One of joys of riding the ferry is that it is a stately mode of transportation, permitting passengers to quietly contemplate their immediate destination and the larger implications of the journey itself.
By Paul Duclos
Published: August, 2011
One of joys of riding the ferry is that it is a stately mode of transportation, permitting passengers to quietly contemplate their immediate destination and the larger implications of the journey itself.
And let’s place an emphasis on quiet here, for ferry commuters are seldom exposed to what is commonly called background music. Our favorite insight on this subject comes from Milan Kundara, who, in his brilliant novel Ignorance, quotes Schoenberg and others on this postmodern atrocity:
Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forward, and any resistance is hopeless; it force-feeds us music . . . regardless of whether we want to hear it, or whether we can grasp it, with the result that music becomes just noise, a noise among other noises. Radio was the tiny stream it all began with. Then came other technical means for reproducing, proliferating, amplifying sound, and the stream became an enormous river. If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, regardless whether we want to hear it, it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don’t know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can’t tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.
So where does one go to find a quiet place for lunch, dinner, or cocktails? For the lucky few, it’s the Presidio Golf Club in Pacific Heights. While its chief attraction is golf—another quiet pastime—many of the club’s social members belong because the only music one hears is that of lyric conversation. No Pandora! We must also add that the food is sublime, and the service without compare. Cultural Currents has featured this place in the past as a place of fellowship and gentle recreation. The PGC is now actively seeking golfers and non-golfers alike by offering very attractive membership deals. In a city filled with noise, this is a sanctum sanctorum.
Lamplighters Stages
H.M.S. Pinafore
Of course, when it comes to music performed in a live setting, there are many options to explore. One of our favorites is the Lamplighters Music Theatre, which often produces the comic operas of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. But besides the entire Gilbert & Sullivan canon, this troupe performs other light opera and musical theatre classics such as The Merry Widow, Die Fledermaus, Of Thee I Sing, My Fair Lady and A Little Night Music.
Lampligters is currently staging a sparkling production of the Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore. Audiences will board one of England’s great Navy ships where the beautiful Josephine must choose between marrying the First Lord of the Admiralty—with all of the wealth, prestige and power his title affords—or the simple sailor, lowly born who has won her heart. Gilbert devised the plot to make fun of patriotism, social class snobbery and incompetence in high places.
This is enchanting music to be cherished and adored. Finding a sacred quiet place to have a pre- or post-performance meal, however, is going to be a challenge. We invite readers to share any discoveries made in this regard, and promise to champion their cause.
Dijon Must’art Brings Taste of France to the Bay Area
Finally, this is a must-attend event: Dijon Must’art.
Ferry commuters will have an ideal opportunity to participate in a citywide, weeklong project celebrating the creativity and vitality of Dijon, France. A delegation of leading chefs, wine experts, artists, musicians and businesspeople, led by the City of Dijon’s Senator-Mayor François Rebsamen, will visit San Francisco for a series of events next month including two Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Events which are open to the public on Saturday August 20 and Tuesday August 23..
Dijon Must’art coincides with opening at the Legion of Honor’s traveling loan exhibition The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy.
Dijon Must’art is supported by the City of Dijon, Burgundy Tourism, FRAME, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, the French Embassy in the United States, the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, Le Cordon Bleu California Culinary Academy, and Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant. For more information about Dijon Must’art events, please visit www.dijon-must-art.com.
