To a certain extent, if it's a live performance and someone notices a wrong note, they're more likely to think "Eh, shit happens. I'm sure he'd get all the right notes if we weren't sitting her making him nervous" than they are likely to think it an unpardonable slight against the integrity of the composer and the very institution of Serious Music.

Now I'm listening to a Glenn Gould CD I haven't heard for a few months. Him playing and conducting Wagner, and at this particular moment it's "Dawn" and "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Gotterd�mmerung. This is one of those unnerving Gould recordings where every once in a while it becomes apparant that he can't possibly be playing all those notes with just 2 hands. And some of them stick out like splinters, infinitessimally out of synch with the torrent of brittle, pre-recorded notes gushing past.

I agree with those who say that, for all the thought-provoking elements of his playing, Glenn Gould was a vulgar pianist; and I think that the quality of condescension and dismissiveness Virgil Thomson attempted to convey with his remark about Horowitz ("a master of distortion and exaggeration") could have been more suitably applied to Gould 15 years later (particularly if the comment was followed by a snooty huff... or a hooty snuff).

But that's not to say that I disrespect Gould's accomplishments or his obvious talent, not to mention the quality of some of his recorded performances. I find certain of his recordings (such as this Wagner CD) to be spellbinding, and I've listened to this CD hundreds of times.

So many critics, both professional and armchair, demonstrate their lack of understanding of a performer by declaring as negatives those qualities which make a performer unique and even great. Virgil Thomson, in his endless attempts to debunk the Horowitz phenomenon in the 50's, ended up demonstrating little more than his own misunderstanding and intolerance of the 19th century romantic piano school of which Horowitz was the final and most heroic exponent.

To me, those passages where Gould dubbed in a third hand or third-and-fourth hands seem comical and even preposterous. Whenever such a passage comes along (one is playing right now as I'm typing) it's as if Glenn Gould fancied himself the Roadrunner from Saturday morning cartoondom. He planned it from the start, of course, but it seems like such an out, such an escape, as if Gould's encounters a level of complexity too intricate for anything but a player piano prompts him to high-tail it outta there... Beep-meep vrooooooom!

I guess you never see the Roadrunner laughing, do you. There's always that smartypants grin, as there is with Glenn Gould, but only the flimsiest display of self-satisfaction is found.

I think of the Roadrunner and Barbie dolls as being of the same ilk, in the sense that if the Barbie Doll was a living thing it would behave just like the Roadrunner. Always hurrying away, looking busy, apparently having places to go, people to see, hearts to break. Too desirable and perfect to waste time with anybody. Never letting anyone get close enough so that they could find out for themselves if all the sarcastic fantasies privately thriving in their brains are anything more than disappointment itself waiting to occur.

People like that are like corporations. Trying to get close to them is like trying to reach Customer Service. For lack of any useful information or perspective, they are impenetrable entities against which lonely outsiders project paranoid, desperate delusions.

Between that last sentence and this one, I got up and walked around the apartment, attempting to bind shut the gap of sensibility that lingers between that last paragraph and the one before it, and in the process of fidgeting and thinking about it I think I may have accidentally dumped some Listerine into my aquarium.

What this apartment needs is some more plastic eating utensils. If there were more plastic cups here, I would not have thought to fill the pump with water from the same cup I use for mouthwash.

Burp.