Top 5

Current Music: My crazy sketch of my future wedding recessional music

Several top 5 song lists:

Love Songs:

1. Crush (DMB)
2. Unexpected Song (from Song & Dance, the musical)
3. Live with Somebody you Love (Martin Guerre, the musical)
4. Till You Came into My Life (Jekyll & Hyde, the musical concept album)
5. Che Gelida Manina (Your hand is freezing...) from La Boheme...although it sort of sucks to cut it out of the context of the scene...the segue into Mimi's "Mi chiamano Mimi" really helps make it rock,but hers isn't explicitly about love; just sort of invoked a bit in"il Primo bacio dell'Aprile e mio!" ("April's first kiss.")

Honorable mentions:

• All I Ask of You (Phantom of the Opera, the musical)
• A Whole New World (Aladdin, the movie)

Anti-love songs:

1. Haloween (Dave Matthews Band)
2. One Night in Bangkok (Chess, the musical)
3. [Love and your world will become a] Madhouse (Aspects of Love, the musical)
4. Happilly Ever After (cut from the musical Company, by Sondheim)
5. Bitches Ain't Shit (Snoop Dogg)

Unrequited love songs:

1. Say Goodbye (Dave Matthews Band)
2. The Winner Takes it All (ABBA)
3. All I Ask of You Reprise -- Finale Act 1 (Phantom of the Opera)
4. Only the Very Best (from Tycoon, the English translation of the Canadian rock opera Starmania)
5. If I Can't Love Her (Beauty and the Beast -- the stage musical version)

Star-Crossed Lovers songs:

1. You and I -- reprise (Chess, the ABBA/Tim Rice musical -- Broadwaycast recording)
2. Written in the Stars (Aida, the Elton John/Tim Rice musical)
3. Don't (Martin Guerre, the musical [revised version]).
4. Letting Go (Jekyll & Hyde, the musical)
5. Someday out of the Blue (El Dorado, the Elton John/Tim Rice animated film soundtrack)

Honorable mentions:

• One Upon a Dream (Jekyll & Hyde)
• I Still Believe (Miss Saigon, the musical)

Schönberg

Current Music: Woman in White Suite, from Phantasia by Lord Lloyd Webber

I just found a list of the music that Claude-Michel Schönberg himself said he'd like to tkae with him if he were stranded on a desert island. I like it that he has "Only the Very Best" from Tycoon on here -- that's one of my favorites. And the original Prologue from Martin Guerre -- also easy to understand. I'll have to check out those that I haven't heard yet, like his "'Too much for one Heart". I also found out about his solo record, "Le Premier Pas", which is for sale at Tower Records.

1.'At the End of the Day'
Performer Cast of 'Les Miserables' from 10th anniversary concert
Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg
Publisher BBC 1999
CD Title Les Miserables in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall
Track 4
Label ENCORE
Rec No Enc.CD.18

2.'Elle afui, la tourterelle' (Although Your Turtle Dove has Flown)
Performer Jessye Norman accompanied by the Rundfunkchor Leipzig
Composer Jacques Offenbach
Publisher Philips Classics Productions
CD Title Tales of Hoffmann
Track Cd2 trk 5
Label PHILIPS
Rec No 422 3756-2, 376-2 & 377-2

3.'Only the Very Best'
Performer Peter Kingsbery
Composer Berger/Plamondon/Rice
Publisher Sony
CD Title 'Tycoon'
Track 1
Label SONY
Rec No 658435 1

4.'Too much for one Heart'
Performer Lea Salonga
Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg
Publisher N/A
CD Title Lea Salonga -Broadway Concert
Track 11
Label BMG
Rec NoBMRCD 198

5.'Mon ceour s'ouvre a ta voix (At your Voice My Heart unfolds)
Performer Agnes Baltsa and Jose Carreras with Symphonie Orchestre
Composer Saint Saens
Publisher Philips Classics productions
CD Title Samson et Dalila
Track Cd2 trk 2
Label PHILIPS
Rec No 426 244-2 & 245-2

6.'Quanto Cielo' (What an Expanse of Sky)
Performer Maria Callas and Mario Boriello with the Orchestra & Choir of the
Composer Puccini
Publisher EMI
CD Title Madama Butterfly
Track Cd1 trk 5
Label EMI
Rec No CDC 747959/60

7.'Prologue'
Performer London cast recording
Composer Boubil & Schonberg
Publisher Bouberg music
CD Title Martin Guerre
Track 1
Label First Night
Rec No CASTCD 59

8.'Beim Schlagengehen' (Before Going to Sleep)
Performer Dame Kiri te Kanawa
Composer Richard Strauss
Publisher CBS
CD Title Four Last Songs
Track LPS1 trk 3
Label CBS
Rec No 76794

Record: Four last songs
Book: Wallace Earle Stegner - All the Little Live things
Luxury: Grand piano

21st Century and Century 21

Current Music: Why God Why?, Miss Saigon -- Complete Symphonic Recording

I'm reading, on the advice of C's dad, "The World Is Flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century", by Thomas Friedman. It's about globalization, supply chains, India, China, etc. etc. Good current-events stuff and great writing. I opened randomly to pg. 205 and saw a title that sucked me in: "India vs. Indiana: Who is Exploiting Whom?" and read a funny thing about a weird instance here in Indiana about an unemployment office having its software development outsourced to India, with lots of mind-bending consequences about how we think of the complicated pluses and minuses of globalization -- or "flattening" of the globe. Next, I randomly turned to pg. 276 and read the first few pages of the chapter "This is Not a Test", whose thesis seems to be that the U.S. is currently facing a crisis of deciding how to cope with the flattening world. I found this paragraph hilarious. It's in the context of how it's harder to get Americans to rally around a flattening-based cause that is more subtle than, say, a nuclear threat from the Soviet Union:

But today, alas, there is no missile threat coming from India. The "hot line," which used to connect the Kremlin with the White House, has been replaced by the "help line," which connects everyone in America to call centers in Bangalore. While the other end of the hotline might have had Leonid Brezhnev threatening nuclear war, the other end of the help line just has a soft voice eager to help you sort out your AOL bill or collaborate with you on a new piece of software. No, that voice has none of the menace of Mikita Khrushchev pounding a shoe on the table at the UN, and it has none of the sinister snarl of the bad guys in From Russia with Love. There is no Boris or Natasha saying "We will bury you" in a thick Russian accent. No, that voice on the help line just has a friendly Indian lilt that masks any sense of threat or challenge. It simply says: "Hello, my name is Rajiv. Can I help you?"

No Rajiv, actually, you can't.

I like this style -- easy to see why it's a bestseller. I've always taken it a bit personally when jobs that should go to Indianans get outsourced to Indians.

In other news, I started looking at condos for sale today so that I can move out of this apartment; rent keeps rising so it's probably going to be the same price soon as a mortgage payment on a shiny new condo. It actually might be cheaper to have moved! A helpful Iraqi woman I know gave me the name of a Century 21 realtor to talk to. So the hunt has started. But at one point I got sad thinking of moving myself into a nice new place, and I wrote a bit to my friends to understand what was happening; I'll paste some in here.

I looked at condos on a web site and found some nice ones that looked perfect and are just blocks away from where I am now. So I was pretty excited, but then it surprisingly made me sad because I didn't want to be doing so without a significant other. Perhaps this is one of the things that has made me put it off for so long. I think I really like the idea of "settling down" and moving into a house with some girl; I enjoyed moving into a new apartment with someone before because of the domestic bliss it seemed to provide.

Something I read a few weeks ago I suppose makes this clearer for me too: I read in this book on "being a man in the modern age" (Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, by Sam Keen) that whereas we used to have standardized "coming-of-age/becoming a real man" rituals (i.e. the tribe makes you go off into the wilderness and survive on eating roots for a month or something), we've sort of eliminated such silly things but the idea still persists in milestones such as, in particular, getting married and buying a house. That's one of the key manhood-achievements. And realizing this, I notice that I get this bizarre feeling of "failure" as I think of moving into a house sans femme -- visualizing the move-in itself leaves me with this feeling of having "skipped a step" (such as the getting married part) and, hence, it makes more concrete the idea that "I'm alone".

Of course, much of me is excited about the prospect of owning my own place -- it seems better financially and the new place will probably be more fun to live in that my current apartment. And there's something nice and "manly" about it. It's just that it seems much more lonely to live alone in my own place instead of a more transient apartment. But that, of course is silly, and easier to deal with now that I realize what was causing it.

Flow

Current Music: I Stop And I Breathe -- Elton John, Peachtree Road

A couple great books I've been reading. Both have weird names, but are wonderful:

• Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (steps toward enhancing the quality of life), by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
• Intimate Connections, by David Burns

Two nights ago I stayed up to finish the first draft of my Lullaby, a piano piece I mostly thought up the summer after my freshman year as an undergrad. Writing it out, though, forces me to make decisions about its structure and also gives an opportunity to make it make more overall consistency. I still need to work out the transitions between separate sections and to make the fast section a bit less mindless.

In other news I'm now taking swing dance lessons. I'm starting with Lindy Hop but I want to learn East Coast next, and maybe later add some ballroom lessons as well.

In music news, Jason Robert Brown has a rockin' new CD out called Wearing Someone Else's Clothes. The title track is very cool, as are most of the songs. It's the composer singing and playing keyboards, backed up by his band. There are even a few live tracks on the CD. "I Could Be In Love With Someone Like You" is a song that (obviously) was going to be part of The Last Five Years, while "Over" is sort of in the style of Songs for a New World. Similarly, "Long Long Road" actually references Songs for a New World in what seems like a pretty personal way. I'd love to know the story behind this one. I love the meta-level feeling when JRB himself sings

"And oh I guess you and I know all about new worlds
and how you're never quite prepared"

and later:
"And oh it just proves what I say about new worlds
and how it ain't worth being scared"

I'm very surprised and happy at how much I like this CD. I also picked up The Light in the Piaza, a new musical about love in Italy, which seems promising, but I haven't quite got into the music enough. It's weird, but pretty. I need to give it more time to have anything concrete to say about it.

Finally, the other night I got to see a performance of Mahler's 2nd in the MAC. It was amazing. And it worked: I was ruminating about death and so on during the performance and the music made me momentarily give some serious thought to the possibility of some form of reincarnation; very surprising and bizarre. My buddies and I sat up towards the front and were following along with the score. The choir rocked, after sitting patiently through the first 4 movements. And I finally managed to spot Talia in the choir about 4 measures before the end.

Reunion and Ms. X

Current Music: late-night percussive firework booms

I could write a huge amount about my two or three reunions in the last two weeks: 10-year high school reunion, my sister's wedding (sort of a family reunion too) and a reunion with various friends from Montana. It was a lot like Alan Lightman's book Reunion. (NPR interview with author, reviews). Well, my reunions were happier events, especially those with old, somewhat long-lost friends from my undergrad. My sister's wedding prominently featured the infinity symbol, as did one of my own reunions: "C" showed me an exercise for developing concentration and focus by repeatedly drawing the infinity sign followed by a letter of the alphabet.. this is repeated 26 times, proceeding from a to z. Later this all inspired an analogy that cheered me up:

We have infinity, the concept of boundless increase or endless repetition, but mathematicians in set theory have developed systems of transfinite numbers, where symbols actually stand for various infinite quantities... and some infinities are larger than others. The magnitude of infinity that represents the (infinite) number of integers is called "aleph null" (the aleph character with a 0 subscript). The magnitude of infinity that "counts" the number of real nubmers (decimals, as opposed to integers) is "C", for continuum. C is so much greater than aleph null (it's equal to aleph null to the aleph null power) that it's hard to conveive of. For one infinity to be infinitely greater than another is mind-blowing, and like quantum physics, if it doesn't seem strange one probably doesn't quit grasp the magnitude(!) of the situation.

So love (limerence?) reminded me of the transfinite numbers. Thoughts of perfection, bliss, love, etc. for me often will revolve around one person and remind me of infinity; call her "aleph null". When in love (limerence) it seems that aleph null has some vaguely infinite qualities. But in the presence of "C", aleph null seems, well, nullified. I had a visceral psychological experience of my thoughts of aleph null sliding off in the infinite distance of the transfinite number line as I remembered the depth and quality of life experience had with C. Fortunately, as with the manifestations of the 3rd dimension in Flatland and the promise of a 4th dimension in Spaceland, there is a theoretical higher-level love promised by C to the C power, call it X = C^C.

So I'm waiting for Ms. X. But I'd also be plenty happy with C/2.