I am half way through the Les Misérables in Concert DVD from Netflix and I have to admit, I know all the words.
When I was in High School, I dated a girl named Georgina. She was studying acting and I acted some. We were inseperable and our favorite thing to do in Honolulu was experience, see, hear, taste, and drink in as many cultural experiences as possible.
That included art films at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and any alternative or experimental thing we could get our hands on, including begging our video store to carry more foreign film selections.
Yeah, we were those especially awful insufferable sort of snobs.
That included going to Blaisdell Concert Hall and Arena for anything. We saw Cats and when I visited her in NYC, we also saw Starlight Express, which was appalling.
My favorite of them all was and still is Les Misérables. And since Georgina and I were snobs and because she was British, we only were willing to listen to the original London recording with Colm Wilkinson.
I remember in college and Freshman year when I listened to the soundtrack in my dorm. My roommates must have really had questions about me. Anyway, I have to thank my mom for all the music, opera, dance, symphony, shows, and museums in my life.
And I got to see it in NYC in the early 90s with my mum. I had a 103 degree fever during the concert and I do believe I was seriously bonded to the show. My mom was worried sick and since I was in that weird fever space, I really experienced the very manly world that Victor Hugo originally penned and Cameron Mackintosh adapted.
My roommates must have really had questions about me. Anyway, I have to thank my mom for all the music, opera, dance, symphony, shows, and museums in my life.
Thanks to my mom, Barbara, I have been brought up to really relish the art world and the world of art. The first book I was read to was “The History of Civilization” which I still posses. She also inundated me with jazz, classical music, and the Beatles. I remember being in my Jolly Jumper bouncing bouncing to the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
And since I was a child in Honolulu, I attended the opera, symphonies, jazz (including Miles Davis), plays (including Camelot) and the ballet (including Rudolf Nureyev). And, of course musicals. My mum actually took me on a pilgrimage to New York when I was a little kid and we say Peter Pan, Evita, and I third that I can’t remember right now.
These days I don’t spend nearly enough of my time indulging in these things in my life. When I got to GW, I joined the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian’s Associate program, the Phillips Collection, and others. I think it is again time to spend more time enjoying the finer things.
