It’s been raining, dark, and cold all day but when I arrived home today, Mykala had put together an indoor picnic. I walked in the door and there was the love of my life in a floppy sun hat, wearing picnic clothes, cold drink in hand, Beach Boys playing in the background, picnic blankets on the floor, Roman Holiday queued up on the television.
We’ve been trying to figure out our budget and our next place to live and I’ve been drowning in details of financial planning and adulthood. Yet, if we’re safe and warm and happy and in love, well, then those are just details, aren’t they?
When I was in the college dorms from 2003 to 2007, students could freely exchange music between their libraries: I’ve ended up with over 20,000 songs this way, over 2 straight months of music. Running low on hard drive space, I recently took a closer look at my music library. I’ve listened to 7,033 of those songs. The most number of plays on a single track is 3572—that is the pink noise loop from SimplyNoise I used to block ambient noise when I was in school and studying in noisy public spaces. Anyhow, in college I grabbed entire discographies from artists just because I thought I should like them. The Who. Bob Dylan. 146 Bob Marley tracks.
Critics rave about these artists, all of the musicians they’ve influenced and the paths they’ve pioneered. I just… didn’t like a lot of the music. There were a few nice songs, but I had these enormous, comprehensive collections from artists I didn’t even really like. I just had them because of this powerful should. If only I had time to understand, to listen, I’d learn to like them, right? I was the problem, the music is spectacular. I’m annoying and boring, the music is enthralling and exciting. The music is great, I’m awful. Yes?
Well, it turns out I just don’t like some songs.
I’m such a peacemaker, a compromise and consensus-seeker, that I sometimes don’t even have enough confidence in my position to stubbornly disagree. I’ve always feared that somehow my position, if frankly stated in opposition to another’s, would destroy any potential for an amiable relationship. It’s not true. I may not like it, but it’s the human condition: we disagree and it is OK.
Some writers can write reams of great books and then J.
D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine
symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some
40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn’t
mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it’s just some guys
are capable of more productivity, some guys take more
time. Mozart pisses me off because he’s like a naturally
gifted athlete, you listen to Mozart and you go: “Of
course. It all came easy to him.” Beethoven you hear the
struggle in it. Look at his manuscripts, and there’s
reams of scratched-out music that he hated. He stops and
he starts. I love that about Beethoven, his humanity
shows in his music. Mozart was almost inhuman, unhuman.
I’ve seen unhuman aptitude up close and it always engenders jealousy. It may be false that Antonio Salieri hated Mozart, but I’m sure other contemporaries did.
And on what it is like to have a left hemisphere stroke: “And in that moment, my brain chatter — my left hemisphere brain chatter — went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.”
Anticipating a reduction in user interface “exuberance” at Apple, The Talk Show #39 discussed concerns of a loss of “playfulness” with Ive in charge. Such speculation made me remember Peter Burrows’ 2006 piece Who Is Jonathan Ive?:
During an internship with design consultancy Roberts
Weaver Group, he created a pen that had a ball and clip
mechanism on top, for no purpose other than to give the
owner something to fiddle with. “It immediately became
the owner’s prize possession, something you always wanted
to play with,” recalls Grinyer, a Roberts Weaver staffer
at the time. “We began to call it ‘having Jony-ness,’ an
extra something that would tap into the product’s
underlying emotion.”
In theory, big countries should dominate all sports
because they have the biggest talent pool. But they
don’t, because societies squander their talent.
Let’s see, well I don’t know enough about classical music to correctly name this piece, but the one I’m listening to right now is performed by Lang Lang and is called Chopin - Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58, III. Largo. Ok, well now I feel guilty and I need to sort out this title. Ok, off to Wikipedia.
I’m back. Sonata comes from the Latin, by way of Italy, meaning “to sound” — a piece of music played and not sung. In this case, though, the piece I’m listening to is from a particular and famous “Sonata” by Frédéric Chopin—from what I can gather, he was so good that he gets to capitalize the “s” in his Sonatas. It would be like if the Beatles had released Album 3, I think. B minor, the key, of course. Now here’s the part where I’m a little fuzzy. “Op. 58, III. Largo” — ok: “Op.” abbreviates “opus” meaning “work” and is a numbering scheme. So, much like I have ids in my database for entries here on tumbledry, it’s a bit like that… and just as mine are inconsistent and not necessarily in chronological order, so too are opus numbering schemes. Wrapping things up, “III.” means movement three, and the title for the movement is “Largo”.
And after that dreadful introduction, the point is, there’s a part of this song that has stupefied my brain. Blown my mind. Depending on who is playing, it’s usually about 3 minutes in — I really really like how Lang Lang slows it down, and the modern recording quality make it a huge delight to listen to. I can NOT find it on YouTube, and I am really sorry for that. Ugh. This whole post is kinda pointless if you can’t listen to it. Wait! I have an idea. I edited it down and you can listen to it right here:
Chopin is doing something with the melody, and the corresponding harmonies that I don’t completely get. It’s as though the line is almostresolving, but he teases your ear away from that, substituting something else that leaves you in an uneasy, anticipatory state. Usually, I hate that. All I can think is “RESOLVE”. But here, something in the almost-resolution stretches the melody out, the left hand plays this glorious chord that isn’t at all what you expect… it’s better. I can see why Chopin keeps returning to it — it’s utterly brilliant.
It’s almost mid-April and we’re coming into a huge snowstorm. They’re saying somewhere between 8 and 20 inches starting tonight and continuing tomorrow. Mykala has planned a Christmas dinner for tomorrow night, the Santa nightlight is plugged in, I’m listening to Christmas music (“Christmas with the Rat Pack”), and getting a game of TextTwist going.
Hey, if we’re going to get a big snowstorm in April, why not lean into it?
Celebrated Vanessa’s 2nd 29th birthday yesterday. It was good to see the Ruperts, and even though their daughter Elli wasn’t there, I can’t believe how fast she’s growing up! I think my peers and I are entering a part of our lives when things become a childful blur.
That’s me and my beautiful wife stage right. Behind the photographer would be a mechanical bull.
