The people downstairs are cooking something. It scares me sometimes when I can smell their smoke.

This post actually isn't about that. That just happened to be what was going on right now. I'm a little nervous because it smells somewhere in the area between 'done' and 'burned,' and I kept thinking I was smelling smoke. So, if they burn down their apartment, mine will burn down too. I think the ovens always smell like they're burning, though, at least, that's how it smells to me upstairs.

I almost had a 'crazy attack' and almost tried to send an email to Rick, because he posted a couple blog posts on his Ukraine blog, and my response was something like 'Oh my gosh! He exists!' And merely because he exists, I have to say something to him. I start getting these ideas that he WANTS me to talk to him. Meanwhile, he actually knows and interacts with hundreds of people. I am just one weirdo buried underneath the hundreds of other weirdos, and normal people, trying to email him.

The idea that I was going to email him about was, I was thinking of asking him if he ever listened to Alan Hovhaness. I discovered Alan Hovhaness one night when I was working two jobs, and I drove my car from one job to the other, and sat in the parking lot playing a public radio station for a few minutes. The one that came on was the first part, 'Largo,' of 'Concerto for harp & string orchestra, Op. 267,' with the harp played by Yolanda Kondonassis. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004S8A8/ref=wms_ohs_product_T2.

Rick likes Rachmaninoff. Ayn Rand also loved Rachmaninoff. She said that he was one of the few, or perhaps the only, composer who ever came close to expressing that feeling she had, that sense of life. She liked only a couple parts of a couple songs. I tried listening to it once, but it didn't work for me - I think I borrowed a copy of something from the library, and I forget which one it was.

Since then I've learned that a song can be really great, but if it's played the wrong way by the wrong person, it can completely ruin it. Sometimes a song sounds mechanical and other times it sounds expressive if it's played by different people. I don't recall which one I tried to listen to. I've been curious lately to try again and see if I found any that had the spirit that I myself am looking for, and can't find, in music (which is the reason why I need to write it, because it doesn't exist).

Alan Hovhaness is something I can listen to for variety. I got another CD and didn't like it much at all. I only have two, and the one that I like is the CD I linked to above. I can't listen to it forever, because it doesn't express everything I need. But it's totally different from everything you hear in modern pop music, so it's refreshing. It's a non-Western musical scale, sometimes. It has an Indian or Arabian sound. He actually traveled to several different countries and learned their music. The ones I like on that CD are #4, #6, and #11. The rest are just sort of okay, but yet, I can listen to them repeatedly, because they are so unusual.

So that was the 'crazy attack,' but I didn't actually email him. I just sort of got ready to do it, and didn't do it.