Sound Investment is an L.A. Chamber Orchestra program in which donors of $250 or more may participate in the development of a new work by the season’s composer-in-residence. The benefits? As an “investor,” you and a guest will be invited to a series of intimate salons where you can meet the composer, hear excerpts of the score in progress and attend a full orchestral rehearsal of the completed work.
Think of it. For a mere $250, you and your guest can sit in chairs immediately behind the rows of musicians, close enough to feel the throb of percussion instruments. Talk about impressing your date!
What a wonderful idea this is, both for the donors who get to physically become an intimate part of the creative process – and for the musicians, who actually get to see, perform for and get feedback from their patrons. In fact, this program is such a good idea that it seems a shame to limit it to one classical music company. It clearly has much greater potential to enrich a far wider selection of our city’s institutions and organizations that would not ordinarily provide such intimate access to their working processes. Allow me, if you would, to suggest other professional fields for which this kind of donor program might be ideal.
• Medical. Your $250 donation to the UCLA Medical Center would entitle you to sit in on and observe an actual operation, perhaps an exciting heart or liver transplant if you’re lucky. Oh, sure, it’s one thing to enjoy watching hospital dramas on TV each week, quite another to be sitting in a real operating room in your scrubs, never knowing if the patient before you will live or die, whether you’ll be splattered with blood, whether the doctor and anesthesiologist will be willing to pose for a quick souvenir photo with you afterwards. And if you took biology or chemistry in school, feel free to make any helpful suggestions during the operation because you’re a vital part of it!
• Political. Hey, we elect our politicians, why shouldn’t we be entitled to monitor them a bit more closely? Especially if we’re paying for the privilege. Perhaps they’d be less inclined to spend so much time on developing tourism, and more time on developing jobs, if we were sitting directly behind them at the Los Angeles City Council meeting, clearing our throats, shaking our heads or giving them an occasional jab in the ribs. Now that’s government of the people, by the people and for the people. And if they do something good, we can acknowledge that as well, with plates of brownies, shoulder massages and high-fives.
• Religious. Clearly, our religious leaders would not be in all the hot water they’re in today if the donor program had been in effect years ago. You L.A. religious leaders know whom I’m talking about. I’m picturing extra robes for the donors who’ll be joining (and protecting) the altar boys as they serve Mass. Perhaps the confessional booths could be enlarged to allow a donor or two to sit in. And I’m confident that a priest would think twice about gratifying his earthly desires with one of his flock if my Aunt Edna was crocheting in the corner of his office. Of course, not every religious experience is suitable for the donor program. You might just want to take a pass on the offer of a front seat for a circumcision.
• Psychological. Doctor-patient privilege, doctor-patient shmivelege. The patient won’t know you’re sitting in on his shrink session if you’re cleverly camouflaged behind some huge office plant. From there, you’ll witness so much dysfunction that you’ll come to realize how normal your own bizarre family truly is. But the fun doesn’t stop there. The city is, after all, the world capital of therapy. You’ll find out which medications are prescribed for various conditions, see what the psychiatrist is doodling on his pad, see grown attorneys cry about being passed over for partner status at their law firm, actresses agonize over getting cosmetic surgery, housewives confess to affairs with their gardeners, and so much more. Make your own diagnosis and compare it to the shrink’s. Now, that’s entertainment!
• Culinary. My Aunt Betty is no longer with us, bless her soul. But nothing would have pleased her more than to have been given carte blanche to hang out in the kitchen of, say, Lawry’s the Prime Rib in Beverly Hills, observing the chef, making suggestions for a better-tasting dish and riding roughshod over the kitchen crew. I can hear her now: “Hey, Chef, why are you putting so much salt in the soup? My husband, Ron, has high blood pressure; you trying to kill him? How about mopping the floor over here? It looks like an amusement park for bacteria. And don’t even get me started on gravy. …”
Mark C. Miller is a marketing communications specialist who was a humor columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and is now a humor columnist for the Huffington Post.
