peripathetic

It's raining.
It's raining here, at least. And it's been raining all day. I got up and was faced with a wet grey blanket outside the window. I went downstairs - the same. At lunchtime the puddles still exploded quietly with circles. And right now there's a patter on the window which sadly isn't that of snow. It's still raining. So I've been distracting myself with online stuff for a while. The fruits of my wandering:

Orchestras, throw away your paper. Digital scores are better than paper ones. Hmm. I'm not sure I agree - a score is like a book, and books are always more satisfying if they're paper. There's a war on in Sudan, but not over which book is everyone's favourite there: Three Men in a Boat. There was a rather interesting article in the New York Times about different Jesus films which have emerged from Hollywood - in advance of Mel Gibson's February offering - but I won't link to it because the NYT will take it offline soon and you'll have to pay to read it all. As usual.

Decontrol, a wonderful online art gallery, found, along with much else in this posting, via MemePool's 'Art' category.

There's one artist whose work everyone likes - some a bit, most quite a lot, and a few who border on idolatry - Andy Goldsworthy. Whether he's plastering wet stones with petals and leaves, weaving feathers / making natural paintings on a meniscus / curling ice around a treetrunk / building wavy walls / stone arches with no mortar / stone eggs - again, sans concretion / pulling a filigree twig curtain across an empty space or leaving large snowballs in London during summer, his simple and beautiful work, both as a thing-in-itself and a way of relating to nature, is similar in its impact to some of Michael Longley's poetry.