Nico
Muhly,

Here is a link to a story of a very particularly heartbreaking genre. I am really excited to follow this as it develops and will be Very Sad if British Privacy Concerns get in the way of my getting to the bottom of it! I have an enormous “capacity” (if that’s the word) for stories (both fictional and real) about missing people, or people who have come back from a long illness or disappearance to find the world changed. Another such book was Clare Sambrook’s Hide & Seek which I very strongly recommend.

I just got a piece of spam whose entire text reads:

affine affine slog demean orthonormal relayed bisexual afro duration elijah frugal cluster spy relayed nostradamus fiery buttock bitt fiery spy sensate relayed slog apportion elliott amadeus cachalot curlicue bisexual stifle shako invertebrate twelfth attentive attentive principle apportion bison rage amadeus motherland hater invertebrate nostradamus cachalot twosome womb frugal motherland hater affine amadeus lithuania these stifle spy demean elliott curlicue afro slog gainful elijah demean cachalot amadeus

Which I think is pretty great. Slog Apportion Elliott Amadeus feels like a whole meme. Twosome Womb Frugal Motherland is the title of my next album, without a doubt, either that or, like, the Arvo Pärt / Kristín Valtýsdóttir collaboration we’ve all been waiting for!

As part of my research for my Electric Violin Concerto, I uncovered this amazing YouTube video of Carl Sagan talking about the constellations. Listen to the music about a minute and a half in. I feel like a lot of people my age or slightly older will forever associate this kind of music with capital-S Science.

So good, right? That’s almost as good as these Philip Glass + Sesame Street Color Wheel things:

I hope there is a generation of kids who were 5 years old in 1977 (that means you, Taye Diggs and Drea De Matteo) who can’t think about primary colors without hearing:

Speaking of which, I hope you are all coming to hear Einstein tomorrow at Carnegie. No excuses! 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.