It looks like a Sibelius album cover outside.  It's mid-February:
aleatoric clouds dance impotently in the sky, two dogs spin their
mimimalist song in the distance, and serialist ice creeps inexorably
across the terrain in strands of dispassionate polyphony - it's all very
beautiful but oh, how I prefer the cruelties of April!

To snap out of my depression I went to Tower.  And there he was:  Thalaba.
(Hmm.  Don't see too many import-types in Tower these days.) Wow - could he
be for real? I had to know more about him - what he was about; what he did
for a living - but I can't be too forward.  I purposely pushed over a stack
of Bach2000 sets on top of him to initiate some small talk, and then
finally I asked for his business card.  Surprisingly he gave it to me.
I pretended not to be interested in looking and just put the card in my
pocket.  (Though I did see a "D-something" under his name.  Dodecaphonist?
Deconstructionist? I would be so typical of the guys I've been meeting
lately.)

What the hell.  With all the feigned indifference of a scientist on the
verge of discovery or disappointment, I looked.

"You're...you're a destroyer??? I said incredulously.  My temples pounded
and my temperature rose in a way that hasn't happened since locking myself
in my bedroom as a teenager listening to the 1812 Overture for the first
time--one hand holding liner notes open to a centerfold featuring the big
canon used in the recording, and the other hand on my bass knob.  If only
my pleasures could have always remained so simple.

I had to think of something further to say, so I started rifling through
the CD's next to me in order to buy time.  Ah, cruel fate:  it happened to
be the Famous Women Composers bin - now what do I do?!? Wait!  I thought
of something.

"So, you must have quite an extensive percussion section."

"Yeah, actually." He said.  "You want to see it?"

On the way home, he described it.  It sounded fantastic, but how will
he use it? Will he grab the biggest mallet available and bang away? Or
will Bantock intercede, like a parent intercepting a child who wants the
give that proverbial Bell of Indulgence--once grand but now brittle and
cracked--one last whack? (This Bell can be seen sitting outside the Hall
of the Good and the Bad.  The hall was closed when I visited; maintenance
men could be seen going in and out with huge swaths of expensive-looking,
looks like...toga material.  I wonder what it's for?)

To be continued....

John Smyth