THE MENTAL PLAYLIST

What music do you have in your mind right now? Is it a mellifluous violin? Or triumphant horns? Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary is good tune to have playing in one's head....... but you might have the Marseillaise from a famous movie. Internal music is a mood enhancer.

No, not the stuff that people plugged-in on the bus play. That's usually fairly mundane stuff, metallic and mediocre. And it isn't actually in their head, but simply echoing in the vast empty spaces between one ear (the left) and the other (on the right). They aren't thinking it, they're merely providing an opportunity for random vibration.

Sometimes there are words.


Years ago I thought that the Sony Walkman was a pretty neat-o invention. It's still an impressive concept -- the idea that wherever you are you can listen to the noise of your choice -- but like cell-phones, there's a time and a place. Packed among the public is, perhaps, not it. There's something too private, too sexual almost, about both clutching a friend to your ear and discussing things that only the two of you know, as well as listening to the music that makes you dream.

Rather than on public transit, you should do it in the bedroom. Nice warm day, pillows, comfortably reclining.... and , if it pleases you, a baroque German with a flair for oomph keeping you company.

Well, not actually there in the flesh, you understand. But his sweet genius envelopes you. A very perfect mood-enhancer, for a mood already stratospheric.


"The conception of an opera as a coherent structure was slow to capture Handel's imagination [*]"

[Per Wikipedia.]


On a totally random note, when you polish wood, wipe off the excess after a few moments, to allow slight penetration. The more absorbent grain will whick oil out of the adjacent harder areas, increasing the contrast between light and heavy.

This in relation to maintaining your pipe. There is nothing like a good rub to make it happy. Along with softly fragrant leaves.
Briar benefits from a friendly treatment.

I also find opera not entirely coherent.
Quite irrespective of structure.
That's not a bad thing.


But anyhow, there you are, lying on your bed as sunlight streams in, cup of steaming Assam, bowlful of a sweetly mature Virginia, and triumphant brass blaring at a level of perfect modulation. Everything in concert.
And afterwards, a crisp apple and a good book.

Later you will replay the tones in your mind's ear, and the mood will be re-induced, the emotion reborn. As time passes, the laminations of memory associated with a particular tune will increase and grow more complex, like grain in wood, annealed and various. Eventually even a few notes will prompt recollection.

Stern man with periwig. A smell of Carolinian ferment. Dust motes dancing iridescently in brilliant shafts. The perfume of fruit, texture of clean cotton, and a whisp of tannin over white porcelain.

Your library of internalized music is as potent and forceful a stimulant as your sense of smell, as intense as the touch at your fingertips.


On the other hand, if someone really wants to tweak and convulse in public while listening to Madonna having a tantrum, I shall not quibble. Like other people, I enjoy bits of random theatre. Strangers doing their own thing oblivious to the amused stares of others, and the mothers restraining their kiddies, telling them to not get too close to the psycho, yep, fine by me.

Second-hand music causes fits.


IT'S WARM TO THE TOUCH

While I write this I am not alone. A devilishly charming fellow with an over-the-top peruke is here with me -- The Four Seasons -- in spirit, though thank heavens not in actual person. And I'm smoking a mixture of Virginias with a touch of perique, oh soft golden mistress with dark allure!

The pipe is an ancient silver-banded straight billiard from John's Pipe Shop in Los Angeles (formerly of 524 South Spring Street). It's large enough for a man, but comfortable enough for a woman.
I just finished polishing it.

Life is melodic.



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