Nietzsche on Music and Learning

“One must learn to love.— This is what happens to us in music: first one has to learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and delimit it as a separate life; then it requires some exertion and good will to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity:—finally there comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense that we should miss it if it were missing: and now it continues to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it.

But that is what happens to us not only in music: that is how we have learned to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness with what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty:—that is its thanks for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves will have learned it in this way: for there is no other way. Love, too, has to be learned.” 

Musician's Creed

A little music humor...

http://www.billkeeven.net/Musician's%20Creed.htm

Home Alone

Great pictures of me playing the role of insane babysitter. It was a great weekend, though. As for the photos, no editing, just straight-up, natural craziness. 

Catullus and Infatuation

"I look no more for her to be my lover
As I love her. That thing could never be.
Nor pray I for her purity––that's over.
Only this much I pray, that I be free.
Free from insane desire myself, and guarded
In peace at last. O heaven, grant that yet
The faith by which I've lived may be
       rewarded.
Let me forget."


– Catullus