Travel time

Crowds, public spaces, noise, and the future of it all.

I’m starting Overcoached at the end of Summer 2023, the Summer That Travel Came Back, the summer of essays shaming folks for posting burrata pics on Instagram, the summer of record-smashing heat waves on multiple continents and everyone back up in planes (barring ground stops for massive storms and/or communication failures). It’s 5:30 am and I’m on a rooftop in Barcelona and all the seagulls just started calling to each other in this massively weird and incredibly loud moment that happens just as dawn begins to break. These things seem related to me, slightly underslept at the end of my own travel-heavy summer. The movements of the world around us cause us to move, and there’s method and shape to that movement even when it feels more like madness.

My summer kicked off with work in Germany and Japan, and husband and I are finishing two weeks in France and Spain planned around one of my recitals. He goes on from here to Austria to play some blues. For two old traveling musicians like us, it’s been a great return to the Before Times, all planes and trains and passports, but like the old philosophers say, you never step in the same security line twice. The world hits different after a few years of not seeing it up close.

And the thing that hits hardest are the crowds.

By the crowds I don’t mean the tourists. Even tourists will mock tourists in the summer, and some of the same burrata-shaming writers referenced above are encouraging people not to travel in this particular sweltering summer because of the tourists. Reader, I am one, and I think you should be too, even if it’s down the highway to a town you don’t know. Go places you haven’t been, especially if you’re a classical musician.

By the crowds I don’t mean OMG it’s so crowded I just can’t, although I have had two get-me-out-of-here moments on this trip, one in a museum and one in a public market. Everything is a practice, including being with several thousand people at once, and I could feel how long it had been and how much harder it seemed. We lose what we don’t work on.

By crowds I mean little narrow streets that force people near one another, made centuries ago with no cars or even Townie rental bikes in mind. I mean sidewalks wide enough for tables and food and almost no traffic belching fumes in your face. I mean people ambling to shops and restaurants near them. I mean cities with multiple choices for moving yourself around. I mean the kind of ease of movement that makes unplanned evenings possible, conversations and gelato and live music at 2 am. I mean lives lived outside, in public, all summer long, in all kinds of places.

Tomorrow, I’ll head back to my homeland, to my car, to events and dates planned around Apple Maps and travel time and availability of parking, to older people (it me) giving extra thought to the road trip after dark. Back to a way of life that makes it always more challenging for us to come together, to try something new, to meet by chance.

And I’ll return to work, preparing performances, training aspiring musicians and educators, and producing concerts. I believe passionately in what live performance has to offer. Spaces and circumstances don’t have to be perfect for us to vibe and vibrate together, for us to use our noises to move one another, lifting each other high, revving each other up, caressing each other into silence. When we think of the physical structures that shape those experiences, we probably think of the concert hall, the club, the church, the street. But physical structures that might seem far removed from those experiences - the freeway, the suburb, the parking garage - can shape their possibilities in ways that feel impossible to overcome. Spending a few weeks with people who easily spend so much time in public spaces has me pondering how that ease of movement, or my culture’s lack of it, affects the population’s ability and will to come out to performances, to stay up after with friends and talk about what they experienced, to build a community around a shared passion.

My home culture prioritizes individual spaces over communal ones to an extreme. The internet is the most accessible public square for many of us (this was especially true during the pandemic), and I’m a believer in that space as a place for real relationships. But there too, the algos are making it increasingly difficult to keep connecting with the people that know and support us. It also often seems like that space is part of what’s killing support for live performance, and that’s a big Gordian knot of a topic worth many future essays. For now I want to stick to this topic: the physical experience of shared sound, a performance that happens in a specific location, at a specific time, that isn’t hard to get to.

Do we still want that kind of experience enough to make it possible?

In my profession, specifically classical music, specifically opera (yes, I know, it’s quite a cul-de-sac if we’re sticking with the traffic metaphors), there’s an idea of excellence driving audience, that if what you do is good enough, people will come out to hear it (Spoiler Alert: this weird belief in musical meritocracy will be a big thematic driver of Overcoached). I respect the optimism of this, but it’s demonstrably untrue. Terrific performers miss threading the eye of the success needle all the time, and loving audiences will amass for a performer with whom they connect regardless of technical accomplishment. And, everybody just got done experiencing music and theater at home for three years and no one in our industry has yet figured out how to get them back off their couches.

I don’t think it’s because we’re not good enough. I think we’ve just made getting together so difficult. Also, things in general are getting more difficult - see the aforementioned heatwaves and ground stops - but again, Gordian knots. And future essays.

For now, here’s the near term plan for me and for Overcoached. In the next four weeks, I’ll hear multiple performances at a few different venues in one of my favorite US locations, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and I’ll perform in Detroit. Back in Texas, I’ll put on my presenter hat for the first recital in what I hope will become a living performance series in the small city of Waco. I’ll be coaching singers and pianists again, teaching a lot of them about music they’re just beginning to know.

At the shows, I’ll be asking: how did these audiences get here? Is it their first time? Where did they park? Will they come back? Did they come for the performers? for the program? for their faith in the presenter? Could they just wander in if they wanted to?

At school, I’ll be asking: how much time do we spend in these little practice rooms with each other, and how much time with our audience? Are these proportions right? Are we prioritizing private space in ways we don’t see?

In the theaters, I’ll close my eyes in the dark and open them as the lights come up on the people whose tales I’ll gladly follow wherever they lead. In my studio, I’ll help the next storytellers however I can, and they’ll teach me about their world, which I often mistake for mine.

And then I’ll write about it here. I also might post pictures of burrata, like travelers sometimes do.

-K