:: a.whisper.in.water ::

:: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 ::

Though Money Can't Buy Happiness...
...it can be exchanged for goods and services, inclusive of (but by no means excluded to) music, which roughly amounts to the same thing. Five new CDs today: Fountains of Wayne's new release Welcome Interstate Managers, the 2 CD-version of the lazy man's Best of Bowie, the surprisingly loaded X-Files Soundtrack, and last (but most, as if that's a common idiomatic expression), a good solid copy of Beethoven's Ninth, played by the NY Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and featuring the Juilliard Chorus. In other words, the music world's finest modern offering, if there is in fact, something to names and reputations. I checked it out; the chorus in the 4th movement still brings me to the brink of tears (with my goddamn dad in the room at that...if I were alone, I'd be gone), so I'd say it was still most effective.

I'm pretty decent at describing things to my satisfaction given enough time and a forgiving audience, but the sheer power of the peaks of Beethoven's Ninth is absurd, to the point where I run out of words at trying to paint the details; rather like trying to resolve really small features on something really bright and/or far away. You go squinty, determine nothing more than the difficulty of your task, then ask for more money from the Howard Hughes Foundation (if my summer at the lab taught me anything, few things are scarier than a research scientist with a functionally unlimited budget). So, little pseudoreviews on all this new music coming up as soon as I listen to it all, which would be very much facilitated by the presence of a working RioVolt SP250 in the house, which hasn't yet happened, though I very much expect it to sometime soon. After all, two CDs came in the mail, and good things come in threes, as I'm told. Wait, those are BAD things. Shit. (Gratuitous, but what am I, if not gratuitous?)

I also got a compiled version of the Chronicles of Narnia, a children's series I didn't read until 12th grade, when I consumed it whole. Consumed it, dare I say, at the rate of the Harry Potter series. I'll let that comparison float to the table, but not before adding that it's quite unlikely that Rowling isn't drawing from Lewis' work in some way, and that I got about 2 pages into the first fucking book before I hit a kid named Digory, which I recognize as a potential (if not probable) coincidence, but, for the sake of a literary comparison, cannot ignore. I mostly can't ignore the inextricable internal memorylink between Narnia and Phil, who lent me the series square in the middle of waiting for college acceptance (or, in my case...) letters. The topic of Phil will always rest uncomfortably, unresolved until I see him again. Every once in a while, I have a dream about him encompassing the following two themes: how great it is to see him after so fucking long, and occasionally, how awful I am for not seeing him sooner. I hear misfortunate things about his life deadending (the word itself makes me shudder, though that's a different story) into more-than-casual drug use and an accounting job (Phil, you ran rings around me upstairs. No accounting job could possibly keep you satisfied. Hence the drugs, I suppose, though I do bear in mind this is all secondhand hypothetical information), which only worsens the emotional-space-time rift between us. Very much Unfinished Business.

Lengthy outing today in the Land Beyond Gaithersburg, which seems to consist entirely of giant parking lots surrounded by chain stores, the damned and damned-ugly alike, and I-270. I tried calling Emi, but the phone, alas, was as busy as I wasn't. !NONSEQUITEUR! So, the new computer was purchased with nearly the singular goal of making old home movies into DVDs of old home movies. I brought home the DVDs today, but they seemed to provide an inadequate catalyst in making this process happen. I fear that I'm going to wind up doing this myself, as much as it isn't my dirty work. Last night was spent slightly regretfully, thinking about what a jerk of a kid I was, and what a bad friend I was. I suppose that real apologies are in order (i.e., ones that aren't sitting on a blog somewhere, but are actually presented to a person, by the person who needs to be apologizing), but in the interim, I throw up a blanket apology for Aziz-conduct between the ages of 1 and 16. Oops. It's okay, I got better / A little better / all the time.

Fuck, am I sore from running yesterday. I guess that means walking tonight, though that caused a bit of a stir concerning my safety that caused me to censor myself in front of my parents in indignation. Ideally, I'd grab a chilled seltzer water from the fridge and throw on a pair of headphones and hit the streets with new music in tow, but all I've got are the headphones. It doesn't feel too awful at all, just sending phone messages to Jenn and getting the (missed) phone call in the evening. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little lonely, though.

:: Aziz 1:10 AM [+] ::
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