OCMS and the sublime?

I took the Art History survey course my senior year at Williams. I've always been glad I did, but the kind of knowledge that it imparted to me, even at five years distance, is strangely like the flash cards I used to quiz myself with: mention a term, and an image, a period, or even a decade instantly springs into my head. The word 'sublime' always triggers this image:

and then the name, Friedrich, and then maybe the title, Morning in the Riessengebirge. I realize this whole preamble is random, but it made me laugh as I was biking back down Walnut from 3rd St because of how that word and those three facts are hard-wired into some fold in my brain.

Back to the sublime. There have been times in my life when I've experienced things sublime. Some of those moments were predictable high-art or high-altitude induced experiences: Bach's chroales; Hélène Grimaud playing Rachmaninoff with the Philadelphia Orchestra; my friend Cynthia standing up and stealing the show doing a Porgy and Bess number at the one-man Girshwin act; the last part of compline at Genesee; summiting at Chamrousse, totally spent, and seeing the Isère and Drôme valleys spread out below me. Others have been downright ordinary: running on that beautiful, deserted dirt road in the Wissahickon Sunday, being one of a dozen or so voices singing (not very well) Grosser Gott at 8am, waking up and hearing the sound of a river churning by, or bouncing around with a bumbly polka band until 3am with my teammates in Maribor. But each gives me that feeling--a tingle of the spine sending a buzz all the way up through my hair--and for an instant makes me feel connected to an idea, a person, or--indulge me with total new-agey gobbly gook for a moment--to everything at once.

I doubt if bluegrass has ever been associated with the sublime, at least not in the academic sense, but I had that tingly feeling many times at the tonight at the OCMS show. Part of it was being right down near the stage, bopping around with a bunch of their old fans (a group that I am not a member of: I've only known them for a few weeks, but have been listening to their albums non-stop) and belting out the words and clapping our hands over our heads on every number. Part of it was just their coke-induced energy for the second set. It was pretty blatant, they did a mediocre, tired 30min set, went off for ~25 minutes before the WXPN broadcast started, and came back flying high. But it made for an awesome show. Part of it was just civic pride or something, shouting "I met a trucker out of Philly had a nice long toke!" with a few hundred people in unison. Anyways, I'm already writing more than I intended to, but they totally rocked. A different band live than they are on their albums, and I like their albums just fine! My favorite tunes were Union Maid, (of course) Wagon Wheel, Minglewood Blues, Fall on my Knees, James River Blues, and (how could you not give it up for the fuel behind the show?) Cocaine Habit.

Oh yeah, this is a running blog. I did some of that today too, hitting Pottruck for a midnight workout. I felt like running hard--treadmill workouts are best when they are short and intense--so I let myself go beyond what I could sustain for the whole time. It broke down like this: 3mi warmup @ 8.6mph for 21min, then 1.5mi at 8.6-9.0mph for 10m15s, then 1.5 going up the ladder from 8.7-10mph for just under 10min! I'd love to do that 1.5mi in 9:30. Maybe on Thursday.