Three Intermezzos
One of my favorite writers is Amy Hempel. She specializes in writing really really short stories, like one or two pages long.
Hempel was once asked for a writing tip.
She replied, "cut out all the boring parts".
Westminster Abbey
Amy and I are in Westminster Abbey and it is full of people. Many of them are tripping and stumbling, then looking behind them for the culprit.
We are being led by a verger carrying a staff with a colorful ball on the end. The verger is short and our group is about 25 people, so when she starts for the next relic, we must follow the ball rising high above the crowd or get hopelessly lost.
"Watch your step there," she points at a seam in the floor with her staff. "Everything in Westminster Abbey is designed to kill you."
The Upper Circle
The tickets to Usher Hall, where Amy and I are going to see the musician Richard Hawley, has cheap tickets in the Upper Circle, their name for the second balcony.
The Usher Hall tickets warn us:
Amy and I ignore this. "Those poor sensitive people ... they will never have the joy of purchasing cheap tickets like us."
It is the night of the concert and we get to our seats. It is literally one million miles directly above the stage. The seats are sloped downwards at an impossible angle and are almost on top of one another. Only a tiny brass rail keeps you from spilling over onto the floor. People down there look like ants.
It is like being in an airplane with a glass floor. Scratch that. Like an airplane with no floor.
We sit down. Sweat breaks out on our foreheads. We twitch in our seats. Our hearts are beating out of their chests. After 5 minutes, it dawns on us that we will never be able to concentrate on the music.
Amy and I look at each other. No words need to be said. We need to get the f**k out of there.
We push past a guy sitting on the end. "I wanted to grab him and hold onto him and beg him never to let me go," Amy says later. I had the exact same feeling.
We exchange our tickets for ones on the 1st balcony and pay a £20 overage. We feel a surcharge for ... well, not dying ... is worth it.
From our new seats, comfortably and safely on the first balcony, Amy and I enjoy the concert. Every once in awhile we glance up at the Upper Circle.
People in the Upper Circle are dancing, swaying and having a grand old time.
Mush
Taylor Swift is in town, saving the Edinburgh economy with her 220,000 fans over three nights - June 7, 8, and 9.
Meanwhile Amy and I are trying to watch the BBC. But there is a weird noise outside our window. It is like like a chorus of angels singing through 10 layers of styrofoam. Every four or five minutes there is a whooshing sound, like a car speeding past.
"Is that Taylor Swift?" Amy says.
It is 10:00 PM, yet the sun hasn't sunk yet. We get on our jackets and head outside. It is quite cold and windy. When a wind gush blows past the angelic chorus gets slightly louder.
We head out into the West end, toward St. Mary's Episcopal Church. The angelic chorus gets softer as we near the church. I stop a moment and calculate it. Right now St. Mary's, a huge church whose main spire is 300 ft tall, is standing smack dab in between us and Murrayfield, where Taylor Swift is playing.
Amy and I walk around the church and into the court yard and the angelic choir reappears. It gets loudest (ironically) near St. Mary's Music School.
I lean against the stone wall and ponder this. Edinburgh has taken a brash, young, in-your-face, global phenom and turned her into a pile of warm mush.
Magic, that.
