It’s a few days after Christmas and the house is quiet and empty, just how I don’t truly like it. All three kids had been home with us since Christmas Eve, but have now returned to their respective flats, and the house is suddenly silent and lifeless. In a while Ben and I will settle back into the groove of the two of us, but for this brief period home feels a little sad, and the fragments of Christmas mess left lying around – half-empty boxes of fancy biscuits, an unopened chocolate orange, a small pile of presents – give the impression of a place that has been abandoned in a hurry.
We need to get out, and luckily Ben has booked two tickets for one of the Sunday morning concerts at the Wigmore Hall. They’re a regular fixture – hour-long performances by solo players or small ensembles – and I’ve been before. This time it’s a piano recital, and given my recent rediscovery of my own skills in this area (ahem), I am ready to be transported into the worlds of Franck, Liszt and Poulenc.
The concerts have an informal atmosphere. No one is very dressed up and as the hall is cool we all keep our outdoor coats on. There’s a slight vibe of being in church. A glass of sherry is included on the way out.
We are seated near the front but off to the side, so that if I want to watch the pianist I have to twist in my seat, and if I do that I’ll put my back out. So instead, as the music begins, I sit looking straight ahead at the exit sign. After a while I close my eyes and try to be transported, and think elevating thoughts.
Instead, and disappointingly, I am beset with mundane ones. I worry about a friend who is going through medical treatment; I worry about a hospital appointment Ben has next week. I wonder whether my ankle, which stiffened up unexpectedly yesterday in a new and delightful twist on “What will go wrong today?”, is going to stiffen up again after sitting for an hour.
The pianist is in full flow, and his stool starts to squeak. I look at him and wonder if he is bothered. Then I wonder how on Earth he is remembering all this music, and how young he was when he started being this good. Did he practise for hours on end from the age of four? He must have done – he’s incredible. I wonder how many gigs he does a year. Whether he gets to travel first class. Where he lives. “Oh God, come on,” I say to myself, “get back into the moment! LISTEN, can’t you!”
And that’s when I realise that I’m NOT really listening, because in some sense I can’t really hear the music properly. I have this problem with classical music, where I feel like I am watching a play in a language I don’t understand. Ben is nodding his head in time and I sense that he is completely captivated, and I’m envious.
As we shuffle out I am shamefaced, and feel that I might not come here again. I like these concerts, but more in theory than in practice. I like the IDEA of them. Maybe I like the idea of being the kind of person who would like them. Maybe what I’m trying to do is make myself become that kind of person.
Two days after this it’s New Year’s Eve and I am sitting in a little cocktail bar in Shoreditch having a celebratory margarita with a friend. We talk about New Year’s resolutions, about how they are in part an attempt to turn ourselves into someone new, or a different version of ourselves. For all the New Years I’ve lived through, and all the resolutions I’ve made, it seems I don’t change much.
So I lurch into 2025 the same as I ever was. Perhaps I will always be someone who can’t quite get into classical music; who loves a cocktail in a basement bar in the centre of a city; who misses her children desperately when they’re not around. Someone who, probably like you, tries to change and never quite can.
[See also: The end of the Eras]
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This article appears in the 08 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Great Power Gap