learning to appreciate superficiality

Since January, the second movement of Mozart's a minor sonata K. 310 has been sitting unpleasantly on my face like an Amazonian boar with brillo pad fur. I wish it was sitting on my face like a tall, slim, latino man with wavy hair and a vocabulary containing phrases like "ay, Dios mío" and "bend me over," but alas, no. I get the boar.

This movement's subtitle should be "Tissues and Issues." (Oh wait, coincidentally, that's the title of a Charlotte Church album that failed when she tried to be Lindsay Lohan. Oops.) Click on the link and go listen to it: "Tissues and Issues" really does sum it up: this piece plays out like adolescent girl-or-homosexual-male love drama. Flirtation and wanky infatuation abound. Mostly this music is just frippery and frillery, and it's all so SUPERFICIAL, shallow and surface sweetness. (Here's my little dedication to Wolfie.) The mood changes from second to second, just like Perez Hilton's hair color. In fact, I can imagine him skipping through daisies with this piece playing in the background.

Pardon me, the contents of my stomach are about to eject themselves out of my mouth.........

Ok, better.

***

Today, I asked Salmon, my illustrious piano teacher, to just talk to me about this piece. All I want is to breathe some life into it, I said. To actually appreciate it, I said, and not perform a taffy mass of maple syrup twinkie. And Salmon replied "You know, this piece is so superficial."

O.

We then talked for an hour on how 18th century Viennese' lives were built on superficiality, dressing in satin and lace just for a trip to the Kaffeehaus, and the color and the ritual and the hot male waiters and the haughtiness and the whole charade of it all. "Play it like that. Like you haven't a care in the world, when deep down... you're the most miserable son of a bitch on God's earth. Play it... superficially."

That, ladies and gentleman, I can do.