$10,000 Wedding Cake

I’ve played at some pretty fancy events.  One of my craziest gigs was a wedding at The Pierre, a 5^th Avenue hotel (circa $800/night).  It was a magazine wedding.  Legit.  Often I am asked to play for weddings months in advance, but for this one I was asked the week of (and of course all communication was with the wedding planner.  I had no contact with any member of the wedding party at any time).  I was practically an after-thought.  They already had a small orchestra lined up for the ceremony.  Want to know what my job was? I was the hallway music.  No kidding, I played outside of the ceremony while people walked in and out.  They hardly even noticed me.  It was so bizarre.  Usually people are at least a little surprised by the sight of a harp.  But hey, the wedding cake alone cost a staggering $10,000.  It was dazzling; probably ten tiers covered in sparkling silver-tipped white flowers (all edible, of course.  I really wanted to try one.  I’m sure they wouldn’t have noticed…) I’ve been googling to find a picture of something similar, but nothing even compares.  Although for your entertainment, I did find this horrifying picture of a bride-shaped wedding cake:

I guess throwing a harpist in the hallway is no biggie when you’re used to living like that.  Nothing much has changed in the past few centuries; clearly musicians are still the low-class slaves of royalty.  This happened only a few weeks after my own wedding.  My entire wedding cost less than their wedding cake.  It’s okay, self.  You had a really nice wedding too.      




Follow up:
Well, I guess my memory exaggerated the size of the cake.  Turns out my husband took a picture of it. 

So it was only six tiers.  But still.  

I Play the Giant Oven Mitt

 Question.  What does this look like to you? (Seriously, comments welcome!)

 When I was a child I thought that the back bump looked like a shark fin.  I used to run around with my case over my head, pretending to be a shark.  But now I mostly think it looks like a harp with a case on it….

 Once I was waiting in an apartment lobby with my harp, which was covered.  Someone walked by and asked if it is a picnic table.  

Really, person? 

Well you never know in this world.   Maybe there is a picnic table out there shaped like a harp.  I definitely haven’t seen one. 

The most popular comment is that it looks like a giant oven mitt.  Now that I can see.  

I guess that’s pretty cool.  I really like to bake, so I’ll go with it.  Imagine the amazing food an oven mitt that large could produce.  

Stand

Music stands are useful in a lot of ways, but no stand should be reduced to this.  Shame, MSM.  Shame on you.    

Plywood

On rare and glorious occasions I am asked to play gigs that provide a harp for me.  It is a liberating thing to show up to a rehearsal or a concert having brought nothing but my backpack.  However the harps that are provided for these things are usually.…well, they suck.  They’re kind of their own breed of harp.  I used to joke that the harp at my high school was made of plywood.  The thing resonated about as much as plywood.  That’s how they all are; they’re the plywood breed of harps.

People ask me if it throws me off to play on unfamiliar harps.  I like to compare it to driving an unfamiliar car.  Driving an unfamiliar car can take some getting used to and similarly playing an unfamiliar harp can require some adjusting.  The stiffness of the pedals and responsiveness of the strings can vary from harp to harp.  Also harps can have horrifying little surprises nestled in their apparently innocent facade, such as wire strings that make a horrible buzzing sound when played too loudly, false strings that just won’t make harmonics, and pedals that pop out of place.  It takes a bit of playing around to discover the quirks of each harp.  But on plywood harps it doesn't really matter.  I usually give up on making any good music on them and just try to get the notes out.  Poor harps.  I do pity them.  Most of them spend the greater part of their lives locked away in pitch black closets, probably crying in the despair of uselessness with only creepy insects and arachnids to comfort them.  Once I was playing a plywood and I noticed a spider crawling around my feet.  I’m 95% sure it crawled out of the harp.  Imagine being forced to lean an instrument on yourself knowing a spider might crawl onto your shoulder and down your shirt.