I’m not sure if this is good or not: it’s Monday evening and my weekend is booking out pretty quickly. I think I’m going to make an appointment with myself on Sunday to do “not a damned thing.” Better pencil that in to the ole Outlook. Or MobileMe. Or whatever. Just try not to forget, asshole.
No, not you dear reader, I’m the asshole I was talking to. It’s cool though: I’m not nuts. Crazy people have conversations with one another – dialogues, if you will. Me, I don’t do any such thing. They’re more discussions – very one-sided – like when my dad and I had (have) a “talk” about something. Except now I usually just get up and walk away if it starts going on too long. Either way – if it’s me or my dad starting to lecture me, I’m outta there.
Goddamn! I love me some J. S . Bach. I really don’t know dick about classical music, but I know I dig some Bach. There’s this thing called a Badinerie – about a minute and a half of some hardcore badass flute-playing at the end of Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor (BVW 1067) (yes, I know that’s exactly what the Wikipedia article says, but that’s also what I’m listening to) that totally gets me hard. Maybe not literally, but I’m sure I’d have a tough time staying calm if you combined pretty much any part of BVW 1067 with naked breasts. Srsly, bro: it rocks.
So yeah, I don’t necessarily know that I dig Badineries and Bourrees unless they’re Bach’s. Anyone have any suggestions as to whom I should check out and give a listen to?
This past New Year’s Eve I spent at my aunt and uncle’s house in Montclair. Attending dinner were Maestro Delta David Grier and his wife – frig, I can’t remember her first name, and she was such a sweetheart. I had to do some hardcore Googling to get David’s last name, anyway.
I picked up the Alastair Reynolds novels on David’s suggestion – he was “reading” the first novel on tape for a book club, I believe.
So, yeah: the point of this long-ass digression is an anecdote that my aunt passed along to me yesterday (I’m pretty sure it was about David). They were engaged in a discussion about various composers (and I’m going to simplify and paraphrase this to get straight to the point). David said that Bach composed by looking at the notes on the page and finding patterns and balance, while Mozart was continually scribbling on every piece of paper at hand, writing and re-writing, and Beethoven, well, Beethoven took dictation directly from God.
At least, I think that’s how it went. I may have mixed up Mozart and Beethoven. Which is fine, because I’m a Bach guy. I can just about see the balance and patterns of the notes on the page as I listen to Bach. It’s pretty fly.
487 words worth of a digression, how do you like that, dear reader?
The point to the title and first sentence of this post (and I very rarely write the title first) is that I need to get my ass in gear this week (literally and figuratively) during the hours when I’m not working: I just spoke with SoloJoe an hour or two ago and I’m going to be meeting him Friday night at one of the lean-tos up in the Adirondacks, for to go hiking on Saturday. Peakbagging, actually. In order to meet him at said lean-to on Friday night, I’m going to have to find myself a nice big pack that will hold my sleeping bag, day pack, food and probably something warm to wear at night. I’ve been eyeballing and pricing out bigger packs for the past few days, but now it’s go-time: I need to pick one up and figure my shiz out lickety-split. No more time for dissembling.
Luckily, I’m pretty sure I know which pack I’m going to get – if it’s still on sale at Ramsey Outdoor Store when I get there tomorrow evening.
Oh, and did I mention that I need to be off Table Top and Phelps mountains and in my car by the early afternoon on Saturday so that I can be at my sister’s birthday party in Astoria in the evening? Yeah, this weekend is going to be a pretty fine one. Katie, try to line up a couple of hot chicks for me. At your birthday party. =D
And there’s a mystery package waiting for me at the post office. So I need to get my ass in bed and try (again) to wake up early so that I can get there before work.
Check out BVW 1067 if you get a chance and imagine playing the flute solo yourself – I swear it’ll melt your face.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
The part about Mozart sounds right. If you’re ever heard Marriage of Figaro, Emperor Joseph II allegedly told Mozart about it that it had “too many notes”. Mozart liked to pack the music full of action. He’s a favorite.
I’m not a serious Bach fan. I love classical (I played flute in high school and this one time, at band camp… j/k) and I’d have to say my favorites are Debussy (he’s a bit more contemporary), Mozart, and Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff has some serious darkness in his music, if you are into that sort of thing.
Debussy has a piece called Arabesque No. 1 for flute and harp that I have on every electronic music playing thing in my life. It’s lovely and soothing and I listen to it often.