Whew! I find that when I finally take some time off, I basically feel exhausted. That’s what happened to me yesterday. It’s happening today as well. I tried very hard not to do much yesterday. Basically spent the day reading and practicing. Finished Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf. I enjoyed this book.
When I finally got to the U.K. I had fun because I had read so much about it in novels and other books. Now that I have been there, when a novel like Woolf’s Jacob’s Room draws on a setting I have actually seen like Cornwall or London, that’s fun too.
It’s intriguing how Woolf writes a story about a character with brief glimpses set in between more general prose about other stuff and other events.
I think she might be writing about her technique when she says:
“It is thus that we live, they say, by an unseizable force. They say that novelists never catch it; that it goes hurtling through their nets and leaves them torn to ribbons. This, they say, is what we live by—an unseizable force.”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
Also finished off Sandman volume 8 by Neil Gaiman recently.
Checked out the next two yesterday.
I also began reading The Elementary Particles by the French writer, Michel Houellebecq. It immediately grabbed my attention. Martin who is the main character is a “clear sighted and deliberate engineer” of a new paradigm shift in human history (presumably the application of quantum theory to everything). Houellebecq wickedly and wittily tells his story. Lots of irony.
I ran across this author’s name in the Guardian article on Damien Hirst I linked in yesterday.
Eileen left the house this morning around 5:30 AM to go to a two day workshop in Ann Arbor. I have three tasks today: appointment with my Boss, piano trio rehearsal and a meeting with another Episcopalian church musician who thinks I might be able to connect her with some resources….
Not sure what that last one is about, but what the heck. She is the first Episcopalian musician to contact me in Western Michigan since I moved here in 1987. It’s weird because when I lived in the eastern side of the state I knew many Episcopalian musicians and the collegiality, networking and common vision was phenomenal. How phenomenal I didn’t know until I moved here.
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Dutch Church Accused of Castrating Up to 10 Young Men – NYTimes.com
Yikes.
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In Uganda, Kony Is Not the Only Problem – NYTimes.com
Interesting take on this scandal from a Ugandan journalist.
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Crime, Punishment and the Rutgers Case – NYTimes.com
Letters to the editor….
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