ooooo, soooo many mentions of me in this blog post! 🙂

x

Hmm, didn’t get any emails letting me know you responded. grrr….. x

So maybe it’s just me, but always your first picture of the blog is way over on the right side of my screen, half hidden by the “Recent Posts”.
Does anyone else see this?

What browser are you using? Sarah mentioned something about this happening as well. She is sort of my webmaster at this point.

I like the picture of the man sitting amongst the books, and it reminds me of this Twilight Zone I saw as a kid, and which I still remember vividly. (oddly, the only one I ever remember seeing…). It was about a man who loved to read, and everyone else in his life (his wife, his boss) didn’t, and thought he shouldn’t be wasting his time. He is hiding out in the bank vault over lunch, reading, when something (a bomb?) seems to destroy all the people on earth. After his shock, he sets about gleefully collecting all the books he will read for the rest of his life, stacking them all around them. I won’t give away the ending, but I find it strange that I remember it all these years later…
I like the light poem too!

thought you might find this interesting

http://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook

thank you Rhonda and Jonny for commenting. Rhonda, I also remember that episode of the Twilight Zone. That show and several others are childhood memories for me which continue to linger (in a good way). I bought paperback editions of the stories by Rod Serling that were either based on the series or vice-versa. They do seem to stick in the brain. Jonny, thanks for the heads up about the Ulysses Audio book. i also use Herrick libraries online streaming service of audiobooks which has a version of this (In order to access these online books you have to go to http://www.herrickdl.org/Resources/emedia.aspx,

then scroll down and click on the audiobookcloud.com link (http://references.herrickdl.org:2048/login?url=http://www.audiobookcloud.com/auto_login.asp?U=herrick&P=login). This will prompt you to enter you library card number and pin. Then you can stream a bunch of audio books. Very cool.

Interesting… I might have to reread some, to think about your comments. But don’t you think his turning his back on the “great” music in his life was part of his crisis after Italy, and when he starts letting go of his needing of her (I’ve forgotten all their names already), he decides that he can, in fact, live without her, and then he starts coming back to it. It’s obvious that, both musically and personally, the quartet is (one of?) the most important things in his life. He tries cutting out everything that was rewarding to him after she is gone, and then eventually realizes how short-sighted this was.
I thought an interesting theme was the people in the book who had partners who weren’t musicians. Were we to believe that they didn’t have as intense, connected relationships as those in the book who were with musicians? (they were lacking this etherial bond of music!) Or did those non-musician-paired-people end up having more healthy, stable relationships, perhaps because they didn’t entermesh every aspect of their lives together, or maybe because their spouses were just more normal, stable people? Contrast that with the first violinist and his super-controlling former partner, for example…
For some reason, Michael’s selfishness didn’t jump out to me when I read it as much, but I imagine you’re right about that. He is fairly oblivious to the agony he’s causing his lover, or her reasons for holding back. I don’t know that he’s unbelievable, though. He just seems to exist only for music (and she seems to be somehow part of his world of music), and was a rather stunted human being, but that’s not unusual, is it? 🙂
anyway, thanks for reading it! Glad you liked the writing.

That was a cool post. When I was working with the elderly I would always enjoy the stories of their lives. Of coarse it was sometimes difficult to sift through delusions and such, but I found that most of the times what they were saying had merit with a slight bit of fogginess.
david
:^)

Thanks for reading!

Hey, Dad! You have a typo in the title of your post. Thought you might want to correct it since it’s quoting a poem. Or maybe it’s a metaphor? Love you!

it seems to me that when Joshua Bell played in the subway, he was performing in a new kind of venue for him, and maybe what he does on the stage of Carnige Hall doesn’t translate well to that new place, and that new kind of audience. I’ve seen very talented people play for good-sized audiences both in public transportation stations, but they seem to understand something about the experience (and/or their audience) that maybe he missed. Or perhaps people just aren’t prepared to settle down for some heavy, extended classical music listening during their morning commute. I do think a huge part of how our audience reacts is all about context, though I’d seen this “Bell plays in the subway and no one notices!”-story before, and hadn’t made this connection. Probably God could be playing Bach in the subway during morning commute, and no one would notice, or care…

I don’t think it was his idea to play there. I think he was set up a bit. I have played classical music on the street as well as original songs I have written and received a wide array of responses. One thing about it I like is that it doesn’t exactly represent the commodified approach to music. People linger if they are interested. They get the music whether they put money in the hat or not. I like that. I am critical of the context of concert etiquette. I think it’s out of date to divide up people into consumers and those that provide what is to be consumed. I like to think of people as makers. If we want to consume music we have recordings that we can listen to. We can create the context for that kind of listening. But entering in to music as makers or people in the presence of music being made (live) doesn’t rely on the old timey stiff protocols of concerts. Just my opinion.

those singers on the stained glass all look scared if you ask me – they must have a really mean choir director… And speaking of smart phones, I hate how I check my email non-stop now. sometimes handy, mostly distracting. and once you get in the habit, really hard to break!

So you have a smart phone too. I seem to recall you have coverage issues. At least in one of our cell phone conversations you seemed to. We’re verizon. Whose your provider? I think the singers look more scarey than scared. Zombie choristers. Heh.

Just a note about gun stuff – the last two This American Life episodes were about one school in Chicago who has been struggling with gangs and gun violence. At the end of the second episode, they dispute the accusation that they chose the most violent school in the country – and then list loads of schools which have lost loads of students in the last year to gun crime.

Both episodes are available for download at the moment – usually they just do one at a time.

zombie choristers did come to mind as well. i’m not sure if i really have coverage issues as much as some other issues related to mark saving money in a cost-cutting, do-it-yourself kind of manner. we use a pay as you go plan. mark never uses his phone, and it probably does save him money. i am much more often running out of money on mine. not sure what that means. (that I’m addicted to checking my email at all times and in all places, i suppose, because I don’t use it to phone people much, or to surf the web). and this never informs me when you reply to a comment of mine, even though it says it will.

Ok, just testing again… have installed a new plugin now.

Testing, testing…

I, for one, don’t think ou need to be so apologetic. I love you! Would like to chat soon. X x x