Listening to records, strangely, is the opposite. Maybe the effort required to skip around - getting up, physically moving the needle - is enough to allow me to enjoy whatever's on as good-enough-for-right-now.
So today, I was pleased with myself that I could maintain a task for a better part of the day, even if the task was only tangentially related to my overall ambitions and goals for this lifetime. I fixed my bikes.
Yes, bikes. My racing bike needed truer wheels (unwobbly), and my get-around-town-bike, my old 10-speed that I converted to a fixie (très hip) needed a lot of shit. The bearings in the wheels gristed too much, too much grit, not enough grease. Actually, that's all. But both wheels needed it, and each one had a different style of bearings.
The rear wheel, the one that I'm going to use on my new track racing bike, had sealed cartridges - reminding me today, for the first time, of the skateboard wheel bearings we used to use - and the seals were broken and rusty grease was leaking out. I had never changed such bearings before; thought it was much more difficult.
So I traipsed over the boulevard to my LBS (local bike shop) and pestered them. I made them true my wheels - in exchange for money - and picked their brain about the feasibility of me reinserting the bearings into the hub without fucking it up. He made it seem manageable, so I took my $16 worth of bearings and traipsed back home. Tra-la-la-dee.
Carefully, I hammered the cartridge in, making sure that it was going straight in lest it damage the hub. No damage and 20 minutes later...
I got distracted by fixing the other hub. I went to use it as a reference but, as it turns out, it's not a cartridge but a loose set of bearings. It, too, was rusty and gristy, so I took it apart and cleaned and degreased and cleaned and degreased. Almost lost a bearing down the sink but saved it in the nick of time. The nick!
Finished that one in about 1/2 hour and finally banged the last cartridge in the first one. Success! Two functioning wheels.
Almost time for food - [I was starving at this point] - but no: I felt I should change some tires around. No food till the work is done.
Finally, time to eat. And write this post about how I don't write enough posts. Looks like it got hijacked by bike talk, which is sort of fitting, since that's how my life has been this summer. #extendedmetaphor
Actually, the whole morning started with a piano lesson followed by a text from my roommate W offering to take me to Kuma's if I could fix his bike. That was the easiest fix but the one that got my hands greasy and my mind into a mechanical rut.
I actually sat down to write a post on Beyond Words about how much I loathe Classical music. Actually, it's not the music, it's the people. The music itself is nice and worth listening to from time to time. For some people, it's essential, but for most people today, there is nothing essential about Classical music. It's hardly pertinent and borders on irrelevance. And that's fine.
The real problem is that we are still subjected to the mediocre music from the past. For instance, Haydn doesn't have anything important to say to modern audiences. The gist of his music is how he uses and abuses the forms and styles of the time, of which we have less and less knowledge. His music should reside solely in specialty concerts. Much of Mozart is the same but there are some pieces whose musical content is interesting regardless of form or style.
Haydn's music is far too much form with no content; Mozart achieved somewhat of a balance; Beethoven was content-driven, and so therefore maintains more relevance.
The Romantic period is more content-driven, so has more potential to be relevant. There's still plenty of music, though, that has inconsequential content and so can be left by the wayside.
There's so much music out there, there's no need to dwell on mediocre pieces from the past. And yet we do because programmers have a personal attachment to a piece, inventing objective reasons for its significance. Sure, every piece is important in some way. Much of my music stirs my soul - even still! after all these years - but that doesn't make it essential.
If they were to make an episode of Hoarders about Classical music, I would love to go through these crusty curmudgeons' attics and throw out all their Kleiber recordings. I'll bet they would squirm just like the packrats on the show. From what I've seen of the show in my imagination.
