"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine?"

Sorry, Mr. Rogers, I'm a hermit. Yes, indeed, the weather is gorgeous...it's like the middle of March somehow was transposed into the middle of January here in Oklahoma. Nevertheless, I cannot bring myself to put on some shoes and get out into it. No doubt, this is a sympton of a serious mental condition that I have.



I haven't listened to anything so far today...I got caught up in the last half of The Sand Pebbles on American Movie Classics, and just haven't got around to the stereo yet. AMC used to be such a great station, with all those classic movies shown uncut and without commercials. What happened? Oh, they still show some good fare, but everything's littered with advertisements. I HATE COMMERCIALS!

Last night I grooved to the sounds of Planet Chant, a compilation CD of various types of "chant", most of which is set to trip-hop/ambient musical settings. This was a promotional copy that was sent to the CD store where I used to work by our distributor (who were not extremely generous in the amount of promos they gave us, but every once in awhile...), and it looked like something I might appreciate. Seeing as how it was NOT something any of my co-workers would appreciate, I took the liberty of taking it home for myself. I already had a couple of CDs of Tantric Buddhist chants as well as Chants Of India by Ravi Shankar and some Gregorian chants as well. I admit it. I like the stuff. And Planet Chant turned out to be just as entertaining/relaxing/moving/insert-expected-response-here.

Listening to that one got me in the mood for more, so I slapped one of my Gregorian chant CDs into the player directly afterwards and it lulled me to sleep (and, perhaps not coincidentally, into some of the most bizarre dreams I've had in a long, long time).

The only other things I really listened to yesterday were the self-titled album by All Together Seperate (a Christian group that employs funky bass lines, incredible vocal harmonies and, on some tracks, a crack horn section), and a tape of jazz music that I recorded from DMX Satellite Radio way back in 92 (I have 15 90-minute tapes full of this, but I never bothered to get song titles or artist information for any of it...some might find that unacceptable, but the amateurishness of it is actually kind of endearing to me).

correspondence: jamesarthur69@hotmail.com