A New Year, A New Calendar

Things are getting complicated on the #DogShirtDaily schedule. We need a calendar.

Good Afternoon:

It is one of the few really dumb features of Substack that it’s hard to embed things that aren’t YouTube videos, podcasts, and Instagram posts. Today’s particular frustration is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to to embed a Google Calendar in a Substack post. Which is annoying, because I have decided that with the new year, #DogShirtDaily needs a #DogShirtCalendar.

I have created such a #DogShirtCalendar, and it will be very useful to everyone who wants to keep track of which days the show is planned as scheduled, which days I have guests scheduled, when the next Make American Read Again (MARA) Book Club event is coming, and when we are doing those Short Make America Read Again (SMARA) events. Anyway, the calendar exists, and I will plan on publishing screenshots of it weekly so that people know what’s coming. It being a Google Calendar and all, you can also subscribe to it if you like and integrate it into your own calendar app. As it is public, it will never contain the link to the studio, which will continue to live below the paywall on every post.

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Operation Brahms

Today’s installment is a genuinely lovely performance of a genuinely lovely piece, a four-hand piano set of Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann—performed here by Emanuel Ax and Orion Weiss. If the title of this piece sounds familiar, that’s because we already heard one set of variations on a Schumann theme (Op. 9). Schumann, recall was Brahms’s mentor—and a fabulous composer in his own right until he went mad and spent the end of his life in an asylum. I’m honestly not sure if I have ever heard this piece before. It’s not among the more famous of Brahms’s theme and variations pieces. In fact, I’m not sure I even knew that there was more than one set of Schumann variations. These are little things you discover when you take the time to listen to a composer comprehensively, in an organized fashion.

There’s a saying that one should never read YouTube comments. In the case of classical music performance, the saying is definitely wrong. People leave all kinds of thoughtful and serious-minded ideas in stray YouTube comments on performance videos. In this case, let me draw your attention to a remark six years ago by one MirkoPlitt: “The symbol of it being written for two pianists. The ghost Brahms invokes is Schumann's.”

There’s something to this, methinks. Brahms could have eulogized Schumann in any number of ways. He chose to write a highly personal piece for two pianists shortly after Schumann’s death on a theme of Schumann’s.

It’s a beautiful piece—well worth your time.

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Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina wanted to ask me about my favorite books. The Greek Chorus joined in for a discussion of everything from Plato to Gogol. Ava was there:

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is—quite unusually—the cat. #BeastOfTheDay aficionados will be aware that, in order to qualify as today’s Beast, a cat or dog must perform a notable Act of Valor, distinguishing themself from the preponderance of their species.

Today’s Beast, a black cat named Moon, performed just such an Act of Valor on the winter solstice this year at Stonehenge, by jumping up onto one of the eponymous Stones during the solstice celebration:

We cannot yet know precisely what today’s Beast portends for the coming year, but, having consulted various augurs, on the matter, I (EJ Wittes) can say that this particular interpretation seems authoritative:

Video Source

In honor of today’s Beast, see him face.

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A Further Note on Today’s Beast

The thing that first drew today’s Beast to my—EJ Wittes—attention was seeing a post including a headline about a black cat at Stonehenge and this image: