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A puzzlement
I’ve realized something a bit peculiar about the London responses to my presentation about music and AIDS. One of the questions – really a sweeping statement – was from someone who said they had a friend who hadn’t liked to tell people he was HIV+. (Amusingly, I could figure out from his elaborate circumlocutions that…
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In Train
Headed home on the late morning train – pretty crowded but I can still manage a pair of seats to myself. (Hmm, that may be a fairly selfish choice; but I’m feeling tired/wonky enough (gastro again) that I think I deserve some space to myself (especially after the shared bathroom at the hotel – which…
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In a hotel room, after midnight
London. “City, city!”, as cries Tom Rakewell. It’s been a pleasant if tentative weekend: having achieved a successful research seminar on Thursday, with the grand old man of musicological modernism Arnold W. in attendance (astonishing that he would be there – it couldn’t have been my topic, so I myself must have been the attraction),…
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The Voyage to Europe
[Fragments for an unfinished novel, 1992-4] Venice by Gondola The sophisticated traveler will develop a passion for the dramatic curves of the great black gondolas, which seem to cut into the stone façades of this ancient city. But be ready for the high prices which, when transformed from millions, from billions of lira – lira…
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Calm and troubled waters
A week of quiet – mostly: Reading Week, the week when we don’t teach classes. I have gotten many small things done, and worked a bit on larger ones. I’ve retrieved a certain calm from the time out – inevitably I’m a bit dismayed to go back to classes and meetings, and especially a research…
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Oppressive traditions
Last Thursday, I gave a lecture supposedly about defining research to our postgraduates – academic, composing, performing and what all. I got my feet a bit tangled around the whole question of why a creative or performing artist should know about history, tradition, the music that has gone before (always a tricky issue, and one…
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Paul Attinello 