Boring Like A Drill.

I’m packing my bags for Australia, so I don’t have time to weigh in on Richard Taruskin’s latest essay in The New Republic, “The Musical Mystique“, the latest in the ongoing Sick Man Dialogue classical music has been having with itself for years (“How do I look? Do I look alright? I think I’m feeling a bit better today, how do I look?” etc etc). Others are already wrestling the 12,000 word behemoth to the ground.

In fact, I haven’t read past the first page, and I only got that far beacuse The Rambler was kind of enough to notify me that Taruskin quotes a witty, intelligent, perceptive “netizen” called Ben.H.

I have only one problem with this. Actually I have two problems, but anyone who quotes me approvingly is OK with me, even if they call me a “netizen”. The main problem is that I don’t remember writing it, and couldn’t find it anywhere on my blog. It took a bit of googling to find it was a jokey, throwaway comment I apparently made on a Sequenza21 post six months ago. According to the website, I wrote it at 9.10 am, which can’t be right. Most likely that’s USA time, which meant I wrote it very late at night, and was quite possibly tired and emotional.

Mind you, Taruskin follows up my quote by saying Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by Blair Tindall “contains the smartest and most constructive take” on the classical music industry, so maybe he was in a similarly, uh, frivolous mood when he started writing his little review.

Actually, it’s more of an honour to find myself quoted (via Taruskin’s quote) in the Something Awful forums. Even though they say “poo poo” too much and can’t discuss any type of music without someone instantly mentioning Frank Zappa.