Diacritiques

I can’t procrastinate any longer. Claude has passed on a music meme to me, and it’s even a chain-letter type meme. But the task looks harmless enough, and I feel guilty anyway because I owe her an email and have been a bad correspondent (in addition to being a bad all-kinds-of-things).#[1] (I promise, I will get around to it! You don’t have to hit me with memes!)

So, here we are:

1. How many music files are there on your computer?

This wasn’t an easy question to answer. My collection is by no means systematic. I’ve digitized far from all my CDs, but on the other hand downloaded some good things recently, though the regular Sunday features at Viewropa. Luckily someone (thank you, anonymous stranger!) pointed me to using the command find /home/chris -name '*mp3' | wc -l in my console window. So the definitive answer is 1673. This is of course incorrect: some of the music files are in Ogg Vorbis format, and some of the .mp3 files are poetry, or the results of my work on Language Log quizzes.

2. Last CD you bought?

I am not sure. It was either the CD that came with a special number of the magazine Les Inrockuptibles (”50 years of rock”, I think), or vocal works: Monteverdi / Kweksilber, Jacobs, Altena, de Lange - Madrigali, with an excellent version of the Lamento d’Ariana (”Lasciate mi morire …”).

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

I was not listening to any music when I saw the message, so I am not sure. It might have been Le Voyage de Pénélope by Air (from the CD Moon Safari). This is a new discovery on a recommendation from Morgan, after I introduced him to Mogwai, whom I like a lot (in particular the CD Happy Songs for Happy People). Or maybe Text Adventure’s Kill Meow (from Fantastic Disaster), which I found in the Viewropa listings.

4. Five songs you often listen to or which mean a lot to you?

This is a difficult question. Since it says “songs”, I will stick to the Rock/Pop/Chanson genres and leave out all the classical, baroque (Bach!) and romantic (Brahms!#[2]) music I love. Sometimes, a new song grabs my attention and I can’t help listening to it again and again. Which happened to me recently with viðrar vel til loftárása by Sigur Rós from ágætis byrjun. Maybe it’s the Icelandic characters. The title apparently means “good weather for airstrikes”. Next I’ll nominate Portishead’s Roads, which is rather sublime. In the discipline “French Chanson”, the one that touches me most at the moment is Dis, quand reviendras tu sung by Barbara. From Blues/Soul, it’s a close call; I could name several Aretha Franklin numbers, but it’ll be I Put A Spell on You in the Nina Simone version. And last, for totally different, silly and personal reasons, Eurythmics’ I Love You Like A Ball and A Chain has to take the last free slot.

Music can hurt, the emotional connection may be so strong to make some pieces overwhelming. I didn’t write down any of those — some things are too personal. But then, I don’t actually listen to them very often, and they don’t really give much insight into my tastes.

5. Who are you going to pass this on to and why?

I am passing this task to Matt, who doesn’t seem to mind memes very much; to Stephanie, because I know a bit, but too little about the music she likes, and to Morgan, who should post more.

[1]: And I’m now composting this entry from the second time after losing nearly all of it yesterday when a nasty site blocked my browser. Note: browsers aren’t auto-saving text processors (yet). … Update: this post keeps crashing on me. I don’t know why. [2]: I am German, you know.