albeit breezy early evening here at Stately Sad Old Goth Manor, and I sit in my lair with the fading light visiting me once again before it succumbs to the lure of night and heads off to places west to begin anew the day of someone else, somewhere else...
I am feasting on Sicilian olives and marinated mozzarella, washed down with the last bottle of 2001 Morellino di Scansano, I having made a sort of sack and pillage of the wine racks under the stairs. My impromptu wine cellar is small, it hold about two dozen bottles of assorted vintage, all red and of varying degrees of dryness, except for a stray bottle of blanc, for friends so inclined in their taste. My wines are an eclectic mix of Californian, Italian, Australian and New Zealand vints, I think there's a bottle of Pinot Noir from New York State in there somewhere and, if memory serves me correctly, it will probably stay there for a long, long time, unless I stoop so low as to foist it on unsuspecting partygoers at some point during the summer. I think New York grapes are played out, but that's just my uneducated taste, probably, although every time I taste a NY vinting, I keep waiting for it to be transformed into vinegar as I swallow it, like some cruel and funny miracle pulled by a bored Jesus on his drunkard friends. Whatever.
I was in my usual musical quandary this night as to what to listen to, so I dug deep, deep, deep into my cabinet of rarely listened to CDs and pulled out one by Duncan Sheik. Very mellow, very soulful, lots of strings and acoustic guitar backing up his almost whispered lyrics. Nice stuff actually. My usual solution to being adrift in the musical doldrums is to tune in the Princeton University radio station, which is a close to musical Zen as you can get. Their dj staff, which rotates and evolves during the school terms and summer vacations, all are very heavily into what they play, whether it's classical, jazz, rock or what have you, which is a rarity in this day of usual twenty top ten song cycles of commercial radio or the creaking door of that bizarre musical crypt, "Classic Rock". (Someone should roll the stone back in front of that door for a few years; that stuff might sound good again if we could get a little break, huh?). The folks at WPRB 103.3 FM, Princeton play what they love to hear themselves and never seem to be in a musical rut; you can hear old school punk followed by opera, follow by a vintage blues recording, followed by an Allan Sherman comedy cut; you never know what will be coming out of the speakers next, but it always seems to be just right. Radio Zen. It is what it is and that's what makes it so special; I can just float along on an aural breeze with no effort expended in making choices, no changing cd's or vinyl over and over because no matter what I choose, it's just not right, so I leave it up to someone else, and it's usually just fine. You can listen to them online while you blog away, if you like, just click here.
I wish I could live my life like I listen to my music, although it harkens back to what I wrote last week; words can not describe what I hear in my mind when I listen to music, so I know that I could never put into motion or words what it does for me. It is the most spiritual thing in my life. I'll leave it at that.
I'm going to go outside and gaze at the beautiful Lucina and have another glass of wine and pipeful of Longbottom Leaf... I shall return.
pearls before swine...
