Things I’m listening to this week: the string quartets of Aaron Jay Kernis and Zemlinsky. Also Lamentate by Arvo Part, Ligeti’s Requiem, and a string quartet by Wynton Marsalis. It’s too early to give my impressions, except to say that the Part is a pleasant surprise. The Kernis is good, but not inspired. I’m often disappointed by modern string quartet music (not that Kernis is disappointing here). It often seems more obtuse than I like for the medium. Everyone wants to write the Bartok quartets, which I don’t much care for either (or shall we blame the late Beethoven quartets?). I have enjoyed the Philip Glass quartets, the Reich triple quartet, some Golijov pieces, and some quartet music of Jennifer Higdon, to mention a few contemporary composers, but in general the string quartet music is often too dense, chromatic, and harsh for me. It just strikes me as particularly odd, since often I'll like the orchestral music of a composer, but not the string quartets. It's true of Bartok, and it's true for many modern composers. Why is that?

I’m reading Watership Down—no, I never read it as a child. I don’t retain any of the Lapine language from day to day, except that I can’t stop thinking about silflay. Quiet grazing in the early dewy morning and during the soft breezes of the evening hours… when life is worth living. Those crazy rabbits know how to live.

I’m still working on the stained glass windows outside of our bathroom, though these will be done soon enough. Then onto the two large 6-paned windows at the base of the rear stairs. I’m really looking forward to working on those. I think they’ll look great, with a mix of blues in a stylized landscape design. And then there’s the painting—about a dozen paintings that I want to finish, and one firmly in my head to begin.

At work I’m in the thick of designing an estate plan for domestic partners. It’s tricky. At home I’m beginning to scrape and paint the house, replacing siding where necessary and repairing gutters where I can. Mostly I can’t.

I'm facebooking, though I'm conflicted about it. It consumes too much time--time which would be better spent working on glass or painting, or...well, even blogging. All of those people writing pithy comments under a 1000 characters. It all feels too social, too much like high school, and too totally devoid of substance and depth. No thought is sustainted for more than a few sentences. But I like writing pithy comments too. And lately I've been feeling a need to be engaged in a way facebook enables. I don't want or need a lot of online socializing. What I'd enjoy is corresponding with one or two interesting and intelligent people. But, well, until that happens I guess I'll have to settle for correspondence with my friends. hahaha