dinoflagellates and the orchestra

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of accompanying my dear friend Brian to see the Enigma Variations by Elgar, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.  I had to borrow a quote from www.philorch.org so I could properly describe the performance. "... Edward Elgar brought forth a strange orchestral piece--a set of variations on an unknown theme in which each movement was a portrait of one of his friends--it was a matter for astonishment, an enigma indeed. "Here," declared one critic, "is a man who knows what he wants to say and knows how to say it!"

Imagine for a second that you have a theme song stuck in your head.  And you varied that theme song to fit the personalities of your friends and loved ones.  Some friends are small and delicate, while others are loud and bold.  That theme would have to be varied to fit their personalities, and that's exactly what Elgar did.  The first half of the performance was really interesting.  Narrators, actors, images and music brought Elgar (just a name on the playbill at the time) to life. Snippets of journal entries and stories where extracted from their pages and presented to the audience, making it seem like Elgar was right there in auditorium, describing his life and his work.  The second half of the performance was purely on the shoulders of the orchestra, and they presented the themes uninterrupted.  It was quite beautiful.

The rest of the night was spent at Parc on Rittenhouse, discussing life, art, food and zombies.  That's right.

Also, I did this drawing of happy dinoflagellates for Kara's thesis.  It's going to be published, and I'm excited that I could make this important contribution to the scientific community.  Who knew that dinoflagellates were so happy and rambunctious?  I did.  I think I'd like to do fun drawings of the bacteria and viruses behind STD's. ... I probably won't finish my actual work now that I've made this decision.