Bartok, Berlioz, and breakups: classical music comes through in a pinch

Bangs = mad chicks. I’ve got work to do.

This past weekend my relationship ended with the cosmic whimper of a thousand kittens getting curb-stomped, the end of the best and worst 6 1/2 years of my life. Breaking up is a process, and I imagine it could be long, tumultuous, and ugly depending on the hour, but in the early stages it’s almost exclusively about hearing songs that up until three days ago you just enjoyed and now can’t listen to without losing your shit (current example: “Who’s Lovin’ You?” by the Jackson 5, a brilliantly written song with young Michael at his apex as a singer that I skillfully ignored the lyrics to for years until now). I have no scientific evidence to back up this claim, but I suspect that breakup songs, in some form or another, constitute an even larger percentage of the musical lexicon than hookup songs, and now is the time for me to listen to “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” on loop and cry myself to sleep only to wake up the next morning and start in with “End of the Road” because I don’t have the emotional energy to stand up and remove this Boyz II Men Greatest Hits CD.

Thank God there’s classical music.

Cruising with Bruckner & Sibelius

Things have finally settled down from the insanity of April, and with that the desire to write something, anything, returns, at least somewhat. Of course, I’m doing this from a hotel room in Dallas, Texas, listening to headphones and simultaneously trying to remember and forget the things learned this week, which is doing nothing for whatever passes for a “creative process.” Right now, I’m just cycling through bits of music that I really like, a playlist which looks strange and is admittedly an out-of-context affront to the composers’ intentions. Then again, perhaps Strauss and Barber would feel good about themselves if they knew that I was gaining some combination of motivation, satisfaction, and solace from random excerpts of the shit they wrote.

Driving down here I did an experiment that I entitled “Will Bruckner and Sibelius Symphonies Make Me Hate Texas Less?” and I have to say, the results are encouraging. The contention that classical music, even raucous classical music, is something to be experienced in a moment of contemplation or repose is something that I think I officially don’t agree with. It was fun as hell to roll the windows down (or at least push a button to make them go down) and crank up the finale of Bruckner 8 or Sibelius 2 – no less fun than cranking up The Black Keys or Radiohead or Geto Boys or The Mills Brothers.

I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t give a fuck about the conventions associated with classical music, and I probably realized this all along, but it really hit me somewhere in the vacuous wasteland that natives call Oklahoma. By the way, I’m from Kansas City! Tangent: I’m listening to the “Wo ist er…” bit from Salome, and I have to say, this cover photo of Birgit Nilsson is freaking me out.

WTF

She looks like a drag queen version of Brendan Gleeson taking a shit in the middle of a Moroccan restaurant, which is actually less fucked up than Salome now that I think about it. Anyway, I just want to say definitively, on the record and for the record, that classical music, while capable of generating tidal waves of emotion and requiring serious concentration to fully appreciate, can also just be a hell of a way to cruise the Interstate Highway System.

Also, I’m still here. Thanks for sticking around.

Still alive according to Merriam-Webster

Be advised: I still live. New job and new house, though, so I’m dead inside. Stay tuned for something at some point and thank you for your patience.

Something to listen to: The collective sound of the amazed and terrified human sports fan

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, in large part because we’re in the process of buying a house and I’m theoretically in the final stages of getting a job. Regardless, I’ve also been watching more sports lately, in no small part because my beloved Golden State Warriors are in danger of making the playoffs for only the second time in my adult life. A couple weeks ago the Dubs were playing in Madison Square Garden, the world’s most famous arena, and the site of some of basketball’s greatest performances (Kobe going for 61, MJ for 55, Lebron for 52) in the history of the game. Stephen Curry scored 54 points, more than half the team’s total, and put on a fucking clinic from long range, making 11 of 13 three-pointers.

What I loved most about the game was the crescendoing sense of doom from the Knicks fans in attendance as Curry got hotter and hotter, hitting an ever-increasing assortment of crazy shots. Enjoy the crowd noise. The gasps, oohs, aahs, and shouts are a beautiful collection of what happens in transcendent moments, with 20,000 people united in witnessing something great. THIS is why we love anything great: sports, movies, music, art, whatever. When a single idea, be it a perfect symphony like Brahms 4 or a basketball sharpshooter finding the zone like none other, captures the imaginations of so many different kinds of people, it demonstrates the sheer power of the Platonic, intangible thing known as greatness and its effect on us all.

50,000 page views and a glimpse into the future

Sometime yesterday this blog received its 50,000th page view. I have no idea what that means, but anytime we pass round numbers in life we reflexively take stock of what’s come before and what’s theoretically to come after. I started Everything but the Music over four years ago and its purpose has essentially remained the same since that time; it’s a space for me to ramble at length about classical music (and whatever else may come up) because there aren’t enough outlets for me to get all the dreadfully uninteresting things I want to say out of my head using human interaction and coffee/beer. Now that we’ve established that I’m clearly very important, it’s time to take a look ahead into what may come down the path in the future.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 24,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Branching out

I’ve started writing a bit for symphs.com, a website after my own heart if there ever was one. My first article is up now, an exploration of what makes a great symphonist. Check it out, and check out the rest of the site. It’s pretty cool and obviously filled with people with good taste in music and writing.