Too lazy to dig through my endless stacks of old periodicals, I found myself searching the web for an archived article in Gramophone magazine that featured an interview with pianist Helene Grimaud. I recalled having read the interview and thought that she had an exceptionally healthy attitude towards life and her art and I wanted to write about it.

During said search I stumbled upon an old essay by Lara St. John, the young Canadian violinist who has impressed the world with her talent and turned many gray-haired classical music aficionados into drooling, gawking half-wits with her stunning good looks.

We all remember as children being told that we can’t have dessert unless we finish our dinner. And while the obedient child would, wincing and whining all the while, scrub his plate clean, the desperate and rebellious child would hide his lima beans in his napkin (while the smart one would sneak it onto his sister’s plate, leaving no evidence to dispose of) with the hopes of reaping the reward without paying his dues.

Whereas we don’t all share the same memories, (my family would have regarded lima beans as too exotic, being a poor potatoes and sometimes-meat family) we can all relate to the sentiment, in one way or another, of wanting to get something for nothing. But as Robert Heinlein said, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. This concept of instant gratification and reward without work has, unfortunately for many of us, carried over into our adulthood, and it is now affecting the very structure and function of that most remarkable of human tools; the brain.

Every so often, though with decreasing frequency these days, a journal appears in print that is subversive enough to balance delicately on the edge of mainstream yet backed by enough money to warrant a glossy cover. These journals are occasionally found in the large chain bookstores, a few copies buried amongst their larger, less inflammatory brethren. And it was in just such a location that I, with eyes wide with delight, recently discovered a copy of The Thresher, sporting a wide variety of goodness on the cover ranging from Surgical Deprogramming and Meth-Sick Goddesses to Madness & Mysticism and Scientologists Punked!

My eyes continued their expressive posturing by welling with tears when I spotted the name of the editor on the inside cover: R.U. Sirius

Several weeks ago the local alternative newspaper Seven Days ran two articles in the same issue that, despite their lack of explicit connection, nevertheless seemed to betray an intimate association.

The first article concerned an eccentric local composer named David Gunn. The second was a review of the book Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects by the now local writer Christopher Miller, though I have since learned that he was not local when he authored the text.

My suspicion was that Miller had actually used Gunn as inspiration for his novel, and quite a wonderful novel it was, I might add.

I wrote up an article, intending to publish it in the Seven Days letters section, but it turned out to be far too long for inclusion. As I was feeling much too lazy to edit it down to a shorter length, I simply sent it to Christopher Miller and called it a day.