February assumed a familiar shape today, as the cold weather "broke" and we found ourselves in nearly 70 degree balm. My wife and I took the dogs for a walk by the pond in the dark. Only a bit of breeze provided any discomfort on our way.
I finished reading Ken Emerson's "Always Magic in the Air", the fascinating discussion of the Brill Building and 1650 Broadway pop songwriters, which reads like a constant "I didn't know they wrote that". I enjoyed reading about the lives of a group of creative people. I think, on balance, that it's better to have a sequencer with a good freeware synthesizer rather than the Dixie Cups as one's musical instrument, but I will never sell 1,000,000 45s or write a Monkees song.
This morning I began Allen Shawn's book "Arnold Schoenberg's Journey", which should be read less as "he's really an avid music reader" and more as "that shelf at Half-Priced Books had some cool tomes". I like the Schoenberg book, although it strikes me that I ought to be sitting at a keyboard fingering out the snippets of sheet music in the book, and that such a thing is not going to happen.
I thought tonight about undergraduate days, and those deep two in the morning conversations one has over hot tea and hotcakes
in houses of pancakes and grills where reuben sandwiches are consumed. I think the weblog offers a lot of advantages of this arrangement, but fails to offer each and every such advantage. What would I discuss over hot mint tea, if tea and not "update journal" were the appropriate paraphernalia? I'm not sure. But I suspect a lively conversation might ensue. I can imagine a goodish many such discussions I"d be delighted to have. I'm sure that everyone is more charming over pancakes in a breakfast
restaurant.
I bought a computer game that plays bridge, so that I can learn to bid and win. I hope it offers opponents who are dinosaurs.
I am tired and a little down tonight, although an e mail I received from a kind fellow was a tonic for the troops. The funny thing is that I got this e mail days ago, and did not see it amid all the zillions of e mails in my in-box. I must go in and more assiduously clear out the spam.
This weekend I plan to rest, fish, and read in twelve tones.