Musings on my neverending quest for sugar

A brief foray into politics (and then on to better things)

Frankly I'm tired of reading about the election. Doing the bio group presentation in the computer lab on election night (and freaking out about the electoral count at the same time) was unlike anything I've ever experienced before, LOL. But I'll just mince around that subject with an excerpt from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798 after the passage of the Sedition Act:

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

I find it sad that the students going abroad next semester were told not to look like Americans while in other countries. Patriotism at its finest, eh? - when Americans really don't give a shit what other countries think of them...and then they have to go to said other countries. Heh.

That said, I feel as if we're all preaching to the choir here. Pomona is mostly liberal, and from what I've read about (and experienced to some limit), conservatives are hated with a passion. I find that sad too. I may not agree with them, but that doesn't mean we should throw their opinions away. I mean, a little more than half of the country agreed with their viewpoints, and I don't understand why. A little more diverse discourse would help, especially at Pomona, but it's just one of those touchy subjects that nobody wants to delve into. *sigh*

And an update on the George "Let's make the piano do really funky things" Crumb concert: I really liked it, actually. My favorite was the humpback whale piece since it began in the avant-garde style of randomness, and then slowly edged into something that made more sense. (The name of the game in music is contrast, dear readers!) I had never heard anything that used sparse echoes and silence so effectively. That's the same reason why I like Tori Amos' acoustic pieces - there's a certain atmosphere that you get when it's just one chord or note fading into silence. The minimalist approach clicks with me. Plus, I had never known that a cello could mimic the calls of a humpback whale so precisely. Wohhhh...

People think too much on this: a Scientific American article on the brain and music. I almost slapped my forehead when I got to the part about them figuring out that neural "responses [from music] depended on the location of a given tone within a melody; cells may fire more vigorously when that tone is preceded by other tones rather than when it is the first." Well, as a musician, I say, "DUH!!!"

posted by sugarfiend @ 5:17 PM