Philip Glass, Minimalist

Dear Philip Glass,

I have been studying your music for a few months now. Please understand, when I say study I am making no claims upon scholarship. I just mean that I'm concentrating on your music and theater pieces. I'm doing some reading then I'm listening again and reading some more.

Sure, I have some things to say after all my thinking and listening. This is why, this is why, this is why, why, why I like blogs. For I may publish my thinking to the world without peer review or edit (besides my own) and perhaps someone else reads and comments, agrees, disagrees. "You are out of your mind. Have you read what Nadia Boulanger had to say?" "No, but Persichetti was scathing!"

Who's there ?
Knock Knock ?
Who's there ?
Knock Knock ?
Who's there ?
Knock Knock ?
Who's there ?
Philip Glass.

So that's why I love to write blogs and express my opinions on the things I read and hear. And I'm sure you understand.

If I were to try to convince someone to start listening to your music, I would tell them that they already like your music. It's like if someone in the 30's and 40's tried to convince someone to enjoy the writing of William Faulkner. *Movie goers were already enjoying it whether they realized it or not in the form of movies like Today We Live, The Road to Glory, Slave Ship, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Land of the Pharoahs. But that was Faulkner.

Wide America is already enjoying your music in the form of The Truman Show.

Truman. Truman. Truman. Come back.
The unknowing public also loved you while they watched The Hours

And others. But that really isn't the point either. What is the point? What is? What? Who's point? Point is? Music that touches? Whose soul? Why do you care if they hear this music? Didn't he just open a new theater piece in New York? Did you see it, hear it, must run, good to see you, talk to you soon.

So when I sit in the car with my twenties something children and I say, listen to this just for a minute and then put on whatever music you like. They say. I like this. And I am satisfied for their souls have been touched too. And I really didn't have to convince them.

A friend of mine gave me a Philip Glass record. I listened to it for five hours before I realized it had a scratch on it.

So what I meant to say is, I like your music.

Betsy

*Note: Faulkner said his work on the script for The Southerner was the best that he did. However, he is not credited with the work because it was produced by United Artists and he was under contract with Warner Bros.