Some people are better than me at several things. Or, why I want to have Jeremy Denk's babies...

There's this guy, Jeremy Denk. He's a brilliant concert pianist and a very witty writer. I don't actually know Jeremy Denk. I'm just a big fan. Also, I decided the first time I read his blog/heard one of his recordings that I want to do him. (**Anywhere, anytime, Jeremy...) His writing, although over-wrought with excessive allusions and metaphors, is clever, insightful, and peppered with musicological factoids and handy audio clips that make me weak in the knees. Normally, I'd keep this most damning of information to myself (I realize this is possibly the nerdiest thing I've ever written). But recently, Jeremy posted a blog about Sarah Palin I just couldn't resist sharing. It may not be funny to you unless you have wasted your time earning a degree in music, have performed or analyzed Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata, or know a bit about Schenkerian analysis, but trust me, it's hilarious.

Also, you can listen to Jeremy play a bit of Ives here.

And just for fun, here's his description (from an older post) of performing a piece by Igor Stravinsky and attending a post-performance dinner with sponsors:

"And Igor, Igor, if you have three notes why must they all be five miles apart? Why are my poor exhausted hands mere jerky puppets of your disjointed imagination? I longed for smooth, adjacent notes without articulation, without acrid wit: I longed for a soothing milkshake of music, gliding down my mental esophagus, towards my awaiting, lactose-tolerant soul. My meal was wet, but my music was dry, and I longed for vice versa.

After the Stravinsky concert was a truly bizarre spectacle: a meal for the festival sponsors, in the spectacular nave of St. Bart’s, proving that if sponsors wish to drink three kinds of flavored vodka in a church, they most certainly will. All hail sponsors! The meal was pretty unbelievably great and I set to the twenty courses with a vengeance to recover all the calories Stravinsky’s leaping had cost me. I was asked if I was single (oh, yes, yes, yes) and was offered a glowing description of a recently divorced 30-something daughter who is looking for a good man. It occurred to me: if they were to consider a pianist a good prospect, then their standards must be fluctuating, or collapsing. But caraway vodka could account for their lack of judgment.

The Lord looked down on us all, feasting and boozing and matchmaking in His or Her house."