I just returned from the memorial event for a long-time friend and colleague who died, suddenly, two months ago. We were not very close, and I had not seen or spoken to him in in over a decade, but we had done a lot of projects together (he was a pianist), and as Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t go to your friends’ funerals, they won’t come to yours.” The deceased was a really lovely human being, unusually so, and I felt privileged to have known him. So I went.

As I expected, I knew almost no one there, just a couple of theater community members and another musician who had played with my friend in a production I directed. Do provide name tags for such events. If you don’t they begin with a lot of wandering around and anxiety.

Another missing element today: there was no pre-announced end time. There was a program, but without any set times and vague entries like “Remembrances and stories” an attendee faces the theoretical possibility that the event will go on forever. And indeed, as the afternoon dragged on, I found myself wondering, “Am I going to die here?”

Because there were many musicians among the celebrants, we were treated to five musical selections by 1) a professional baritone singing “The Impossible Dream,”2) a passable tenor singing a song from an unproduced musical written by the deceased’s common law ex-wife (and making it clear why the musical remains unproduced), 3) another song, this one a duet, from that same source, 4) a very long Polish Christmas carol sung by a very old soprano and accompanied by a violin played by an even older violinist, then 5) the very old soprano sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from “Carousel.”

The quality of the performances went down-hill from “The Impossible Dream,” but the main problem was that five unconnected musical performances is a revue, not a memorial service. This was the beginning of my fear that I was in an endless time loop. But there was more! A screen was pulled down and we were treated to an amateur video of my dead friend sight-reading an interminable medley of songs on the piano. This feature all by itself took more than a half an hour. Videos in such situations are like your grandfather showing home movies to dinner guests. If you have to include them at all, make them short and to the point. But no, after my friend’s shaky piano performance, complete with crude special effects like animated hearts leaping off the keys, the video shifted to an empty church with my friend accompanying a large baritone as he sang a fatuous musical prayer that may have been composed by Barney. (“I bless you, you bless me…”) The guy could sing, I’ll grant that, and he was at the memorial, so he could have sung live. I guess the idea was that the video had the loved one playing, but the video was also echo-y, in drab surroundings, of a drab song.