Something New

The last few days have been unreasonably and unexpectedly busy at work. But the next few days offer a respite I'm happy to say. The unexpectedness is, in part, related to trying to deal with a radically altered shape to the school year. In its own way this is interesting, so there's a kind of novelty about the situation which takes the edge off the negative aspects somehow.

It's a measure of just how busy I've been that when the new Dylan album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, arrived yesterday in its CD form from those good people at amazon.com I didn't actually play it immediately. Astonishing. Of course, I was familiar with three of the brilliant tracks from it already, but I'd manfully held back from other songs appearing on-line since ordering the CDs, so not playing it was, as I say, little short of astonishing. (Don't worry, I put the omission right this evening, and will happily repeat that when my head hits the pillow later to its eminently soothing sounds.)

What I did play from my order yesterday was the gorgeous become desert by John Luther Adams. The sort of ambient qualities of the piece meant I could play it as background whilst working without feeling dreadfully torn, something that wasn't going to happen with Dylan. Indeed, it strikes me that playing any Dylan as background is almost impossible: he drags you in; you feel the newness of the words anew each time, even when they're old; there's always another nuance of the playing, the phrasing, the whole feel, to catch.