Music words

Music of any complexity (and even "Three Blind Mice" is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about.

Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.

The things by which our emotions can be moved - the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way the clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music - all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers.

That's not a reduction of it, that's the beauty of it.
Ask Newton.
Ask Einstein.
Ask the poet (Keats) who said that what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

-from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams



1952-2001

Still love Chromeo and I got to tell Dave 1 just that

Chromeo, aside from being the first successful collaboration between and Arab and Jew, are an electronic duo who play funky sing-songy 80's tinged dance music. They are certainly tongue-in-cheek and maybe some people would think that their music is too obvious in some way. Like, too much wink-wink going on, but I love it. Chromeo is composed of Dave 1 (older brother of the amazing A-Trak) and P-Thugg and the other week I got to tell Dave just how much I enjoy their tunes.

As Charlotte and I were looking for a place to satisfy our hunger downtown, a tall, lanky dude in glasses walked past us. I says to Maple, I says "that's totally Dave from Chromeo." I did not want to accost him on the street, so I rebuffed Charlotte's suggestion to talk to him. Then he meets up with a fine young lady and walks into the Apple store that is down there. I decided to walk in after him and we quietly approached him as he was checking out some shiny new Apple product.

Charlotte: Are you Dave?
Dave: Yup
Charlotte: From Chromeo?
Dave: Yup.
Charlotte and Alex: Cool! We just saw Chromeo a few weeks ago at Camp Bisco.
Dave: That was the really wet one right?
Us: Yup! Mud up to our knees!
Dave: Yeah, all out equipment was destroyed that night! Save one irreplaceable keyboard, but then the festival paid for everything else.
Us: Great! Well, that sucks, but great that they paid for it! We also just saw your brother (A-Trak) tear down Webster Hall last Friday.
Alex: The Macklovitch family makes some of my favorite music today!
Dave: Awesome! I'm going to tell my dad!

It's cool because I have never made Dave dance and he made me dance many times over, in private and in public.

A year and a half later

What has happened to me since my last post over a year ago?

Not much has changed. I still work in Manhattan, I still live in Brooklyn (albeit one floor up), and I still love to eat cottage cheese with fruit preserves. One thing has changed though and it eclipsed any other mundane things in my life. That one thing is the love of a wonderful woman. She has a world of color and music churning around inside of her head and the love emanating from her is heady and intoxicating. It is reciprocated from my end and that results in Super Happy Awesome time, which must last for the rest of my life. Anything else would be inconceivable!