Step one: make whirligigs

Currently at Toronto Pearson: 3. It's been rising slowly since 9 last night from -6 . In Bancroft, which I may or may not be reporting more on in the future, it started rising from -21 at 1 a.m. to 0 currently.

Went to see Nick Buzz, featuring Martin Tielli, last night. There are two things I love about Martin--at least these two things that bring tears to my eyes when I see and hear him perform. The first has to do with something I was talking about with one of my students lately, in relation to sports. He had written something about the aesthetics of power in sports, and I said that part of what appeals to me in sports is something I might call an aesthetics of precision. Precision is something I might say appeals to me generally aesthetically ... but then I started mulling this over yesterday morning, thinking about my deep love of Chopin, thinking that it would seem odd to say that Chopin--as opposed to Bach, or Mozart--has anything to do with precision ... but seeing and hearing Martin perform last night showed what it is in Chopin, in the performance of Chopin, appeals to an aesthetics of precision: it's exactly not clockwork, but it's control of a sort, a kind of deliberateness, stretching out a note, considering it, reaching out and snapping it off just there--I think of the opening four chords of Chopin's g-minor Prelude, which need to be hung over and stung down just so. But I'm not sure the other thing I love about Martin is different--in a word I would call it "emergence".

Hey look, another whirligig!