Ice, Not Snow

in a panic nashville closed down late last night anticipating the worst: multiple inches of snow, coupled with ice, and temps dropping below 20. in fine ostrich style nashville pulled its head out of the frozen earth this morning to find two things: weather that feels like 6 degrees, and ice, lots of ice. every exterior surface in nashville is covered with at least a quarter inch of white ice, slick slippery, and trying on one's patience. it seems to me that the worst didnt happen, but it got pretty bad. i certainly am thankful that i dont have to travel through this mess. mtb headed back to the lou, last eve, prior to the freezing, and after two point five hours of driving he only made it to clarksville, just a normal forty-minutes drive away. fortunately he tucked himself into a roadside motel and mystic river, to keep himself warm and off the road.



two points on tchaikovsky:

one. it seems to me that most any cd of his includes a performance of the 1812 overture, or at least some portion of the nutcracker suite.

two. to an untrained ear, like mine, tchaikovsky's fourth symphony is very gestural; and by gestural i dont mean the franz kline, jackson pollock sort of gestural, i mean the gestural that you stumble upon as you watch acting students improv. the sort of gesture that wears itself on the sleeve and wears itself thin for lack of ambiguity, for lack of the gray.

if you are wanting to take your friend out on a date to the symphony, and have an opportunity see tchaikovsky's fourth, i say pass, and wait till his sixth rolls around. a much more brooding and lulling piece, tchaikovsky masterfully weaves depression into triumph, in his sixth, giving us westerners, perhaps, an idea what it would have been like to travel from siberia, to moscow, by coach. moving from cold and misery to the glorious, yet dying days, of tsarist russia.




on a strictly personal note, i find, that sometimes it is better to just not say anything.