For decades, I have had a subscription to the world renown, and local treasure, The Philadelphia Orchestra. From the late 80s to the early aughts, I attended concerts at The Academy of Music; since then, at Marian Andersen Hall inside the Kimmel Center. I began my concert-going experience by bringing along my sister. The middle years belonged to my wife, the later years and up to the present, my son. Three people: that’s not very much enlightenment to an artform every bit as worthy as Shakespeare on a stage and Rembrandt on a canvas.
Please indulge me as I recount one night at the concert hall: The orchestra played Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, a cinematic depiction of Bloody Sunday. The Czar invites citizens to the palace square to protest. Once fully assembled, they are promptly massacred. One might describe the symphony’s first movement as atmospheric in how it depicts a “nervous” or “restless quiet.” The second movement brings the massacre. How does one compose a massacre? Watch the brief video below.
The third movement offers a slow but forceful recapitulation of an earlier motif. The fourth brings chaos that crescendos. At its zenith, it plummets to the disquieting atmosphere sensed in the first movement. Out of the quiet emerges soft notes resonating from an English Horn. It echoes like a singular voice in the wilderness; perhaps it is God weeping that humanity has fallen further than He could have imagined.
For fear my words would not do it justice, I won’t attempt to describe the symphony’s finale. But I will intimate, that night I walked away from the concert hall wondering how many will go from the cradle to the grave never experiencing what I would describe as the most poignant and riveting music ever composed. Thus, my invented holiday would be called: Exposure Day—a day when everyone exposes themselves to unfamiliar artforms and expressions that explore the human experience.
Years ago, whenever my son would utter the words, “Dad, you’re gonna love this song,” inwardly, I would groan, for I assumed the song would be shit and that I would never get back the 3 1/2 minutes stolen by a teenager’s perception of art. I have since softened my position, having recently exposed myself to artists such as Greta Van Fleet and MF Doom. Will every new experience serve as a pathway to enrichment? No, and nor should we expect it to; but at least we’ll have collected more shared experiences; and, in that, there cannot be a downside. Will my holiday ever rise to the level of a renewed George Bailey running through Bedford Falls yelling, “Happy Exposure Day, everybody!”? Likely not. But Exposure Day just might invite people into a public square where antagonism takes a backseat to the better angels of our nature.
Michael's Corner 
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