Music, Verbosity, and Anything Else

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Kneel Before Zodd!


Today I learned a phat new cantrip courtesy of the Great Antiprince. Apparently it's pretty easy though I'm so easily impressed I probably could watch a magician make a dung-ball float for hours. Think of it- floating shitstorms! The world will never be the same...

Here is my new trick.




I cannot fully express what this performance does to my All. Apart from the obvious mastery of the instrument, she is playing a guitar arrangement of every serious violinist's wettest dream, and her interpretation is appassionata to boot. Perhaps what finally does me in is watching her face. A sound such as this which lifts my soul to new heights is accompanied by the face of a chartered accountant attached to a ten-year-old Korean girl. The incongruousness of the music with the blank mug presents a certain musical irony that makes me a little sad and, coincidentally, heightens my appreciation of the performance. However, I am not without ugly questions. Did she learn the piece at gunpoint?(They're nuts up North, there...)Was she raised in a test tube labeled "Paganini, 24ve Caprice- Nylon Guitar" with only that in mind, to the detriment of her ever being able to play "Dueling Banjos?"

By that last, I recall a bit from Huxley's Brave New World in which a child was taught through hypnopædia that...

"The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It extends from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro northward to its delta in the Mediterranean Sea. It yadda yadda, blahbiddyblah, flammajamma jim jam, etc..."

"So, what's the longest river in Africa?"

"I...I don't know."

"What can you tell me about the Nile River?"

"The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It extends from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro northward to its delta in the Mediterranean Sea. It yadda yadda, blahbiddyblah, flammajamma jim jam, etc..."

"So, what's the longest river in Africa?"

"I...I don't knoooow."

2 Comments:

Blogger antiprincess said...

what's a cantrip? (I don't have sound on my work computer).

yeah, I remember seeing that video and being just amazed. I would prefer to think, of course, that she loved (felt uplifted, felt transformed) playing the piece just as much as we do hearing it.

but yeah, test tubes, gunpoint...makes you wonder.

great post.

5:38 AM  
Blogger TheAdequateDer said...

Cantrip...A magic spell that amounts to nothing more than "icing." Impressive, but won't kill dragons.

10:13 AM  

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