We have thousands of human-written stories, discussions, interviews and reviews from today through the past 20+ years. Find them here:

Search the site Search

November 18, 2004 at 4:08 AM

High tech is wonderful. Only recently have I noticed the ads on my screen on different pages of violinist.com. When my most recent blog entry was about Ansel Adams, the ads were for books, prints, and posters relating to Ansel Adams. When I wrote about depression and suicide, the ads were for self help books for troubled people, mainly teens. I suppose that the scanner picked up the words “depression,” “suicide,” and “students.” Now the ads on my blog are for anti-spam software. I wonder whether this is a default option when the scanner doesn’t pick up anything that the software engineer considered interesting. I checked the “Bach for Pauline” thread, and that page had ads for recordings of Bach’s music, which said software engineer must have considered sufficiently interesting. I thought that some of the ads were interesting, too. My favorite is the one for an Internet site at which you can download, entirely for free, your ten favorite songs by Bach.

I’ve been having so many different emotions, all of them intense. I feel hurt, angry, ashamed, and scared. After I write about my feelings, I feel wrung out, and I just crash. I have also been practicing escapism. I don’t watch television, except on Election Night, but I cruise around the Internet for hours. I do shopping on ebay, check out forums on some of my favorite sites, argue politics, read the news, and follow links. There are a few things that I actually enjoy doing: walking, photography, and, of course, playing my violin. Last night I practiced for hours, mainly Bach’s Partita in E. I’ve always loved listening to the S&Ps, but I had assumed that playing them was far beyond my reach until Scott Bosley, of violinist.com, encouraged me to try. I was inspired to try them again after reading “Bach for Pauline.” I’m finding the thread on intonation in this piece interesting and helpful. Music takes me out of myself and puts me in touch with something much bigger. I’m blessed that way.