Somehow Christmas is
connected to organ music for me.
I guess it has to do with the connection of
church and these massive pipe instruments that many of them are home to. Or it
could also be the music my father chose to play because of the mood Christmas used
to put him into.
Secondly it was a
dreary day. I had taken my bicycle out in the rain in the morning to work and
it was still or maybe again raining when I returned back in the late
afternoon.
Weather in the Netherlands is usually quite similar, as it was the second day of Christmas in Singapore. Except for the fact that
it is about 25 degrees colder than here, it looked and felt
pretty much the same; grey and damp!
It was actually my wife who
suggested to go to Barbershop, to see the Barbershop quartet’s impressive line
up of
Richard Jackson vocals
Rick Smith Guitar
Tamagoh on drums
And fitting to my Christmas
feelings the Organ masterfully played by Oliver von Essen.
Those of you who have been
reading several of my posts may have come to the conclusion that I have a strong
preference for vivacious characters on stage, preferably women, and that may be
true.
But as I am reading the last
chapter of Quiet, the power of introverts in a world that cannot stop talking,
I recognize several of the observations made in this book in Richard.
To anyone
that considers calling someone an introvert a negative thing, I recommend
the book strongly and others should read it as well, I think. It is an
interesting perspective on the kind of people we all know and you may even be
yourself, society just did not allow you to know it.
So Richard, as I know him, is calm and quiet,
appears pensive often and speaks using few words, a strong contrast to the
jumpy, crazy, bubbly characters I am admiring so often.
Yet I enjoy watching Richard
as much as I enjoy hearing him sing. Observing Richard is like staring into the
open fire of a fireplace, watching the flames that reach out into the darkness chimney.
It somehow absorbs your mind and allows you to float away
listening to soulful music, while you can feel the warmth it radiates. What is nicer on grungy grey days like last Friday.
I will have finished the
last chapter of Quiet probably by the end of the weekend and then I will be closing
that book…! Finally perhaps, because I am a slow reader and even slower in
learning. My encounter with the introvert side of people did teach me several
lessons though and I will end a good year with quite a bit of new perspectives!
The last song of the second
set happened to be a pretty version of a rainy night in Georgia. At that point I thought we had enough rain for one day. So we decided to pay up and head home to play our fireplace DVD.
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