Twelve Wonderful Years
The beginning of July means one thing: the start of a month-long celebration of my vomit-free lifestyle. It is now twelve years since I last threw up, and I am drawing ever closer to the 14 year streak of Jerry Seinfeld.
As some of you may know, the last time I up-chucked was the beginning of July 1995, when, immediately after an enormous breakfast of pancakes, I had to chase an escaped dog.
My goal is twenty pukeless years.
Filed under: Dana Heritage Project on July 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »
Classical Music Beat Down
Lamentations on the death of classical music appear with regularity, and have for years. Today’s obituary appears in the New York Times in the form of Edward Rothstein’s “Classical Music Imperiled: Can You Hear the Shrug?” The column is a review of a new book by Lawrence Kramer entitled Why Classical Music Still Matters. Professor Kramer’s book, which I have not yet read, “laments the dwindling enthusiasm for classical music and examines what could be lost”.
I have written about this very phenomenon on many occasions, including in the New York Times, and while I don’t believe that Western art-music can be written off as dead, I am convinced that its status is clearly diminished. Gone are the days when the names Bernstein, Horowitz, Reiner, Rubinstein, Stern and Toscanini were familiar to average Americans. But, to be fair, gone, too, are the days when the names Iraq, Israel or Ohio were familiar to most Americans. Americans today are simply ignorant.
Of course, when most people are stupid, it’s difficult for an art form that is intellectual by its very nature to thrive. Listening to the radio recently, I was struck by the number of songs with five or fewer notes in the entire song. Repetitive beats are popular.
So, is classical music dying? Well, sure, but so is poetry, theater, taxidermy, sculpture, square dancing, calligraphy, puppetry, conversation, etc.
Filed under: Music, Rantings on July 2nd, 2007 | No Comments »