ABBOT

Abbatars

A colleague of mine, who, like me, finds herself in London a lot these days, recommended I see there the avatar-first show ABBA Voyage. I am a fan of the band and am intrigued by the concept, which is to record a concert using holograms of the famous four as they appeared, and played, at their peak. There are many great groups I have never seen perform and even the most on-it musicgoer has inevitably missed legendary performances that might, surely, be worth experiencing in a sort of super 3D recording? I truly wanted this to work, and maybe it would have if I hadn't been reminded, the night before, of what a live show is really all about.

I'd decided to see ABBA Voyage on Saturday night, but, before buying my ticket, I texted a local friend to see what they were up to. As it happens, they already had plans to see an ABBA-themed show, the dinner theater, sing-along, unabashedly campy Mamma Mia! The Party. I believe that when invited by a local to a local event the only right answer is Yes. This offer challenged that belief: about the last thing on earth I would volunteer to spend time doing is eating terrible food while drunken idiots, egged on by hack performers, mangle songs I love. Still, when in Rome. So it was I found myself later that day, full of dread, on the Jubilee line to the O2 stadium complex.

Maybe it was my lowest of low expectations, or perhaps the cheery company of my friend and his family, and certainly the actually quite decent prosecco we started the evening with helped...in any case, I enjoyed every moment of this three hour show. It was cleverly staged and orchestrated, performed competently and with seeming enthusiasm, and the food, to my great surprise, was decent. Above all, it was rapturously received by the audience, many of whom, statistics show, were repeat customers. ABBA's music stirs deep emotions in me and even this performance of their songs--sung in fragments by B string talent accompanied by tables full of increasingly drunken bachelorette parties--touched a chord. I was reminded of how much I really do love the band and, carried on a tide of prosecco-fueled enthusiasm, bought a hundred GBP ticket to ABBA Voyage for the next night.

Maybe it was my elevated expectations, or perhaps the fact that I was alone at what is clearly also a destination for bachelorette parties, but ABBA Voyage fell flat for me in almost every respect. The audio quality was mediocre (I get a more lifelike sound from my tube stereo at home), a good chunk of the show was dedicated to what appeared to be a side quest from the Legend of Zelda, and the recorded performances of the avatars communicated nothing of the human pathos behind the songs: without the feeling it simply isn't ABBA. The show is a one trick pony, though that trick, an immersive visual experience that used not only state of the art simulation on the stage but also clever lighting effects throughout the entire theater, is a good one.

But above all what this concert lacked was the literally vital link between the performers and their audience which is, I'd argue, the reason most of us go to see live music. The fact that the audience only came alive a good third of the way into the show, when the actually live accompanying band was given front stage for a song or so, was the clearest possible evidence of this. Indeed, even the recording of ABBA's famous but frankly underwhelming performance of Waterloo at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, projected on giant screens at one point during the show and embedded for you below...

...had more life in it than did the brilliantly crafted puppets on stage. The directors' transparent attempts to bridge the gap between the undead and the living by having the avatars speak directly to the audience, as the band might well have done had they been there in person, only made things worse. Indeed, I found the repeated thanks of a prerecorded avatar to be simply repulsive. Expressions of gratitude from a bot cannot achieve even insincerity.

I would still pay good money (though not that much good money) to see large-screen projections of recorded live shows, but I will never again waste any money on a simulated performance. The experience taught me that much, and more, it helped me understand the fears and consternation people express at the thought of human content creation being replaced, as increasingly it is, by AI "slop." It's not that the AI output is lacking in quality, but that, however high the quality, the AI creator cannot ever care about how you received it or whether you truly want more. When I respond emotionally to ABBA's songs, I am forming a bond with a person whom I will never meet and who is at that moment far away in time and place. That bond is real and is why I love ABBA and am, with them, grateful for the music.

The Crash

An ironic casualty

One of our boys was in a car crash recently, eventually arriving not at his intended spring break destination but back here, in the bedroom he grew up in. He returned to us stitched and stapled together, covered in blood and scrapes, dazed and exhausted. Every parent's second-worst nightmare.

How to process this harrowing experience? My immediate feelings are a strange mix of relief, anger, fear, and, periodically throughout the day, an overwhelming desire to blank it all out with sleep. Contemplation resurrects deep memories of a time I terrified a parent and, reflecting on that, I determine not to add psychic damage to my child's wounds by showing my own. Between visitors and our bandaging regime there's plenty of distraction in any case, and, as it happens, life has gone on these past couple of weeks with even more intensity than usual. The victim recovers steadily and after a while we send him away again, hoping he doesn't show too many scars, even while left with our own.

A Future We Choose

Speaking of believing in the future, the United Nations Environment Programme has just released an updated "Global Environment Outlook," subtitled A Future We Choose. These reports are the fruit of a magnificent on-going act of scientific collaboration. Hundreds of scientists from a plethora of disciplines and countries have worked across the decades to produce a single point of view which they summarize as follows:

The report finds that investing in a stable climate, healthy nature and land, and a pollution-free planet can deliver trillions of dollars each year in additional global GDP, avoid millions of deaths, and lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger and poverty in the coming decades.

Following current development pathways will bring catastrophic climate change, devastation to nature and biodiversity, debilitating land degradation and desertification, and lingering deadly pollution – all at a huge cost to people, planet and economies.

So there you have it: prosperity or catastrophe. The evidence has never been clearer, the costs are increasing by the day, and the solutions are well understood and are known to be economically and technically entirely feasible. Global surveys show that, no duh, people prefer prosperity And yet, as best I can tell, this report, the seventh and best of its kind, has received even less notice than any of its predecessors, a direct result of the dismantling of the US government's sensory organs and of the general stifling of environmental discourse that is being driven by the maimed parts of that government still in operation. Of all its many, many crimes, this is the Administration's worst and the one for which we will all pay the most and the longest. I saw this coming a long way off but watching it happen is horrifying beyond what I ever imagined.

Day 7499

My wedding ring fell apart a few days ago. A portent? No, but certainly a reminder that my marriage, like the artifact that symbolizes it, could use some care and attention. Nor is it the only such: the day counter stopped working some time back and was put in the project pile where, now that I think of it, Talia's engagement ring has been languishing for years and years. Well here's one thing fixed, anyway:

The days go on

I don't propose to fix my wedding ring myself but will instead take it back to the goldsmith who made it when next I visit Amsterdam. In the meanwhile it's still wearable and, in its shaky state, serves as a constant and welcome reminder to show more love to my sweet wife. 

Happy day 7500, Talia. You are better and more true than gold.

Happy Birthday, Nurit (aka "The Long Play")

Aren't you excited to have another birthday?

Talia has a special skill: compliment her on an item in the house or a piece of clothing she is wearing and she will immediately tell you who gifted it or in what shop, online or off, it was purchased, and when. I, lacking memories not written out in this blog, am wowed every time she does this trick. I suspect this skill is inherited because Talia's mother, Nurit, can likewise detail the provenance of her possessions. Further, she builds on this to do something even more impressive: she produces objects--critical artifacts for ceremonies, gifts purchased decades ago, the right tool for the job--exactly when they are most appropriate or needed. This implies that she not only knows where things come from but also where they are and, in some cases, that she first acquired them with this eventual use in mind.

There is a lot to like about my mother-in-law but I particularly admire this ability to produce a carefully stored item at the moment it is most needed. It demands organizational skill, careful planning, and, most special, the ability to imagine yourself at a specific juncture in the far future which, I assert, is a rare act of imagination: yes, we all think about the future and some of us even make plans, but most of us don't really believe in a time that is not now but is then.

Nurit does and so do I, but unlike Nurit there's not a chance I will remember where I buried a time capsule without written instructions, so, note to self: if you are looking for books and toys for eventual grandchildren they are in the eaves of the barn, the pictures of the framing of our rebuilt house before the drywall went up are in the folder labeled--wait for it...--"Behind the drywall at 10 Court," and the ketubah is, hmmm, well somewhere in the archive I'm sure.