for this onion-lover and further enhanced by a chicken salad tasting of chicken and not overly mayonaised. He was impressed with both the tastiness and the value of his sandwich. Double score.

Lunch took a while because we had so much music to talk about (The Decemberists, Yeasayer, Midlake, Fanfarlo, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes doesn't begin to cover it) and when we were done with the food, we continued the conversation while strolling the neighborhood. It was a perfect sunny fall afternoon for a music walk and talk.

I've met a few people because they read my blog and I always worry that somehow I'll disappoint in person; after all, I never know what impression a reader has formed of me based on my writing.

But in today's case, he'd already written that he thought I was awesome, so I had even further to fall than usual. That or I was a shoo-in; I couldn't decide which.

We both left with our handwritten lists of recommended music. If I was a disappointment musically, he was too polite to show it.

I just might have a new concert buddy. Epic score.

Helluva Wake

Once upon a time I met a guy named Andrew and nothing happened. Oh, we worked together and had bland conversations, but that was about it. And then we drove to Ashland one fine day and discovered our mutual music obsession...that and our shared love of people watching and commenting. A friendship was born.

He was the first person I ever knew who blogged, so I started reading his music blog. But Andrew, unlike me, is quiet and sort of reserved. He's not effusive or the complimentary type. I had to presume that he appreciated me because we've continued to hang out for over three years.

Well, I don't have to presume anymore. Andrew gave me my absolute favorite gift: words. Forget jewelry, clothing or anything that comes from a mall; I'd rather a friend or loved one wrote me a note, letter or e-mail than anything else in the world. And I've always been that way.

And Andrew has gone and done just that. Oh sure, I may have teased him a lot lately about the fact that he never says anything complimentary directly to me. But he knows that the way I show affection for friends is to tease them and give them a hard time, sometimes even employing sarcasm (No!) and he wrote about me anyway, here.

And not only wrote about me, but included a link to my namesake song by a favorite band, surely a nod to our shared bond.

He left out a few memorable moments (like the glow-stick dance party at the Plushgun show at Alley Katz), but maybe that's because we have so many great memories together.

So yes, Andrew, we're even for the moment. But you have to promise to read that e-mail at my wake (P.S: I'll be burnt up, so there won't be a body to be a buzz kill) and read it like you mean it.

I'm only sorry I won't be there to hear you do it, but then I'm sorry I won't be there to witness all of my friends and loved ones sharing stories about me. All the different Karens are going to be revealed, for better or for worse, and some of you are going to be shocked and appalled (and delighted) when you hear what some of the others know of me.

Should be a good time.

Scones and Oddballs at Garnett's

Sure, Garnett's seems like just a nice, normal sandwich place, but don't let it fool you. Just this morning I encountered an alien there. Only last month, I'd been there and a friend had told me about an alien he'd met and almost dated, here. But that was just a story; I didn't actually lay eyes on a stranger from a strange land.

Today I did. I was innocently sitting at the counter when a guy came in, a guy I'd met a while back at Garnett's; now that we know each other, we usually have a good chat when we run into one another. He was meeting a friend for coffee after her run and she soon arrived, dimpled and pretty and still in her running clothes. As they began catching up, it was hard not to overhear their conversation; Garnett's bar is small. She was lamenting that, "I've never ever done anything wrong in my life. I've always been good."

He laughed but clearly couldn't think of how to answer that, so I turned to her and said, "Give it a few years and that'll take care of itself. You won't have to worry about that anymore." He agreed enthusiastically and she looked dubious. And no, that didn't make her an alien.

What did was when he told her that his hard drive had crashed and he'd lost all his music, years- worth gone with no backup. She looked at him as if he were speaking Mandarin. "What's the big deal?" she asked. "I haven't put any new music on my iPod in five and a half years."

WTF? They already knew I was eavesdropping so, I didn't hesitate to give her my best incredulous stare and asked, "Are you kidding? How is that possible that you haven't wanted any new music in five and a half years?"

Shrugging nonchalantly, she said (and I quote), "Well I don't really like music. I just use it when I run." This was the moment she officially qualified for alien status. Who doesn't like music? I mean, seriously, who? And note the employment of the word "use" instead of enjoy, like music is a utilitarian thing instead of pure pleasure.

There's no way to respond to a comment like that and I didn't try. After they left, I went over to Hunter, busy prepping for lunch, and told him the story. He was as shocked as I was that there could be someone so alien in our midst and said, "Not like music? I'd..." and pantomimed blowing his brains out.

Now I don't want to judge here (be quiet, Andrew) but, honey, you most definitely have done something wrong in your life and sadly, you're paying the price every single day and not even realizing it. Alien or not, you have my deepest sympathy.

Check, Please!

I am not so shallow that I need others to validate my opinion. I'm confident that my beliefs are based on life experience, careful consideration and general smarts. Still, it's incredibly gratifying to have a random conversation that proves that my thinking is not completely off the wall.

I was at Garnett's around 11:00 and a musician I know came in for coffee and a scone. The music on the stereo made him look at me and ask, "Do you know if this is Bowerbirds?" Why, yes it was, I told him, leading to a discussion of the band's acoustic Americana sound, of which we were both very fond. He'd even seen them in Charlottesville last month, a show I told him I'd missed because of prior plans.

Realizing he'd found a kindred music soul, he shared a recent story with me. Seems he was really interested in this girl and was trying to figure out the best way to approach her. He'd wanted to ask her out on a date, so he suggested they go to Balliceaux to see Fight the Big Bull. Her response was, "Oh, that's kind of late and I'm not really into live music."

I looked at him incredulously and he just nodded at me. "Yea, it kind of told me everything I needed to know about her." As I told him, at least he didn't waste another minute of his life with someone with such a skewed life-view.

Or as we like to say about a near-miss like that, "Check, please!"

First Kiss and a Blind Date at Bin 22

Modern Love: A Romance in Four Parts about sums up my evening.

Passion! Beauty! Betrayal! Architecture!

Tonight was the first night of a four-week class at the Virginia Center for Architecture on the topic of 20th century architecture.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the other attendees; how many other people could there be like me who would be willing to commit to four Thursday nights in dreary February, albeit for just an hour, just to look at building slides and learn something?

Well, at tonight's installment, First Kiss: 1900-1930, there were easily two dozen or more, pretty evenly split between men and women of all ages.

The lecturer, Roberto Ventura, had broken down the series by the stages of a romance.

Tonight he said it was all about the early stages of love, characterized by twitterpation, that giddy state of being entirely infatuated with someone.

Bambi fans, you know what I'm talking about, but it was a new word to me.

It was an analogy for the changes in architecture brought about by the Industrial Revolution and centered largely on Chicago because of the massive rebuilding that went on there after the great fire.

That, and Mr. Otis' invention.

While he didn't invent the elevator, he did invent the safety elevator, which allowed the elevator to brake if the hoisting ropes failed, which meant buildings could be designed to be much taller.

Believe me, this was fascinating stuff to the group of us in the room.

After class, I moved on to Bin 22 for an after-school snack and ran into Austin, a friend and talented artist, who'd just had a table accepted into a prestigious show to be held at MIT this summer.

While I enjoyed my Pratsch Gruner Vetliner and a Soppressetta, Fontina and arugula Panini, we discussed the music being played (British Sea Power, the National, Talking Heads) as well as the music on his computer, which was equal parts stuff I like and then a whole lot of classic rock.

I no longer shake my head when I see this combination, but I'll never understand it.

Iron and Wine and the Rolling Stones?

Ugly Casanova and Led Zeppelin?

Postal Service and the Kinks?

Sigh.

Greg the owner, was telling me about the waiter race held in Carytown on Bastille day two years ago, in which he'd been a participant.

I'm familiar with a similar annual event in D.C., but didn't recall the one here.

He cracked us up with the dramatic story of victory being snatched from his hands (or more accurately, him almost running into a trashcan and overcompensating, causing the wine bottle to fall off his tray); it's apparently still fairly fresh in his mind.

He was robbed.

Interestingly, considering the romance theme of the evening, there was a couple there on a blind date and the staff was enjoying making observations about how much they were drinking and how it was going.

The couple looked a bit nervous, but also into each other, causing the staff to assume that it was going to end with (insert pounding sound and crude gesture).

I preferred to focus on their body language, which did point to romantic possibilities.

And now, for the finale to my evening, I once again have a new mix tape and specific instructions on how I am to listen to it.

It is a sequel to my all-time favorite mix, Naive Melodies/Waiting and is simply titled Still Naive.

After an evening of twitterpation at the Branch House, it already sounds to be just what I want to hear.

More Poetic Than We Know

My plans for the evening got postponed due to my friend's root canal recovery, so for a change I stayed in and listened to music and read, two of my absolute favorite past times. I purposely pulled out some CDs that I hadn't listened to in a while, years in some cases.

What struck me as I was listening was how the lyrics to some songs immediately came back to me, even ones I hadn't heard in forever; word for word, I remembered them as if I'd heard them yesterday.

And it occurred to me that we learn song lyrics now like people once learned poetry: as something to be committed to memory and recited back for our own or others' pleasure. I don't know many people who could recite a poem at the drop of a hat, but what are song lyrics if not poetry set to music? This line of thinking somehow made me feel better about the poetic literacy of our culture, not to mention my mental faculties.

I see a dog upon the road
Running hard to catch a cat
My car is pulling to a halt
The truck behind me doesn't know

Everything is in the balance
Of a moment I can't control
Your sympathetic strings
Are like stirrings in my soul

I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
I could go anytime

Find the meaning of the act
Remember how it goes
Every time you take the water
You swim against the flow

The world is all around us
The days are flying past
And fear is so contagious
But I'm not afraid to laugh

I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
I could go anytime

Anytime
Come without warning
Anytime
It could be so easy

A walk in the park
Or maybe when I'm sleeping
Anytime
See the clouds come over

I feel like I'm in love
With a stranger I'll never know
Although you're still a mystery
I'm so glad I'm not alone

I could go anytime
There's nothing safe about this life
Make it so easy to fly in the night
I could go anytime

Poetry, right? I don't think I even realized I knew those words until I heard the song and they came out of my head. And that was just one of several such instances tonight. Such fatalistic lyrics make for great poetry, whether you can sing or not (I can't). It's satisfying enough just to read or recite them.