#cellogayageum

[3garcons]

Cellogayageum at Music at Noon Feb 2024

[gubbin-galoshes]

In December, I had a breakdown and threw myself into a wild frenzy of Being Better. I would change my diet, I would walk more, I would support public transit, I would live sustainably, and I would go on at least one small adventure every week and one big Adventure every month. The day I decided all of this was the day I bought a single concert ticket for two separate events at a stage theater I'd never been to. One was Jeremy Dutcher. The other was CelloGayageum.

CelloGayageum was tonight's Adventure. I'd been listening to them on Spotify for the past month, hypnotized by the combination of sounds from opposite sides of the world.

But I Don't Like places I'm unfamiliar with, especially if I have to drive to them. For the past week I'd been clicking through Google Maps memorizing the street view of my route. I spent hours researching parking and walking paths. I triple-saved my tickets in my phone, my email, my notes.

I was so freaked out about it, I considered just not going. All day, when I was alone, I repeated to myself, "You'll regret it if you don't!"

(It was the same mantra as last night, leading up to a local free community ASL class. I've always wanted to learn ASL, I used to pretend I knew it as a kid, just the idea of talking without speaking sounds amazing to me, and yet I considered not going. But I did. And I'm glad I did. I would've regretted it if I'd stayed home.)

After work I paced. My fretting cat wove between my ankles, I kept checking the clock, it was kinda raining outside, I listened to podcasts and wondered if I should just leave, I couldn't go too early but what if I made a wrong turn or there was a roadblock or fire started raining from the sky? Best leave myself an extra fifteen minutes. An extra half-hour. But I could really just stay home where there was no chance of an accident. Should I take the train instead? But the trains stop running and there'd be no way home.

I left an hour early.

I was one of the first ones in the theater, a comfortable place to read fanfic on my phone and casually watch the people finding their seats. The people getting told not to sit on the stage or block the aisle or climb over the seats by extremely patient ushers.

Then the lights dimmed, there was applause as the artists took their seats at cello and gayageum, and for the next hour the sound twisted us out of reality and into some other dream.

They told stories of their travels, of folk tales and the ocean, and described music like a diary entry, a piece to remember the lights and the color and the emotion of a moment. We laughed between the sets and communicated with our applause, and they cast spells on their instruments with techniques and sounds that shouldn't be physically possible. We flew through the air and dove into the stormy ocean, died and came back to life. I smiled all night. It was a standing ovation.

The drive home was calm. The roads were quiet, the sky was gray with the end of the rain. I'd done it: I'd gone to a place I'd never been, for no other reasons than my own, and I loved every minute of it.

No regrets.