The trip to Seattle with my grandparents and sister was awesome. (It was this trip, the one we'd been planning since December of 2007) First, the opera part of the trip: I watched 17 hours of Wagner opera over the course of the week. The Ring Cycle is like some sort of crazy triathlon of operagoing. We went to operas on Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Saturday night. The last two operas were each five hours long. There were a couple of half-hour intermissions in the longer operas and we had tickets to a VIP room where we could move around and stretch and get free wine and small meals and coffee (which didn't help me much because I'm not really a coffee drinker), but still, that's a lot of time sitting and watching opera. I was actually surprised by how much I ended up loving it. Prior to the trip I'd only seen a handful of other operas in my life and never anything by Wagner. Sometimes I felt like the only person in the audience who wasn't a hardcore Wagnerian. (There are people-incredibly wealthy, insane people-who spend the entire year traveling the world from one Ring Cycle to another. I loved the cycle, don't get me wrong, but I kept wondering if these people realize there are other art forms out there...or even other operas, if they don't feel like branching out that much.) Anyway, the production itself was very impressive. There were flying mermaids and cliffs flickering with actual fire and a horse and, well, the spectacle was really amazing. I also loved the music, although I'll admit that I'm not qualified to judge the quality of the singing (it sounded good to me!). Anyway, I really enjoyed the cycle. The fact that my mind keeps traveling back to it on a regular basis two weeks later means it definitely made a major impression.
I would definitely attend the whole cycle again...provided I could ever afford to do it on my own, which is sort of unlikely. The one downside to the experience was the conflict I always feel in these...well, "rich people" situations (for want of a better word). There's a part of me that really loves it. I'm never going to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain about being related to people who can afford to fly me across the country, put me up in a really nice hotel, and buy me tickets to absurdly expensive entertainment. I love the feeling I have when I'm dressed up with a glass of wine in one hand and a plate of tiny crabcakes in the other. I like when someone leaps to my service to valet park my car or carry my suitcase. It's great to be able to pick a restaurant based purely on what sounds good and not even have to look at the prices on the menu because whatever it costs I know we can afford it. I guess what I'm babbling about is this: the trappings of wealth are really pretty damn fantastic. I feel extremely blessed that my grandparents have lived their lives in such a way that they can afford to do such nice things for me and my siblings and cousins. But I always feel conflicted because, first of all, as much as people like to think they get rich through hard work, I know that most of it is just luck and could easily slip away (illness could bankrupt a family, we could become--GASP!--a socialist country, etc.). I don't understand how people come to feel entitled, to feel like money is just a given thing in their lives. That emotion doesn't exist for me, and so it sometimes rubs me the wrong way to be in a room full of people who don't appear to feel lucky for what they have. I'm in the VIP donor room just marveling that I get to be there at all, while around me old ladies are shoving chocolates into their purses and complaining about how there aren't enough and in my head I'm shouting, "Seriously, people, you have thousands of dollars to donate to something as frivolous as an opera performance and yet you're concerned that you're not getting enough foil-wrapped chocolates?!) It's doubly frustrating because the half of me that can't believe how much money people spend on the arts when there are so many people in need wars with the half whose ENTIRE CAREER hinges on the fact that people remain interested in and continue to donate money to the fine arts. My other conflict in these "rich people" situations stems from the fact that I grew up solidly middle class and will likely (hopefully) raise my own family in the middle class so I didn't grow up my whole life in this world. Sure, I grew up with a lot of privileges not everyone has. We always got to take summer vacations, we always got new back-to-school clothes, we never wanted for any of the basics, ever. But it was only recently, when my dad's business started doing particularly well, that my parents upgraded from La Quintas to Hyatts, you know? And, like I said, I can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't get used to the nice opportunities I can have spending time with my family because it could all slip away just as easily. I look at the life Penn and I have supporting ourselves, and it feels perfectly nice. There's honestly not much we need that we don't have right now. We have all the basics we need and we have quite a few luxuries, too. We can afford a few vacations a year, we can afford to go out with friends on weekends, etc. We have to watch our money, but we don't have to stress constantly about it. And this lifestyle is perfectly satisfying to me. I'm rambling, but I guess my point is that I really enjoy the opportunities afforded to me by my grandparents' money, but I don't feel like the "fancy" part of my life is a right. It feels like a privilege, always, and I wish more of the people I was at the opera with realized exactly how privileged they are.
Wow, I didn't realize I needed to get that off my chest. Sometimes these entries go places I wasn't expecting.
Anyway, there was also a lot of the Seattle trip that had nothing to do with opera. It was great getting to spend time with my grandparents, and I also spent a lot of one-on-one time with my sister. We so rarely get to do that anymore, so it was really nice. We did a lot of the Seattle tourist things: Pike Place Market (AMAZING!), the Fremont Troll, the Experience Music Project, the aquarium. We even took a ferry to Victoria, Canada for the day and went to the Buchart Gardens (also AMAZING). I really, really loved Seattle. It's a very pretty city with a lot of great restaurants and a perfect mix of urban culture and outdoor activities. I could see myself living there, actually, which surprised me because I thought I'd pretty much determined that I'm an east coast person. I'm looking forward to going back someday.
I was going to update you on the rest of my life but this got lengthy so I'll save it for another entry, I suppose.
No comments:
Post a Comment