vol. 24

Think strengths, not weaknesses...
-- Dan Pink

• finished The Soloist last night -- it was an extremely worthwhile read...in one of the later chapters, Nathaniel, the musician, asks Steve Lopez, the journalist the following: "Does this mean to you what it means to me?" -- that line hit me on so many levels...
  

• just another example of Lopez' ability to describe the way music can reach a person: "It was beautifully evocative, beginning with an expectant swell that suddenly pauses early in the first movement, like an infatuated suitor who stops just short of saying too much. The music was hope and longing, a poem to the idea of romance and the promise of love. My appreciation of music had grown immeasurably through Nathaniel. I felt it as much as I heard it, taking note of the mood changes and wondering at the themes. I marveled at the genius of creations so universal and lasting that they can survive death and war, the clamor of invention, the whims of style, the turn of centuries." -- beautifully written, just beautifully written...

• i had a really weird dream last night (when i was actually able to get to sleep -- fell asleep after the pitt game then woke up at 12:44 -- last time i looked at the clock it read 3:12...) i was in the downstairs faculty lounge and there was somebody (i knew at the time, but i can't remember now) who was lying on the couch over by the pop machines who had a gun trained on me as i sat where i normally sit -- i assured him i wasn't going to shoot him (i guess i had a gun as well...) and then he got up and walked out... absolutely no clue where that came from...

• i am almost mystically drawn to watching mma and ufc fights -- and i almost always turn them off before they're decided, my stomach turning...