Comments on: Influence, Links

By: Jed

Jed — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:53:13 +0000

I'm surprised that Nico can't understand why anyone would want to date a vegan. Even Bill Buford, arch-carnivore that he is, acknowledges in a New Yorker piece that "no one has ever really come up with a persuasive rejoinder to the claim that a warm-blooded, pain-feeling creatureâ€s life shouldnâ€t be taken for your supper." I'm pleased to see that Nico eventually says "live and let live" regarding other people's lifestyles, and as a vegan I take the same approach. But there are good reasons to be a vegan, and the characteristics that often motivate the choice (compassion, sensitivity, self-sacrifice) can be good reasons to date someone.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:03:58 +0000

So great to hear your thoughts on Adams! I have to say I really love El NiÃ±o. When I first heard it, I was literally stunned and couldn’t believe what I had just heard. In subsequent experiences with the piece, the awe is just that much more profound. One of my favorite moments is “Shake the Heavens”. It just makes all my hair stand on end, especially when the chorus slams into “And I will fill this house with glory and in this place I will give peace.” Oh what power and what elation! It’s just yummy!

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:37:34 +0000

Ta conscience t’honore.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:54:44 +0000

Calvados on a peach tart !! Be careful with what you write here, there are some french people reading this blog ! I think my heart stopped for a second or two. Calvados goes on the tarte tatin (made with apples or pears). Glad to see your mom will not let you blaspheme.

Nico says: I know! I know! And I write this space so quickly, these things just slip out. I could have cheated, by the way, and edited it, but once I press “POST” if feel obliged to keep it the way it originally appeared!

By: killian

killian — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:38:16 +0000

you are an absolutely exquisite writer (all organ-consuming aside) and you give good interiew,too; laughed out loud THREE TIMES through the Newyorker piece (the Glenn Gould comment was outrageous). Love how you explain your joy at hearing new John Adams (ah, Shaker Loops!). as a dancer/choreographer, I experience that same thrill when seeing a new work by Mark Morris or Trisha Brown–it is INDEED just Too Exciting.

thank you.

By: tim

tim — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:23:10 +0000

bcz i am totally lame i hadnt heard of you till i read that article in the nyer but anyway then i came here + i see that you’ve just been to st john! so exciting. that’s my fav restaurant.

Nico responds: yes, it’s the best thing ever. I was just shuddering at the memory of the pig’s spleen, so delicious.

By: Susan W.

Susan W. — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:23:45 +0000

I shall not comment re the Dr. Atomic piece other than to say I found it quite thrilling. Of course, my ear is not so keen as yours, so I accept your remarks about the timpani as perhaps being so…but it made my heart race nonetheless.

Too late to get tics for The Kitchen, alas, but I have contented myself with a purchase of your new CD.

Were my dear Armenian grandmother alive today, she would purchase a cow’s head from the market, plunge it into boiling water and prepare black butter and brains…a feast I had many times as a child. You would, of course, be invited for dinner, Nico.

Kind regards.

By: Marc Geelhoed

Marc Geelhoed — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:45:09 +0000

I get that weak-in-the-knees feeling from Britten’s Dawn from the Four Sea Interludes, and Barber’s Sure on this Shining Night always turns me to a small puddle of jelly, but that may just be the sentimentalist taking over for 3 minutes.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:12:09 +0000

I had my first John Adams experience when I was seventeen, playing Harmonielehre on third clarinet. It was the last piece on the last concert of this summer program I went to. I cried. (There’s only about three pieces that have ever had this effect on me.) It blew me away then, it still does now; I kindof have mixed feelings about his music in general. But I’ve always had a place in my heart for Meister Eckhardt and Quackie.

The Boulez connection’s a little harder to hear–but you like the later stuff? Répons, Sur Incises and all that. A lot of his compositions from the last twenty years come off more as special effects than as music, to me. Pretty effects, you know, but.

Also, I downloaded Speaks Volumes this week. I love Clear Music, look forward to hearing stuff from the new album.

PS, I can’t say I share your love of organs and entrails, but I wouldn’t hold it against you. Which is not to say you have any right to speak against the Wonders of Tempeh.

By: Bunny

Bunny — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:50:51 +0000

mirabelle or poire williams or kirsch but never calvados for a peach tart

love you ,mom

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:59:22 +0000

Various and sundry organs are all well and good, but MARROW? That’s to DIE for

By: Aeijtzsche

Aeijtzsche — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:30:36 +0000

Oh, and about that inter-special-diet dating article…it does kind of get out of hand. It’s not worth damaging a relationship over it. I generally avoid dairy products because they make me sick, and I tend to avoid meat too, for various reasons. But I’d gladly plunge my hand into the coelum of an endangered species and retrieve and enjoy eating it’s spleen if that was important to a guy. It’s just not a big deal to me. The meat-eating, that is. I imagine coelum-hand-plunging would be kind of a big deal.

Stuff like:

“shivering at the thought of kissing someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea.

Ben Abdalla, 42, a real estate agent in Boca Raton, Fla., said he preferred to date fellow vegetarians because meat eaters smell bad and have low energy.”

is just kind of nuts. Then again, nuts are tasty…

Anyway, whatever.

By: Aeijtzsche

Aeijtzsche — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:18:02 +0000

I–and this is all absolutely true–was once browsing the CD area in a Borders bookstore when I turned to see a poster advertising that an album-worth of Mahavishnu Orchestra (from the original line-up) tapes had been found in some vault, and that the tapes would be furnishing an upcoming Mahavishnu Orchestra release. At the time I was really into the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and upon reading the poster, my legs involuntarily turned to jello (one might even say they palsied), I collapsed to the floor and was struck with this “auditory vision” of what the album sounded like. The vision turned out to be inaccurate, but my friends tell me that I was flopping around on the floor of this bookstore for quite a few minutes.

And then when I bought the album I was too excited to listen to it for…a few weeks at least.

Sorry this wasn’t an inter-disciplinary example.

By: flavorflanks

flavorflanks — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:10:30 +0000

if you’re back in NYC be sure to go to Resto and have the deviled egg on “pork toast” made of swine jowl.