I was at the Metropolitan Opera 39 years ago tonight watching Alban Berg's Wozzeck and try as I might, not liking it too much. I went with my music professor from Columbia and his wife and it was more of a curiosity than an experience of enjoyment. Moreover, as it is difficult music and not widely performed "live", I figured it would be the only time in my life I would get to see it.
At the second intermission we went to get the customary glass of champagne and do the "oooohhh ahhh" thing. Clearly audible were a stream of sirens racing on Broadway - enough so that we feared some disaster had befallen the city. It had.
The sirens were of course the police and the ambulance from nearby Roosevelt Hospital going to do what they could for John Lennon, shot dead just a few blocks away. We didn't know that, of course, until after the opera; we were at a play within a greater play.
A decade plus prior to this night I was working nights in the Michigan State Student Union Grill. The Sergeant Pepper album was out and on the jukebox..playing incessantly. We closed at 2am and it was pretty quiet with only a few regulars sitting around with no other place to go.
The Viet Nam War was raging on and I was somewhat friends with a woman named Lynn who came in every night. Her husband was drafted the year before and was killed in action while I knew her. They would spend evenings in the Union while both were students and she had elected to continue on and finish while he did his 2 years. She always sat at their booth.
She had long black hair, like Yoko, and for some reason I equated the two as I think back on it and still do. Two sad, raven haired women of good heart, going though anguish unimagined over the senseless killing of a loved one.
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