Random musical thoughts

• Why don’t I own any music by Tanita Tikaram?
• A fantasy of mine, which I doubt anyone else shares: wouldn’t it be just the most amazing thing if the Latin Playboys (Los Lobos spinoff / side project) recorded an album using the Harry Partch Instruments? Does anybody even know what I’m talking about?
• Is Islamic music allowed to have imagery? Their visual art isn’t, which is why there is so much abstract and pattern-based stuff in their culture (e.g. The Alhambra).
• One of my favorite pastimes is to watch television or movies with the sound feed off, replaced by music from my stereo. It’s amazing how frequently the video and audio “work.”* I’m sure this is due to some sort of wiring in our brains that coerces us into putting disparate things together (even if they have to be subliminally fudged). It’s the same phenomenon that allows us to solve puzzles and explains our propensity for seeing (mostly) human faces and figures in abstract milieux.

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* note to self: coin term for this activity and submit to appropriate lexical authorities.

 

Lexical Nebulosity

Just having a bit of fun with a little Internet thingamajig called Wordle. I used my blog’s address as the source.

 

It’s raining again

No, this isn’t a post about the Supertramp song. Instead, I’m revisiting the subject of cats and dogs, which I mined in an earlier post. I’ve always thought that it’s curious how some seemingly analogous compound words containing “cat” and “dog” often have such divergent meanings. I’ve augmented the list of common phrases with some gleanings from the OED and other dictionaries. I think it’s worth remarking that there is a sexist or chauvinistic flavor to some of the definitions.