Classical music is mostly boring to me. While I can appreciate the intricacies of the different threads running through the most complicated pieces, for the most part, the whole is uninteresting to me.

There are two exceptions to this.

The first is the when the music tells a story, an unintentionally vague description that doesn't really describe the exeception well. Certain pieces of music tell a story, a story that is often different for each person that heard it. In the music you can hear the struggle, you can hear the victory, the defeat, the success, the utter failure and the blinding glory.

Some music has it for only a moment, a small part where the heart catches the notes and recognizes that moment as its own. The strongest example I can give is the guitar solo that begins nominally at 6:19, but doesn't really start until 6:48, of November Rain, the original lyrics, from Use your Illusion 1 from Guns and Roses. At 7:08, it begins, and you can feel the struggle, that has a release at 7:36. That release, that moment, gives me the chills every time I hear it.

There are a couple others similar to that moment, but few with the effects that have lasted decades.

2:12 of Running from the Scene of the Crime from Manic Bloom has the struggle, the unrelenting build up that starts to release at 2:36. It isn't as dramatic as November Rain, but the bass and piano play that becomes prominent at 3:15 still sway the heart. I say that, but the most visual part I think is from 1:27 to 1:40. I always see Harry Dresden with his staff fending off the Red Court, usually with Ramirez close by (and if that made no sense to you, that's fine, go read the Harry Dresden series).

Along with the story-telling style of music, the other exception to the classical music dislike is the intertwining, overlapping duet melodies. Unfortunately, I don't know the term for it (but am hoping that Matthew Albert will help me out here), but can describe it at least.

The music has two people are singing (though it could be two instruments), different parts that interweave and overlap, each singing parts where words overlap sometimes.

Two examples:

The first is the scene from Les Misérables after Fantine dies, where Javier confronts Jean val Jean. The two actors sing different parts, with one singing loudly when his words are more important. Kris says the best choreography he saw of this was when the two characters circled each other around a table or bed, and the actor upstage facing the audience was singing more loudly, his words carrying to the audience.

A more modern version is My Eyes from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, where Dr. Horrible and Penny's words are completely overlapping in the third verse. You can concentrate on one melody, listen to it weave through the song, then relisten to the song and listen to the other melody, and the whole mood changes. The one is tortured with unrequited love, the other is joyous in its newfound love. The song is delightfully amazing in it's telling.

The best classical music is the one that combines both of these delicious quirks, though music isn't the only way the interweaving can happen. And the story-telling doesn't have to be the normal plot line of introduction, increasing tension, climax, and denouement. When they're circular in the rising and falling fashion, the story can be surprisingly entertaining. Mostly, when the starting and ending parts are the same, I am amused.

The Jabberwocky is an example of the start and the end being the same, which holds in the same vein:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The start of the poem, there's calm. You feel the slow meditative feel of the story begining and after the horrific, violent death and morbid celebration of said death, the world calms back down to the quiet, Bambi-esque, happy songs playing in the background after the tempest.

It's that moment after the crashing thunderstorms have run amok, when there's quiet and peace and certainty. It's the point in story in the classical music piece when the cacophany of the middle torture is over, and the slower calming part has arrived.

It's a good place, this place of peace.

It's been a long time coming, too.

It's nice to be here again.

Update:

Matthew comes through for me, as I knew he would:

Hey Kitt! What you're describing doesn't have a term specific to vocal
writing, as far as I know. It's a duet, but the particular kind of
interweaving is called counterpoint. If two musical lines are following the
same rhythm but on different notes, they're in harmony with one another.
It's when each line has more independence, sometimes going up when the other
goes down, or holding a note when the other moves between notes, that you
get counterpoint.

There's also a term called invertible counterpoint, which is when the
counterpoint works in such a way that either line could be transposed up to
a higher or lower register and it would still work as counterpoint. Most
counterpoint works this way.

Classical composers like Bach were famous for this kind of writing, and this
is something musicians study in theory in undergrad.

So I'd describe these duets as vocal counterpoint.

With a breakfast like this, how can the day be bad?

So, right, Kris has been talking about buying land in Maine. The land he's been talking about it like $6,000 an acre, so inexpensive enough, with low enough taxes, that even if we never build a cabin on it or visit it, the land wouldn't be too much of a financial burden.

So (so many so's here), off we went to look at some places that we saw on the window of a realtor's office in downtown Camden.

And there's where the problems began.

We had our first fight when looking at a property that, on paper, looked perfect. I know the trigger of my frustrations, I know that my frustrations are the reason for our fight. I know the fight wasn't so bad, but it definitely had some lingering effects, which, well, annoy me more. Vicious cycle that.

The land we looked at, for the record, was swampy, and, though big, not what would work. Honestly, I'm somewhat relieved. How much can you enjoy land 3000 miles away?

After our harbor boat cruise, we had sandwiches at the crab shack on the dock.

I ordered a shrimp taco, instead of a crab sandwich because it sounded tasty. When it arrived, I realized the shrimp inside in the taco were deep-fried. When I lamented that I wouldn't have ordered the shrimp tacos if I knew they were deep-fried, Kris asked, "Oh, is it not good?"

"Oh, no," I answered, "it's really really tasty, and I'm totally enjoying it. I just wouldn't have ordered if I had known it was deep-fried."

Tasty, indeed.

Kris has been talking about going on a sailing cruise for a while now. Not a short cruise in the hahbah (that's "harbor" if you don't read Bostonian), but a couple week long cruise on a working boat of some sort. Not a seriously hard working boat, but rather a boat where the passengers were expected to help with the sails and the cooking and the cleaning and the general boat upkeep.

When he talks about the cruise, I think of the way Pete Fenner used to talk about his retirement, how he wanted to hop into a boat and sail around the world. I also think of how Nancy wanted nothing to do with it, because, really, I have no desire to head out on a boat.

I'm a mountain girl, not an ocean girl.

Really.

But, he's been talking about it, finding cruises he's interested in going on, checking out the itineraries, the ports of call, the prices.

When Kris gets this serious about something, he's going to do it. I did the best thing I could do given my lack of desire to go.

I invited Andy.

Andy seemed initially hestitant, but decided that he's in, if he and Kris could pretend to be a couple, because, really, two white guys from San Francisco? Everyone would assume they were an item anyway. When Andy told me his logic, I tried to refute it. When he said he'd bring his Speedo, I gave up.

The only known snag in this plan is the last boat trip Kris went on. We went snorkeling as Bharat and Jen and maybe Ben and Lisa went scuba diving. Kris swallowed a bunch of salt water when his mask slipped off, and ended up feeding the fishes later on the boat. He had never been seasick before that, and it was time to find out if that trip was a fluke, or if his plans of a two week cruise would need to be smashed.

Today, we were heading out on the water, for a two hour tour, a two hour tour. I was prepared with my hat, which stayed on my head all the way until the boat left the pier, which is to say, not long at all.

Before we left the dock, we were told all about the booms and the sails and how when the booms are released, everyone ducks, lest you be smashed in the head with a swinging one. I chose to lie down on the top of one of the cabins, looking up at the booms. The captain was a little puzzled by my choice of seating, but seemed okay with my place once he realized I was going to lie down as the sails went up.

I mean, hello, awesome view!

Most everyone else sat with the captain. I can't say I blame them. I mean, warm blankets, comfy seats and entertaining stories? So much better than sitting on the deck.

Or jumping around putting up sails.

Or, I don't know, BEING TERRIFIED OF THE DECK ANGLE?

Right.

Water.

So, I'm not a boat person. I'll go on the boat. I'll hang on tight. Until I get used to it, though, I'm a wreck. Ha, ha, no, not a shipwreck.

I am, however, fortunate that seasickness is not a problem for me. I mean, anyone who can read a book in the back seat of a car that's winding up 9 on the way to Santa Cruz does NOT have to worry about seasickness.

At all.

Doesn't mean the rest of it is completely enjoyable.

Fortunately, some of it was. Okay, a lot of it was. Once I released my deathgrip on the rigging, I was nominally fine. I kept thinking, yes, this is the human condition that makes us so powerfully capable and so devastatingly fragile: we can get used to anything. Including moving quickly along the surface at a 30° angle, thinking, wow, it would be really easy to fall in here.

Despite the angle of the boat, I did go to the bathroom in the boat. I mean, how many times do you get the chance to pee sitting at a 30° angle with your back to the ocean just below your ass? Really? How many times?

We went out for an hour, went past a number of small islands, some inhabited by seals, some not, some inhabited by people, some not, some owned, some not. We listened to stories from the captain, too. He told us about his grandfather's heading out from Maine to walk to Canada when he (his grandfather) was twelve, and his (his grandfather's) mother saying, "Fine, but be back by school.". He told us about the ice industry at the beginning of the last century, and how it enabled Maine to have a winter income for decades. He told us about the few times when he tried to tell his corporate clients that no, they didn't need to provide three lobsters for each of the 40 guests, that two would suffice, then going home in the evening with 50 lobsters, and overeating on lobster for the next two weeks.

It was a good boat ride. And, I get to write "I'm on a boat!"

Now, if Kris would just stop singing that damn song.