2008-02-28 - 11:44 a.m. Alex Ross's interesting piece on Carl Nielsen in a recent New Yorker piqued my interest, and I was pleased to see that Emusic has a lot of his compositions online. I've now heard enough to express a preference for his string quartets, but have no classical-music vocabulary to explain why, except that violins, in their screechiness and tremblesome beauty, seem capable of expressing his weird, mercurial, shifting emotions better than any other orchestral instrument. The other day in a yoga class the teacher, not a native English-speaker, made an instruction referring to our "private area." It got me a-thinkin'. I realize what she was referring to, but honestly, is the "private area" all that private anymore? Sure, we cover 'em up before we leave the house, but there are some folks who know our private areas fairly well. I'd say a worthy body part for the designation "private" would be the nose. No matter how much you love someone, you don't really want to get too close to the inside of his or her nose. That's private. thoughts? (7 comments so far) previous - next blog archive contact