My friend and colleague Marcia is, among other nice things, an absolute fiend for Classical music. She goes through CDs like other people go through milk, or bread, or Manolo Blahniks. She has rack after rack after rack of CD storage lining her living room (she and her partner, Dennis, hold the current record amongst my friends for the tallest stereo speakers, at over 6 ft.). A visit to their house out in the woods is like a trip into some audiophile Nirvana (and playing H3 on their huge plasma screen ain’t too shabby, either).
The coolest part is that Marcia maintains a Google document that lists all her discs. Yesterday I went through and made a couple selections, and this morning she showed up at work with a little backpack full of albums. I’m just itching to get home and fill the house with this sound. Ava and I were cruising in the car the other day, and I was playing the local (well, it’s not as local now as it used to be) Classical station on the radio. A beautiful violin piece came on, and Ava asked, “What’s this?” I explained that it was a violin and asked if she liked it. She did. A little blossom of hope bloomed in my heart that maybe I’d finally have a chum with whom I could sit and listen to music. I’m sure she’s a little young yet for this kind of sustained calm, but it certainly couldn’t hurt her to settle down once in a while.