A Short Paragraph About You

[gurdonark]

An on-line friend from Goteburg sent me two samples of a Swedish instrument called a nyckelharpa. It's got a great sound--like a cross among a zither, a fiddle, a dulcimer and something indefinable. I'm using it to mine samples to slice, but I admire the samples as they stand now, unadorned.

Today marked another very busy day. I am tired.

The newspaper advised that this January is the most rainy since 1898. We do extremes well where I live. Other places are warmer, other places are colder, but we have compelling contrasts.

I like a meme that is going around the internet these days. I'm impressed, too, with the aplomb people bring to this meme.
Thus, I'm going to incorporate that meme into this post, and issue you an invitation:

I'd be delighted to write you a short paragraph about how cool you are, and what I like about you and your journal. There are but three rules:

a. you may not write back to deny any compliments paid;
b. you need not duplicate my feat in your journal;
c. you shall not turn inot a winged monkey.

I reserve the right to:

a. write a long paragraph, or more than one
b. wax effusively
c. go off on tangents
d. give unexpected praise

As you know, I like to start these things with a silly word in reply.

If you are interested, could you reply--

"All about me"

Comments

all about me me me me

[asphalteden.livejournal.com]

I'd like to reserve the right to turn into a flying monkey.

You, sir, may monkey around with flying at your leisure

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

When I read your journal, I always feel as if I know the person who is writing the journal, both the things said and the things unsaid. Even though we are so very dissimilar, we start from some common assumptions about reflection, loyalty and seeking out one's own meanings in one's experience.

I'm impressed by your knowledge of music, but not in that Hi Fidelity "gee, I'll bet you know the Eels' third B side" way. I know that some of our figurative gap in musical depth of knowledge arises from age difference, in that my tastes typically at about your age were perhaps a bit more ear-to-the-ground than they are now.

I like that we met through the hypnos.com bulletin board, which, for all its ups and downs, is nonetheless a good housekeeping seal of approval, although I miss the days when ambient stars wrote me to say, as in one instance "your weblog opened the lotus for me", as it is my personal suspicion that weblogs, grand and good things, ever open any loti any more.

I like that you're a family man by habit and choice when it might have been possible, given your evolution, to have chosen different paths. I like that you like your job, and I no doubt have some secret feeling of hidden stardust within because I know a man who does one of the great and good acts of positive good in popular culture, putting out a magazine much more important to me as a classic dissemination of culture than is the New Yorker or Poetry.

I like that you love the Church, not because I love the Church (I merely like them), but because when I read how you love the Church then I know where you are coming from, even if, theoretically speaking, you're the wrong generation to truly love them. Speaking of which, on the plane last night they played a Cure concert and, because robert smith is 45ish and he's still a great performer but he looks ready for pensions, I felt old in a way I rarely do.

I wish I had gotten my wife to go with me last April to the American livebearers Association meeting in New Jersey, sot that we could have met you and your wife. Even allowing for the inherent silences and oddities that attend meeting any virtual friend, I think we'd enjoy that. I have a key client in your state, and someday I'm sure I'll visit there.

I like that you like Ogden Nash. I have enjoyed the care packages you've sent from time to time. I like that I know that you will one day be a differently published writer than you are now, and I like that you really rather know it, too, but know it's not something you need rush, and something that working carefully will make it happen more than talking incessantly about it.

I like that you have an interesting and eclectic mix of livejournal friends, and I doubt I would have met people I find fascinating such as rebirtha but for reading your journal.

I like that you're introspective. I like that you're opinionated. I like that you set up that ambient review site, though I think it's a shame we don't use it more.

I like that you love old movies and classical music and odd german 70s/80s music and that you assemble party ensembles to watch sinbad movies.

I like that you're always open to learn more, but you don't just grab onto facts for anecdoctal value.

I like your pungent and sharp sense of self-effacing humour.

I like the way you take your imperfections and treat them as normalcies.

I loved that you liked the sound of your wife tap-dancing.

I hope you get assigned to take trips to Scandinavia to promote your magazine.

It's been such a pleasure to get to know you, and I could go on for paragraphs more.

[asphalteden.livejournal.com]

Oh, these are the most thoughtful and kind things anybody has ever written to me. Thank you.