I'm sitting in my office at the university, listening to C-span and waiting for the powers that be here to rev up the Projection Screen down the hall.  In the meantime, I've been watching the scenes from the mall, and by some weird trick of memory they reminded me of a concert I went to in Boston a number of years ago.  It was at the Orpheum and featured the flamboyant (to say the least) organ virtuoso Virgil Fox. 

I was gainfully employed (still punching the clock in the same place now, as a matter of fact), and with a little extra money in my pocket I splurged on a seat downstairs in the orchestra.  I think it cost me all of $25.00, but don't hold me to that figure.  Well, Virgil came out on stage and sat at the console of the touring electric organ he used--at the time, the largest in the world, and ripped into a Bach recital with more panache than one man should be able to muster.  He was dressed to then nines--maybe the elevens, including rhinestones embedded in the heels of his patent leather pumps.so people could catch the dazzling footwork on the wedge fugue. 

Then I noticed something....while the well dressed audience sitting around me was clapping "Boston polite" (mustn't show too much emotion, must we?)  The crowd in the second balcony--the cheap seats called "heaven" because of their location was quite literally cheering at the top of their lungs and clapping their hands to the point where I bet some of them suffered bruises.  I couldn't hear the applause around me--it was drowned out by the applause above me.  I knew I belonged upstairs, and when Virgil lead a cheer--B.  A.  C.  H.---B.  A...C...H...   I cheered with the balcony regardless of the snooty looks from my posh-seat neighbors.

Looking out on the mall today, I wish I was there.  If I were, I'd want to be in the "cheap seats" in the middle of the back of the crowd.  That's where the dancing is happening.  That's where the cheering is happening, and that's where people are wearing the funny hats and smiling so broadly that the tops of their heads look likely to fall off.  I'm sure some of the folks in the reserved seating area will go mildly nuts, but nothing like the joy I'm seeing in the cheap seats.  So my cheer today goes to the folks who have will, have joy, have the stamina to stand in the cold for hours and hours, and who have everything but the connections to get the good seats.  They may not have the good, but they have the best.

To celebrate, Here's Virgil Fox playing Charles Ives' Variations on America  I can't think of anything more appropriate, symbolically.  To see him in a more "dignified" mode, watch the Prelude and Fugue in A minor.  To understand the quote marks around "dignified" look to the last 20 seconds or so...the imp is just under the facade.