Doctor Atomic

I saw John Adams's Doctor Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera last night, from row F in Family Circle. I could almost reach up and touch the gilt ceiling, but the music glides around that theater, and there's not a bad seat in the house.

(I love the moment just before the opera starts when the lights are dimmed and the chandeliers raised in unison. They look like atomic snowflakes).

The pacing is what got me. Most of the the opera oscillates between expressions of misgivings about the bomb's potential to change and devastate humanity and desire to achieve scientific and military aims.

(And the lighting spectacularly leads your eyes along the hills of Los Alamos, through the offices and bedrooms and lives of the scientists working there. And the sound design transports you and expands the stage and encompasses you. And the set design mesmerizes you with suspended hunks of charred wood (inspired by Cornelia Parker sculptures, I read) and a hulking sci-fi bomb dangling like a disco ball).

But after all the oscillations, there is a conclusion, a detonation. And, like the ensemble cast, I wanted to put on sunglasses, light a cigarette, sit back and watch. But I was hit, rocked by the real power of the thing, unimaginable, simultaneously massive and individual.

Jessica Thompson
Three Songs

These three songs shuffled on my broken iPod this week and caught me: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce51k8tjlBQ&hl=en&fs=1]

Pluto Drive by The Creatures -- I was flirting with goth when this album was released in 1989, but my Boticelli hair and Pollyanna demeanor held me to the light side, and I started wearing plaid shirts and corduroy pants instead.  Still, I love how the looping bass drives this song without interference from flashy guitars or opulent synth solos. The druggy, stripped down aural atmosphere is spot on, and Siouxsie Sioux's vocals are utterly cool. In case you're feeling nostalgic, it is available (used) on cassette at Amazon.

Musty Dusty by Sagittarius -- so tender, so dark, I'd slip it on a mix CD for a friend's new baby nestled between other lullabies about puppies, the alphabet, broken boughs, ennui, death, despair.

Without Darkness (There's No Light) by Peter Sarstedt -- (I could only track down a clip).  This shuffled on my iPod while I was walking to work, a little dazed from lack of sleep and overload of emotion, the morning after Barack Obama was elected the next President of the United States of America. My heart swelled with the knowledge that, after eight very dark years, this country has an Obama Presidency to look forward to.  How strange to feel proud of one's country again.

Jessica Thompson