– W.H. Auden’s poetry needs no endorsement from me, but I never fail to be surprised by how many well-read people are unaware that he was also a prolific critic and essayist. I was cleaning out a closet the other day and ran across a slightly bent paperback copy of Forewords and Afterwords, the only essay collection Auden published in his lifetime (the Princeton University Press uniform edition of his complete works will ultimately contain all of his essays and reviews). I’ve no idea how one of my favorite books ended up underneath my toolbox, especially since I could see at a glance that I’d marked a half-dozen passages I must have meant to transfer to my electronic commonplace book. Instead, I’ll post them as almanac entries this week, starting today.
I am, incidentally, still chewing away happily at A la recherche du temps perdu. Not surprisingly, I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done on the ground in Chicago, but I spent a pleasant hour with the Duchess de Guermantes at the airport this afternoon. Unlikely as it may sound, A la recherche is ideally suited for planes, trains, and waiting rooms….
– Two composers I know–both of them women, but otherwise very different in age, living circumstances, and stylistic interests–told me separately in the past few days that they found one of the inescapable problems of being a professional composer to be the fact that you spend so much time alone. This is also true of writing, but I’ve never found the solitude necessary for writing to be a problem in and of itself. On the other hand, I do find that I start to get a bit isolated whenever my workaholism flares up and gets out of control. The Web, I suspect, is part of the problem: I use it to provide a change of pace when I’ve got a lot of deadlines on my plate, and it creates so powerful an illusion of “being in touch” that I sometimes forget to go out and see real live people, or even leave the apartment for anything beyond the most essential errands.
Sooner or later, though, I start feeling the need for actual human contact, which brings me back to my senses, sometimes quite abruptly. E-mail is great–better than great–but it won’t give you a kiss on the cheek when you open the door.
– Last week I went for a walk in Central Park with a musician friend, in the course of which the following dialogue took place:
ME Somebody sent me a weird URL the other day.
SHE Weird like how?
ME Well, it was for a site called, uh, maybe “Babes in Classical Music,” or “Classical Hotties,” or something like that. Anyway, it was a Web site full of pictures of good-looking women musicians, organized by what instrument they play, voice type, whatever. How silly is that? What kind of person would spend all that time putting together a site like that? I mean, get a life, right?
SHE (with dawning horror) The URL wasn’t beautyinmusic.com, was it?
ME Yeah, I think that was it.
SHE Er…um…I’m on it.
A beat.
ME (with the maniacal glee of a playground bully) You’re on it? And you stood there and let me tell you all about it? I am soooo blogging this!
SHE (embarrassed) Oh, God, no, you can’t do that! It’s not my fault! I didn’t have anything to do with it! I don’t even know who does the thing….
ME No way. You’re totally busted.
SHE (resigned) Well, at least don’t mention my name, all right?
ME (magnanimously) O.K. Your secret is safe with me.