it's glenn gould's birthday today.

i had cbc news cranked this morning during the morning croissants and the station had tecnical difficulties throughout the ENTIRE glenn gould THING which you know is just kinda my luck.

i'm obsessed with these people, these music makers or makers of music about 10 - 15 years too late and it is just SO UNFAIR.

i'm re-reading the johnny cash biography, which i lent to the landscaper and he brought it back and tried to talk to me about it and there was so much i forgot, so i started re-reading. ANYWAY his manager from the 1970's to until he stopped recording was from London Ontario. He proposed to June in Toronto. I mean it sucks like hell that I never see him perform, that I just barely barely missed it, but there's also all these weird other geographical nearnesses. so i had my afternoon nap and dreamed about him, that i lived in a cabin next door to him and i should just get up the courage to go over and say hi WHICH is very telling about something else in my life, but there ya go.

ANYWAY

if you know me or don't know me you should know this about me...

i have a strange obsession with gould, that is on par with my joyce obsession EXCEPT the gould obsession is different in that...it's an obsession like i'm obsessed with stephen dedealus or molly bloom (the original not the fuzzy one). which doesn't make complete sense, using the joyce formula (and jon the physicist could help me out here) i should be obsessed with bach, who wrote the music not with gould who played it, as i would be obsessed with joyce who made dedealus.

the obsession is rooted i believe in my grandparents somehow who used to play this horrible AM radio station that made those horrible AM radio station noises, and they'd play a lot of opera type stuff, some big band, some plan bad, and of course gould. i think my grandmother may have 'seen' him, but i may be mixing that up with trudeau who i believe she kissed. my grandmother was a good looking women when she was younger.

ANYWAY

so then i start wondering why do i have this thing for gould? and the artist and i talk about it, and he decides it's the flaws of gould, as i cite that i loved when the cbc re-released unedited versions of the goldberg variations and if you turn it up you can hear gould hummmmmm, through the entire recording. so i ask the artist WHY would they take that out? and he said because it's a flaw. and looking at the long list of men i've been with, or been accussed of being with (some of them are just ridiculous) i suppose it's somewhat easy to agree with him, that i have this fascination or obsession with the flawed. but then i think what is flawed? i mean at what point is something or some situation flawed? i don't believe the humming is a flaw, i believe it's amazing and brilliant and weird and i dunno....i dunno how to talk about classical music and i'm gonna let a fuckin awesome slip, but that's what it's like. i put it on, and stop and stare and listen, really really listen. it's amazing. the way his voice goes with the music, the way his voice leads his fingers over the keys. i suppose the older guys, the guys who aren't employed in the jobs they could or should be, the guys with tattoos (which is the simpliest of all self inflicted flaws...as oppossed to say? marriage) the piercings, and unattainable, the drugs, the drinking, in retrospect i've had them all and i guess that certainly isn't flaw-less...clearly walking talking imperfections.

but gould is perfect to me.

just as they were all at some point perfect to me.

i didn't want this to turn into a weird introspective sparring session.

i really just wanted to say happy birthday glenn.

i'm gonna crank the goldbergs, maybe take molly for her evening walk around the just named glenn gould plaza by metro hall, and walking down toronto streets, fuzz bucket strutting along side, i'll hummmmm as much i can remember as celebration.