Occasionally there are concerts at HPAC which do not require the full string section and this week was my first time sitting out. It was therefore also my first time going to an HPAC concert, sitting in an audience of Japanese music lovers, waiting in line for the toilet with them, watching the musicians come onstage together, and doing my share to keep the long applauses going while knowing that everyone onstage is ready to hit the dressing room and grab a beer.
Waiting for the concert to begin, I flipped through the materials in the goody bag handed to me in exchange for my ticket. Full color fliers of upcoming performances at HPAC, my program, and an additional booklet of fliers for even more upcoming performances. Movie previews move over, Superbowl Sunday lookout–this was worth the cost of admission.
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| Wait, there's more? |
I become immersed in pictures of musicians and orchestras, and the occasional dancer, sounding out the kana in my head, until it was time for a concert. The stage doors opened, the applause began, and there were my friends onstage walking to their seats with their instruments like we've done a hundred times this year, that commonplace occurrence newly made magical for me. Here we are together, to play a concert. It is only happening once, right now, and then it's gone.
When I went to Osaka the other day, there was a woman who walked back and forth from one end of the train to the other. She passed through my car two are three times, head hanging down, feet shuffling, mechanically opening the doors at the end of one car to pass into the next as though sleep walking.
Do we know that we know? Do we know that we don't know? How can we know?
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