17 January 2009
Saturday, 2:55am
Music: Brahms 3rd Symphony, 1st movement

Sometimes I find it rather funny to look back at myself and see things that I never really thought were there. I used to never think I was religious or spiritual, but it seems that I am. (Or highly irrational and superstitious as the case may be.)

I picked up one of my books on Nicholas & Alexandra Romanov yesterday and the author was trying to argue that Alexandra was mystical for all the times she saw patterns and metaphors in life. He argued that her mystical tendencies were manifested in seeing the 300th Anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty and how its beginning had powerful similarities to how things were going around 1912-1914. He also added in stuff like her responses to the pain and suffering she had in her personal life.

Now today, I sorta saw the same thing through music, and it was quite interesting. I was driving to meet with an old old friend and her new boyfriend. They're out visiting from New York. So, as I was driving, the classical station programmed Tchaikovsky's Tempest! Now that piece-and it lives up to its name-was my constant companion late in high school. What can I say, I love storm music! And in due course with all constant companion pieces of music, you burn yourself out of them, put them away, and generally forget about them. And today I got to hear The Tempest for the first time since... oh probably 1999. And it was like meeting an old friend. I started to remember details and bits and pieces that I'd forgotten about. And how ironic that I was on the way to meet an old lady-friend while revisiting an old music-friend!

Right now, the piece I'm listening to is another old friend, one that I used to define myself by. Yet as I mature (and hopefully mellow) I see that dramatic posturing gets very old very fast. It has its place too, but it is a touch ridiculous.

Still its nice to see old friends, old feelings, and old states of mind. Who knows from where I've been to where I'll go!