The cats had a massive fight this evening: the hardwood floor in front of the fireplace looked like shag carpeting, in beautiful decorator-moggy colors. Our pugnacious pussies are getting ever redder in tooth and claw. However, there's no entreating a cat to change: there is only damage control. This is why I like cats -- I can approach them in precisely the same cautious and uncritical frame of mind with which I must approach my friends. Cats have the advantage of not mis-using English so readily; my humans, on the other hand, are better able to invigorate my emotional life. Ah. Recondit'armonia. I couldn't possibly live without either of them, although, if I had to choose, the people would stay: since MM moved out, I haven't had the privilege of cleaning up any human expurganda.
Musick time: Double-choir motets by J M and J Chr Bach and J Pachelbel (and Ich lasse dich nicht, a J S Bach juvenilium). Gentle, tuneful, by turns sentimental and light-hearted, these pieces are a complete surprise for any person whose pigheaded preconceptions about Lutheran music are cruising for a bruising. With a compositional gambit so brilliant it makes me giddy, young J S, then a mere Bachlein, uses the hissing sounds of the phrase, "Ich lasse dich nicht", incessantly repeated in three voices, like a background of rustling aspen leaves against which he places the soberer edifice of the chorale tune canto firmo.
John Darnielle Update: JD has discovered Morrissey, lords bless us! This from a man whose Anti-Music Song refers to, "A second-rate songwriter from the eighties named Morrissey / I never liked Morrissey, and I never liked you..." JD hath recanted his heresy, and cleansed to lead a purer life, is spreading the Good News of the Moz, yea, even unto the heathen.