Besides, Lord Vetinari, the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, rather liked music.
People wondered what sort of music would appeal to such a man. Highly formalized chamber music, possibly, or thunder-and-lightning opera scores.
In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe… well, the idea made him shudder. Although not much, because he never did anything to extremes.
I am a conductor and pianist with a decent level of absolute pitch who reads sheet music to myself like this all the time, and this description captures the synesthetic experience really well!
The weirdest part in my experience is that it’s easy to listen to an audiobook at the same time because the sections of the brain that process each of those things are totally separate, just how you can listen to music and study at the same time.
it’s easy to listen to an audiobook at the same time
This blows my mind and shows what a different experience this must be, compared to what I was imagining. I suppose you’ve been reading sheet music for a long time now? Almost like a second “language.” Do you enjoy reading sheet music?
I was in rural India for a friend’s wedding. They set up a giant tent pavilion to use as a dining hall, with fans hanging from the top. This was a ways away from the main house, but there were some power lines nearby so they just got power straight from the grid.
Also, day of the wedding, there was a large sound system for the musicians and priest. All the components were plugged into a power strip, which was powered by a couple loose wires stuffed into an outlet
Unfortunately India will also peak it’s population around 2040. My city already has a fertility rate of 1.4 I wish world was comfortable enough for people to be okay having kids
I was at a company once where they didn’t understand how bad this metric was. They worshipped this one guy who would work all night and have a record number of lines of code changed.
They thought he was a programming god.
I realized he knew how to do “refactor” in his IDE, and every day the class hierarchy would change
I usually just give myself a lot of room ahead of the car in front, slow down to a crawl, keep balance and keep slowing down to a very very slow crawl as long as possible while inching my way to the car in front. Half the time I finally put my foot down but half the time I get the timing right and never move my feet and make it through.
So satisfying when you can make through a busy intersection without putting your feet down. I feel it’s safer if you never put your feet down in an intersection because once you do, you’ve stopped, and once you’ve stopped, you’re a sitting target that will take time to react and move. If you’ve planned and kept an eye out the whole time and your feet are up, at least you know where to go and go quickly if you have to and get out of the intersection and away from a dangerous place.
I highly recommend the book “We Have No Idea” by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whitesom. Great explanations of what we know about the universe (with hilarious comic illustrations) and a profound message of just how much we don’t know.
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