Monday 28 December 2020

Yule 2020

I forgot this! The smallest and calmest Christmas celebration I've yet seen, left more room than usual for farther (and maybe deeper?) reaching contemplation. I've enjoyed the solitude this year, but I understand many haven't as much, I hope it's been ok still.

Schradieck is painful -_- Is this the best way to round off an important annual post? Yes. Well, could end with saying that I've started working on BWV1004 Gigue again, lovely energetic piece.

Monday 7 December 2020

So much chess

Except there wasn't much chess? Just finished Queen's Gambit, took my time with it since it was a nice watch, and it's been praised left and right. Overall fine, but the last episode was incredibly rushed and the protagonist unlocked her super-power on a whim. Anime battles are more complex. And as is usual, the main topic, the game of chess, felt like a vessel for the real story, with character and envirmontal development, although there was pretty much only character development here. I enjoyed the characters, it was all quite straightforward without crazy twisterinos. Add cool thematic jargon, snazzy clothes and wallpapers, no insight at all into what is going on with the main subject, and that's the recipe we all know and love. Oh right, the protagonist is an intuitive genious, cannot let that be demystified. I wanted to see more chess, and I hate the game, funny.

That is why The Wire is so bloody excellent. It focuses on a huge cast of characters and their dynamics in the world without the fluff. No veneer, no theme, no questing, what might seem to start with cops vs gangsters becomes, uh, everything? Personalities, their lot in life, let time pass and have them mix and match, and we get what we get. Yeah I'm no critic, but honestly The Wire is so difficult to pin down.

It's been a busy fall, in many ways. Vacations are coming up, gonna enjoy my brand new Müsing C3! Right now actually.

EDIT 2020-12-16: I watched some analysis videos of the games in Queen's Gambit. There's quite a lot going on in the depicted games, and seeing other options and the pivotal moves when games were adjourned or turned is really nice. Exactly what I had hoped to know more about while watching the show... What does it mean to play intuitively or aggressively? How do different opponents react? Muh, Russians are machines and it's cool to feel free and live in the moment, that's what it's always about. It's easy for seasoned players to pick out the interesting details that are shown to us in plain sight I suppose, but I don't think some actual explanation about the games to all viewers would have hurt anything. Oh well, there are more important things in the world :p