The Opera and the Octopus
by Aaron Rowan
The octopus is my spirit animal. They are clever, curious, enigmatic, and occasionally mischievous creatures. I enjoy reading about them, and high on my experience wishlist is getting to pet one at an aquarium; perhaps I’ll even dive with some one day. I’ve built quite a collection of octopusian objects. There’s an octopus painting, an octopus-headed cane, an octopus sugar bowl, an octopus wine stopper, an orange glass blown octopus-tentacle-shaped shot glass, and a blue knitted octopus my lady commissioned for me to match her red one. Octopuses seem to show up everywhere we go. My lady’s best friend even plays in an accordion ensemble performing classical music. Their name? Bachtopus.
Last month during an Opera Modesto concert, an octopus became the mechanism of my marriage proposal.
It was Super Bowl Sunday, and OM was presenting a Valentine’s recital starring baritone Andrew Pardini and octo-soprano Jasmine Diaz. This happened to be my first anniversary with Jody. We were already quite the rockstar couple in the local opera circle – Jody performed an original poem at my annual December world-music concert with them, and she and I won the audience-favorite costume prize during January’s Sherlock Holmes opera weekend. A glance at the Valentine concert program showed that Jasmine would sing a double selection from ‘My Fair Lady’ as the penultimate piece, ending with ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ (which Jody and I almost did the night before at the Mardi Gras party I wrote about last month), and I knew that would be the perfect moment to interrupt the show. I enlisted Jasmine’s help to carry out my plan.
She called us to the stage before launching into the song and recognized our anniversary. I handed Jody her gift: a stuffed octopus I’d seen in a store window a few days earlier. But this was no ordinary octopus. It had blue circles set under its eyes. This was a blue-ringed octopus. And when you’re holding onto a brilliant blue engagement ring to give to the woman you love, only a blue-ringed octopus will do. I wedged the ring onto a tentacle; presented it to Jody; and in true football spirit, I took a knee, becoming not only the luckiest man in Modesto, not only the first to propose at an Opera Modesto event, but the first person in history to become engaged by octopus. I think. You’d have to ask an anthropologist whether they were used as dowries in some ancient culture. And that is my story of the engagement that ought to go down in Modesto legend.
After a lengthy hiatus, live music returns to the Dragonfly Art For Life this month, with another ‘Friday Night Folk Flight’ featuring one of my favorite local lovebird musical duos, The Darcys (Erik Lindblom & Robin Retherford.) This multi-instrumental Americana act is influenced by the likes of Jackson Browne, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, John Prine, and Neil Young. They’ve got a batch of new songs they’ve been waiting to share. Catch their set on March 29 from 7:30-9:00 pm, at 1210 J St. $10 cash admission at the door. Keep a watch for more artist announcements there this spring.
