Warning: this post is going to be a bit Inside Baseball.

Just before I began vacuuming this morning, I turned on the last.fm channel for Steve Reich. I like last.fm, but it does have its eccentricities, like a few days ago when within an hour of starting the Monteverdi channel, I had already heard Berlioz and Verdi. So this morning, within three songs, it had, of course migrated to Xenakis, but by that time, I was making a ruckus with the vacuum cleaner.

I believe that, given the situation, David Byrne would lambaste my vacuuming, as well as all modern appliances because they are alienating. New father and Ph.D (late congratulations!) The Rambler would boldly defend my right to make noise with the vacuum and also to listen to Xenakis. Kyle Gann would first bemoan David Byrne for ignoring all of the good that electrical appliances have done for us, but also tell me that I’m making an error by trying to make music with my vacuum that is as complex as Xenakis’s. Daniel Stephen Johnson would accuse Kyle Gann of not understanding the difference between “modern” appliances and “electrical” appliances while declaring that his favorite music is when the vacuum gets attached to him and gives him a giant welt on the tummy. Darcy James Argue would try desperately to get everyone to calm down, but take a kick at the obscurist vacuum, anyway. Kyle Gann would post a photo of himself enjoying a modern and electrical appliance in order to establish that he was into modern electrical appliances long before Daniel Stephen Johnson was born. Daniel Stephen Johnson would write an update and go on vacation. The Rambler would offer us all food.

In the mean time, The Universe would make its own decision by pulling the plug on the electricity for just long enough that my computer would turn off, rendering gnarly Xenakis silent. Apparently The Universe prefers the gnarly sounds of the vacuum, which stopped for a brief moment and started right up again.

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If that didn’t make sense, if it’s full of false analogies and poor logic and confusing conclusions, good, because none of this stuff - trying to tell young composers what style of music they ought to write - ever made sense.