It’s 5 March 2014…
Sometimes plans don’t go according to plan. Sometimes that plan B that we plan for comes in handy. Right outside Wausau, WI, I discovered that for some reason my iPhone was no longer charging. Now, iPhones are cool. They’re really, really cool. But, their batteries aren’t. Constantly charging them. All the time. Charging. Constantly. The time. Always. (Wait… I think I mixed up the order of that sentence. I’m not used to doing things in the right order.)
But, something else that isn’t cool are the cords we used to charge these phones that are cool. I’ve already had to replace the regular USB charger once because the first one somehow frayed right at one end. But now the charger I use in my car is on the blink. And it happened to go on the blink when I was right outside Wausau, WI.
So imagine my disappointment when, as it does, the phone’s indicator that indicates the indication of how charged the phone is (on an indicator scale that uses percentages to indicate the indication) indicated 50% charged, then 40%, then 30%, then all the way to nothing just as I entered the Michigan border. Quite literally. I had the phone all ready to take the picture of the usual “Welcome to Our State” sign, knowing that the phone was to die at any moment (Some state’s signs are better than others, incidentally. I’m partial to Minnesota’s, naturally, but Wisconsin’s is quite wonderful as well. Michigan’s was kind of, “Meh.”) when the phone died completely.
So, my plan to document my trip to Michigan in not only words but images as well immediately fell through. It fell through and into a kind of well of despair of webs of death of doom. Never would I reach into this well of despair of webs of death of doom, because I had a plan B.
And that plan B? Well, plan B was to not worry about plan B because plan A would work as it should. And who uses plan Bs anyway? Sadly, naturally, I was relying solely on my iPhone to give me all the images I needed. I didn’t bother to bring my old other camera from ages past (well, sevenish years past, but an eternity[not and age] in tech years, nonetheless) because iPhones are cool. Their batteries and chargers are not. In fact, they’re so uncool that if the uncoolest thing in the entire universe was put next to an iPhone battery and charger, it would be easier to just get a mirror.
Somewhere around somewhere in Michigan’s upper peninsula, I discovered that after I turned my car off, the phone started charging again. (Bizarre, no?) So naturally I was overjoyed that the compendium of the trip’s images could continue, yet slightly annoyed that I still missed taking a picture of the “Welcome to Our State” sign (even though I thought Minnesota and Wisconsin have better ones).
But, alas, this overjoy was short lived. Just as I was able to snap some bad pictures of the Mackinac Bridge, I saw that the phone stopped charging. I later thought that perhaps the phone only charged when I had the car turned off. Alas, no. I tested this hypothesis, and it didn’t pass the facts. I ultimately discovered that if I allowed the phone’s battery to die, turned the car off, and plugged the phone back in, that it would charge to the point that it would turn on. But, even with the car turned off, the phone refused to charge beyond 4% or 5%. How maddening.
(It’s at this point that I’m starting to worry that this is a really boring blog post. Seriously. I feel like I’m getting bored. I’m not bored, however. Not yet. I just feel like I’m getting bored. Please tell me if you’re getting bored, and tell me if this blog post might actually end up being a tad on the uncool side.)
So, not very many pictures to share on this first day of this trip. And generally, apart from the iPhone’s charger mishap, a relatively uneventful travel to Interlochen. I could go on about how I had to buy a map of Michigan because my phone was no longer able to tell me how to get to Interlochen. I could go on about how when I got to Interlochen I couldn’t find my hotel. I could go on about how I followed signs for Interlochen Center for the Arts, but couldn’t find it and stopped by this ice cream and coffee shop and ran into two wonderful people who were also going to the exact same performance and so therefore I could follow them to the dance building where Clocks in Motion were to perform my Percussion Duo. I could go on about how I eventually did find the hotel, and the person who checked me in asked me about the weather, and I wanted to remark that how we experience weather is relative (it felt quite warm in Interlochen even though all the natives seemed to think otherwise) but didn’t want to go into details and just said, “Oh it’s still pretty cold,” even though it wasn’t.
But, going on about these things doesn’t interest me.
What does interest me, however, is that Clocks in Motion’s Sean Kleve and Jennifer Hedstrom once again delivered a bloody brilliant performance of the duo. What also interests me is that in addition to Sean and Jennifer, Clocks in Motion’s other performers continue to deliver impressive programs that delight, challenge, and fascinate the ears, from Marc Mellits’s mesmeric Gravity, Paul Lansky’s cyclical Threads, to John Luther Adams’s primordial Drums of Winter.
What also interests me is that I’m excited to announce that Sean, Jennifer, and I planted seeds for our next collaboration. We’re still figuring out details, but we’re envisioning that I’ll write some sort of music with a bit of stuff with some things added on the side. We did plan things in much more detail (over beers, cheese, crackers, and cookies [yes, cookies]), but I don’t want to spoil the future too much for now.
Tune in tomorrow night when I report on how Day 2 of my excursion went.