I have a huge Chinese dictionary with thousands of characters in it. Lately I’ve been writing the characters down one at a time, fitting the meaning of each mostly into a single line. And when a character is also used in Japanese writing, I’ve included its pronunciation in that language. (My computer has fonts for writing Chinese and Japanese characters.) I’m almost finished, and all that’s left is some of the characters under the water radical.
As I work on this summary, I’ve been listening to classical music on YouTube. Stuff like symphonies and concerti and sonatas. A lot of it I was already familiar with: there are a couple of melodies I remember hearing when I was young, and I’m hoping to hear them again somewhere. One of my favourite piano concerti is Edvard Grieg’s A Minor piece. I read somewhere that when Grieg was a boy he spent a lot of his time in dreams, which sounds like me. Just now I’m listening to Chopin’s polonaises: he composed over two hours worth!
Before that I heard all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas. Hearing them today, these sonatas are a revelation. I think my favourite is the one called “Appassionata.” There’s one melody that I’m pretty sure I heard in a TV commercial back in the 1960s, for bathroom tissue or something. I used to play piano when I was young. I could play just about all of Mozart’s sonatas, and some of Haydn’s. But Beethoven’s sonatas were out of my league!
On the other hand, my sister Moira was playing piano in university, and I got to hear her playing just about all of Beethoven’s sonatas. Listening to them now, I remember hearing them back then. I was really lucky to be exposed to all this incredible music at that age.
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