(New Music + Bunny Slippers) / Long Day = Perfect Evening?

So, I was having lunch with Alex’s blog today, and he was making a few concert recommendations, starting with the fact that the Newspeak ensemble is playing Judd Greenstein’s What They Don’t Like (For Chuck D), Samson Young’s Efflorescentric Aftermath (Game Boy Music II), and David T. Little’s sweet, light, crude…all, um, tonight.

Short notice, but three composers I’ve been anxious to learn more about, all on the same program, makes me put down my fork and pick up my calendar. But damn, am I exhausted. I was really just planning on going directly home after work tonight. Then I see the show is actually at Princeton. Oh well—easy out. But wait. You can listen live at 8 p.m. via the music department’s website. The Mr. Burns in me sinks back in her chair and murmurs, “Exxxxcellent.”

So I’ll be picking up a bottle of wine on the way home, slipping on my fuzzy bunny slippers, and catching the program after all. I don’t mean to suggest that this will be better than being at the show, but it will be much better than missing it altogether. Will we all look back in ten years and wonder how we ever lived in a world where you didn’t have such a choice to make? Never miss a show because you have a hacking cough again. Listen to a program in Atlanta from Cincinnati. Does that make listening “live” online the greatest thing since sliced bread, or is it just another step toward dissociative, dehumanizing, 21st-century isolation?