The Fredösphere

John Tavener's Total Eclipse has been in my CD collection for many months.  I rarely listen to it.  From the first, I have disliked it.  Today, finally, I get it.  I don't know what took me so long.

This weekend saw a milestone:  20 measures of my current choral project have assumed their close-to-final form.  I've spent the last -- what? Three months? -- on these 20 measures, and at times I almost despaired.  (I'm setting a text which I previously made fun of.)  Hearing how they turned out, I'm mostly satisfied, yet I have to wonder why the heck this project is moving so slowly.

On Friday I wrote a review of Paul Simon's song Graceland.  That song's been out for years, but suddenly my thoughts about it (the short version is, artistic expression:  exquisite; underlying ideas:  dicey) clarified themselves and I banged the thing out in a spasm of inspiration.  I don't know if I'll bother to post the review; a suspicion nags me that the world-wide demand for reviews of Graceland may have been met long ago.

In summary, what we're talking about here is someone (me) with a serious bias toward deliberation, caution, and a molasses-in-January reaction time.  I'm about as mercurial as Gort.  I'm not complaining; both ends of the judging-perceiving continuum have their pluses and minuses.  I'm just saying.