Yes, I’m a Music Snob…
And in this article, Norman Lebrecht has a couple of excellent points regarding what the Walkman (and its successors) has done to our musical tastes while bringing music to the mobile masses.
Sony Walkman - Music to whose ears?
By Norman Lebrecht (July 26, 2004, La Scena Musicale)
(Also via Arts & Letters Daily)
Taking the Mystery out of Deja Vu
The Tease of Memory, by David Glenn
Psychologists are dusting off 19th-century explanations of deja vu. Have we been here before? (July 23, 2004, The Chronicle of Higher Education)
(Via Arts & Letters Daily)
Get Thee Behind Me, Deadline
Done. In two days, the first half of my manuscript has been edited and sent back. Yes, it was an insane deadline. But it’s done. It occurs to me that sooner or later I’ll have to stop performing miracles, or I’m going to get myself in a tight spot some day. Right; from now on, the Scotty method of evaluating engine-repair jobs. (Although it occurs to me that delivering material before my estimated time of completion is how I got myself up to celebrity status. Hmm.)
And I have suddenly remembered the possibilities held within the addition of simple underarm gussets, which just might make this ritual dress a go instead of simply a learning experience. Of course, I have no more black thread on hand. I’ll pick some up tonight, because right now, all I want to do is rest after driving myself mad with edits for forty-eight hours.
The Deadline Looms
I asked t! how things were when he called from work yesterday afternoon. “I no longer hate the plot,” he responded. And you know, that’s really all a creative-type can hope for sometimes. When you don’t hate what you’re writing, you can at least work on it. When you hate it, all you can do is scroll through it and think about how much you detest the thing Sometimes, the most important thing about writing or drawing or painting or composing is just getting to a point where you no longer hate the work, even if it’s just for a moment. So long as you hate it, you’re focused on the fact that you hate it, and not the work in question. But as soon as you’re past the hate, a dozen new avenues of development open up.
I have an hour and a half till my deadline. I don’t hate my manuscript. I hate that I have to rearrange information between two chapters.
Beating the System
I am drinking iced tea instead of hot tea. That way it can’t get cold. And if it hits room temperature, well, it’s a heck of a lot easier to drop an ice cube into it than to boil a new pot of water.
