New year’s resolution: stop making promises. A late offer of a car trip through the countryside over the weekend crueled my plans for staying home updating a silly old blog.
Also, I’ve thought about offering my own review of 2008, as others have done, but unlike last year no neat list comes to mind. For a number of reasons both within and outside of my control it was a sketchy, underwhelming year. Not enough travel, not enough art, not enough pleasant social intercourse.
For the greater part of the year I was preoccupied with legal hassles involving the dodgy dealings of a real estate company who lost some money I’d paid them, which they decided entitled them to send the bailiffs around demanding I pay them again, plus interest. So for me, when I think highlights of the year, I think of taking those chancers to court and watching the judge smacking them – almost literally.
Apart from that, the thing that really sticks out is, a year after his death, just how important Stockhausen is to music, and probably to the arts in general. Over the past year his name has come up again and again. I saw and heard more by and about Stockhausen in the past year than in the rest of my life put together. In fact, I’ll be hearing more later this month.
2008, the year of the stockhausen. i've heard his work/name/theories so many times this year, it's similarly uncanny. am excited to see the barbican show and while i'm in london later this month, i'll be catching up with a friend who is writing a thesis on german music post-wwii with a large section on stockhausen. synchronicity surrounding a man who was all about the asynchonous.