Donald's Blog
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This old house was only a few blocks from the state Capitol in Madison,
Wisconsin. All the neighborhood cats lived in the basement during the
winter. The house has long since been torn down, but in 1972 there were
AR2ax speakers in the front room, and a lot of good music was heard there. |
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In the 21st century I am just as opinionated as ever,
and I now have an outlet. I shall pontificate here about anything
that catches my fancy; I hope I will not make too great a fool
of myself. You may comment yea or nay about anything on the
site; I may quote you here, or I may not. Send brickbats etc.
to: dmclarke78@icloud.com.
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April 10, 2012The prisonerAt the drugstore tonight I had to stand in line behind an old lady. Having got her prescription, it took her a while to get her handbag together. Her legs and her ankles were swollen and misshapen; she had big plastic clogs on her feet. She was dressed in several layers of hopelessly mismatched clothing, and had some sort of rag around her head. She was using one of the store's shopping carts as a walker, and also had a cane.
She stank. She really reeked. She obviously had trouble getting around, and wherever she lived, no doubt found it difficult to bathe.
She turned away from the prescription counter with some difficulty, and glanced briefly up at me. Her face was old and puffy, like the rest of her, but her expression, and especially her eyes, were those of a little girl.
April 10, 2012Music, music, musicSixty years ago I could not find enough music to listen to. All I had was the radio, in Kenosha in 1952; there was no FM, no classical music and no jazz. Now and then I heard a "popular instrumental", and loved the sound of an orchestra, but otherwise only jingles. Somehow I knew that Mahler and Monk and Mozart were out there, but I didn't know how to get to them.
Nowadays I have somewhere between three and four thousand items in my collection, and now a ton of stuff on my hard disc, but sometimes I sit here in my basement playing with the computer and forget to put some music on. It strikes me that the reason is that I always have a favorite playing in the truck: I go back and forth to work, run errands around the neighborhood, never get more than 15 minutes or so at a time, but it is enough of a dose to take my mind off all the nonsense, to remind me what the universe is really about. A few months ago it was Schubert's "Great" C Major symphony; another time it was string quartets by Myaskovsky; I play the same CD for days or weeks on end, and when I get out of the truck I am protected.
Just now it is the music of Michael Tippett: two concertos for orchestra, and the Little Music for String Orchestra from 1946, inspired by English baroque music. I love an enormous amount of music in many different styles, but Tippett's instrumental music speaks to me in a special way. I suppose it is an example of the soul of the artist speaking directly to mine.