Missing the Kennedy Center

I miss the Kennedy Center. I miss the opera and the symphony. I miss being able to look at the calendar and find something I want to hear. Living in the DMV, I valued having that within reach. Its absence makes me appreciate how much it contributed to living here.

An evening at a performance asks something of you. You have to leave the house, get there, and give the work your attention. I value that commitment. There is a pleasure in sitting with a piece of music long enough to hear where it goes, with other people who have chosen to spend their evening doing the same thing.

Opera makes that especially clear to me. It takes an extraordinary amount of work to bring voices, an orchestra, acting, and a stage together for a few hours. Being in the audience gives you some sense of that effort. I miss having the opportunity to experience it here, and I think about how much harder it becomes to sustain that work when a major stage is unavailable.

The symphony offers a different kind of concentration. You can follow a phrase as it moves through the orchestra, hear a familiar passage played differently, or spend an evening getting acquainted with a composer. Those are modest pleasures in the course of a busy week. They matter to me.

Places like the Kennedy Center also make the region feel more like home. People come from across the District, Maryland, and Virginia to hear the same performance. For a little while, we share something specific. We can disagree about the production afterward. We have still been in the room together, paying attention to the same work.

As of November 3, the main building remains closed. Some programming continues at the REACH, and the National Symphony Orchestra opened its season at Strathmore. I am glad those opportunities exist. I also feel the loss of having so much available in one familiar place. A venue becomes part of how you make plans and what you look forward to.

There are people on the other side of that loss whose concerns are more immediate than mine. Musicians, performers, crews, and staff have work and livelihoods tied to these events. As an audience member, I hope they can keep doing that work here. Their presence is part of what makes this a place I want to live.

I have been looking at what is coming up elsewhere. The NSO's November program includes Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings alongside a new work by Sarah Kirkland Snider. At the REACH, Qi Yu Quartet is bringing guzheng and jazz together. Red Baraat is playing the Barns at Wolf Trap. Each gives me something to consider when making plans. The Folger's family workshops offer another way to spend time with the arts, particularly for children.

It takes a little more effort to find those evenings now. I want to make the effort. Cultural life depends in part on the ordinary decision to attend: buying a ticket, inviting someone, making room in the week. I would like to keep doing my part as a member of the audience.

I hope to hear the opera and the symphony at the Kennedy Center again. Until then, I miss it. That is a small, personal consequence of the closure, and one that belongs in the conversation about what the place means to people who live here.