poor associations

I went to a concert last night, a Miller Theater (of Columbia U.) performance of Renaissance polyphony by the Flemish composer Jacobus Vaet (I'd never heard of him before I bought the ticket either), performed by the Vox Vocal Ensemble, which is a fine local choral group run by a guy named George Steel, who is also Executive Director of Miller.

Having grown up pretty middle class, in a town with few to no entertainment options beyond broadcast TV (outside of surfing and getting high, neither of which I did), I watched at least a bit of wrestling in the 80s, the heyday of Hulk Hogan, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and, yes, George "The Animal" Steel. And it's unfortunate, but whenever I go to any Miller Theater event, and this group's performances in particular, that is the first and primary association I have.



So I'm listening to this heavenly (literally) music, performed by highly talented, formally dressed people, in a church, and in my mind I see a grunting, hirsute, spandex-clad madman rampaging in their midst, throwing folding chairs and upsetting music stands, and it's all I can do not to start laughing hysterically. Very distracting and, as I said, very unfortuante.

This isn't a particularly gloomy post, or even a particularly funny one for most people, given the likely minuscule overlap between the Vox Vocal Ensemble audience and viewers of 1980s-vintage WWF.

I think, though, that it helps answer the question of why, given how miserable I seem to tend to be, I even bother getting out of bed in the morning. As a key survival skill, it takes very, very little for me to amuse myself.