Toreador!

En garde!

This morning, I caught myself humming a tune that's an oldie. Oldie in both the sense of when it was written (1845) as well as how long it's been stuck floating around in my head.
Senior year in high school, I decided that I was going to take on a challenge for my audition to the all-region honor choir. My director was fairly brainless so he supported my efforts to learn and sing "Toreador!" from Carmen.
Yeah...
It was kind of a nightmare.
BUT, I loved the song and the chorus is forever implanted in my brain.
Escamillo, the toreador, sings of his profession, bullfighting.
This post isn't going to focus on how disgusting bullfighting is *shudder* but rather on the contest of love that Escamillo is singing of.
The portion that gets stuck in my head starts around 2:15 in the video I linked to above. The text is:

Toreador, en garde! Toreador, Toreador!
Et songe bien, oui, songe en combattant
Qu'un oeil noir te regarde,
Et que l'amour t'attend,
Toreador, L'amour t'attend!
Et songe bien, oui, songe en combattant
Qu'un oeil noir te regarde,
Et que l'amour t'attend,
Toreador, L'amour t'attend!

and the English translation of that would be:

Toreador, en guard! Toreador, Toreador!

And dream away, yes, dream in combat,
That a black eye is watching you,
And that love awaits you,
Toreador, love awaits you!
And dream away, yes dream in combat,
That a black eye is watching you
And may love await you,
Toreador, love await you!

My thoughts for this are a longing for simplicity. Escamillo sings about acts of bravery winning love. I kind of envy how straightforward that world was.

Don't get me wrong, I love living today, and how much quality of life has improved since then, but some times I feel a bit overwhelmed by how much technology has made things. For example:

Let's say I would like to ask a girl out. Here's a sample of how my mental preparation for that could go:

Hmmm... I will see her in passing on Tuesday, but she's always in a hurry then. I could ask her out, but that might be awkward...

How about when I see her at the institute on Thursday. I could ask then...

But that's only a day before the weekend. She'll have plans by then.

Good point... I'll have to try something else.

Lots of people don't really care for electronic communication, but you may have to give that a shot.

I can do that. Let's see, what are my options?

I could call...

Not bad.

I could send a facebook message...

That's kind of chicken.

I could text...

There are girls who'd turn that down on the fact that it was a text asking them out...

Ugh. That's true. I could start with a poke on facebook...

...

Yeah, let's pretend I didn't suggest that one...

Ok. So I'll call. I can do this! I can.

Dialing...

R*i*i*i*i*i*ng

.

.

.

R*i*i*i*i*i*ng

.

.

.

R*i*i*i*i*i*ng

.

(Oh crap. What if she doesn't answer?

are you going to leave a voicemail?

I don't know! Some people refuse to listen to voicemail, but some people prefer it...

.

.

R*i*i*i*i*i*ng

You could just hang up and then she'll see that you called and call back...

but then the ball is completely out of my court.

I don't like that...

.

.

.

"hey, you've reached..."

*CLICK*

Maybe I'll just do some homework this weekend.

So, yeah. I probably over-complicate things and think that the past was a lot simpler than it actually was, but it seems to me that in our efforts to improve and provide more options, we've taken something that was never easy to begin with and made it more difficult and fraught with pitfalls and opportunities to fail.

To paraphrase my good friend, Pat,

En garde!