Guess what I'm NOT doing tonight?

Song for this post: "Loser" ~ Beck

This is the second year in a row I've missed Mozart's Requiem at Benaroya Hall. I've said close to a billion times that it's my very favorite piece of music.

I totally forgot it was tonight and tomorrow night.

So. Unbelievably. Upset. Right now.

Find the complete Requiem here. There is nothing more beautiful, more heartbreaking, and more moving.

For those who don't know, a requiem mass is a "mass for the dead." It was the last piece Mozart wrote and he told his wife he was writing it for his own funeral. That's likely an Elizabethan play on words though, since he was commissioned to write the piece.  What he meant was that he was feeling very ill. Mozart was convinced he had been poisoned and his health continued to deteriorate while he wrote the mass. He never got to finish it, though, as he died before it's completion.  An apprentice finished it for him.

Fittingly, it was played at his funeral.

There are only two movements that I find particularly melancholy: Introitus (the beginning) and the last section of Sequentia (the Lacrimosa, which means "mournful."). The rest is really rather intense.  It ranges from evoking feelings of introspection and an appreciation for the world around you to impending doom to straight up anger.  If you listen to the entire mass (roughly an hour) I guarantee you'll feel nearly the entire spectrum of emotion. That's sort of the point of requiem masses, though. You're supposed to feel the spectrum of emotion and, thus, the spectrum of your life.

Mozart was an absolute genius and I'm very Very VERY sad to miss this again.

...aaaaaaaand I just found out a friend of mine is at Maximilien for lunch which is my very favorite restaurant in Seattle. Incredible, sweeping views of the sound, outstanding wine and some pretty spectacular oysters. If you haven't gone, go. For rlz.

So basically, I'm feeling left out of the finer things this city has to offer today.  It's going to take an extra glass of wine in today's "Friday Staff Meeting" to cover this wound.