the best 10 minutes in which you'll be inspired to create

My beloved gave me a unique valentine last week: a playlist of classical music for my iPod.  I purchased each song he recommended on the premise that each song had a specific element of my personality within.

I want to say, before I forget to mention it, that my beloved is an amazing man who knows me better than I know myself.  I am delighted by his uncanny ability to discern my nuances far better than this silly introvert could ever manage.  One of the songs on my list was Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which delights my ears and my soul each time I listen.

That being said, I want to comment on how beautifully creative, complex and perfect Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is.  This has long been my very favorite piece of music, sifting above any modern-day creation, for its beauty, its symmetry and asymmetry and triad of complexity.  I have also long clung to the notion that those of us who regularly listen to classical music tend toward the intelligent and creative side of life (I mean, after all, if it's true for me, its true for the rest of the world, right?)  

At any rate, I am working on some graphic art design today, and after listening to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, I am creatively infused.  To anyone who isn't familiar with the piece, it's a work for pipe organ, which gives the piece its three-part complexity -- a part for left hand, a part for right hand, and the organ, or foot, part.  In a minor key, it is dark and shadowy in every corner, but also beautiful as it revels in intricacy, answering itself in humming, slow and fast and fast and slow, pausing only where you as a listener need to take a breath, bliss.  The sheer feat the performer completes by playing this piece, 10 minutes long in it's entirety, is reason enough to laud this creation to its end.  About 3 minutes into the piece, I begin to realize why I wanted this to be my wedding processional (at the risk of sounding a bit Goth.)

If you don't already have an appreciation for this song (or just want to know about which particular Bach organ piece I rave), visit http://www.classiccat.net/bach_js/913.htm to download this music for free.

My recommendation: sit in a dark, quiet area, find yourself some headphones, close your eyes, listen to the song and allow your ears and mind to be washed with the complex and complete beauty of one pipe organ and one fantastic piece of creative genius.

Wishing growth and beauty today!

26 questions I've always wanted the answer to

1) What's the best gift you've ever received, and why?

2) What one class would you like to re-attend (from grade school all the way up?)

3) What's the earliest phone number you've had that you can remember?

4) Describe your mood today by telling me which album you know that would most closely match it.

5) What made you pick the institution of higher education that you attended (or did not attend)?

6) Which of the following common ailments do you find most annoying, and for what reason? Chapped lips, paper cuts, blemishes.

7) Why would you / did you befriend a disorganized, melodramatic, neurotic brainiac like me?

8) Tell me the nicest compliment you can remember getting.

9) What's the world's best scent, and why?

10) Why is garlic in all the dishes that are served in "romantic" restaraunts?

11) What's the best part about the job you have right now?

12) Why did women decide to toss aside their dresses and shoes for pants and workboots? How come we don't dress like ladies anymore?

13) What do you imagine is said about you most often when you leave a room?

14) Who do you most miss in your life right now?

15) What do you think Mona Lisa is smiling at?

16) Of what ancestral heritage are you most proud to claim, and why?

17) What holiday do you most dread, and why?

18) Why, oh why, does Microsoft make god-forsaken counterintuitive products that still manage to get used in every organization I have ever worked for?

19) What do you think MY job entails (I know what I do, but I don't know what other people think...)

20) What ARE all the words to "It's the End of the World As We Know It?"

21) Tell me about a secret indulgence in which you love to partake, but not very many others know about.

22) What's the best "family name" you've got a claim to (IE, your uncle Egebert...)?

23) Quick - you're invited to a dinner party. What's the most tempting menu you hope to be offered?

24) When is the last time you hand-wrote and mailed (with postage) a paper letter?

25) Think way back: what was the best art project you ever did while in school? What made it so fantastic?

26) You're very, very late to something incredibly important one morning, and you are also wickedly hung over. You have to choose to do only one of the following: you either get to shower or drink caffeine. You can't do both; which do you pick, and why?