(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

I was delighted to hear from an old friend on WeChat last week. We went to elementary and middle school together for seven years. After that, she pursued a career in music at full speed, while I followed the conventional path of further education and then a job. Since graduating from college, we’ve met only a handful of times—literally, I could count them on one hand. I was studying in Chicago when she came to perform at a music festival; I was working in Los Angeles when she came through with her orchestra.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

Three-Part Invention

Following the music recommendation, I listened to the first piece of The Musical Offering, BWV 1079: the three-part ricercar.

The dialogue Three-Part Invention features three characters: Achilles, the Tortoise, and Zeno. Here are a few of the jokes and references:

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

How It All Began

Last weekend, I dropped my son off at a classmate’s birthday party. As expected, the kids had a blast, running around until they were sweaty and exhausted. What I didn’t expect was to have such a stimulating conversation with another parent. We talked about AI, work, philosophy, the self, and so on.

At one point, I asked him, “Have you read GEB?”

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

A while ago, while listening to Bach, I decided I wanted to systematically fill in some gaps in my knowledge of music—music theory, history, and so on. I remembered that I had saved Introduction to Classical Music on Coursera years ago. It was quite good, and I had worked my way through part of it on and off.

Recently I finally had some free time and opened it again, only to discover that the free audit option was gone!

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

I visited the museum toward the end of last year. The experience hit me so hard that I kept putting off writing about it. Today I went through the photos again, along with some of the articles and videos I had seen before, and finally put some thoughts together. It is still a very heavy feeling.

On September 11, 2001, the attacks happened on a Tuesday morning in the U.S., while it was already nighttime in China. I think it was the next day at school when a classmate told me that the World Trade Center in the U.S. had been bombed. I remember saying, “No way?” I can’t remember whether it was at school or at home when I saw the towers burning on the news.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of ChatGPT.)

Following up on the previous post, this time we begin with the first category of Bach’s works: sacred cantatas (YouTube Music playlist).

I will go through Bach’s masterpieces roughly in BWV order. A disclaimer first: this is simply a hobbyist’s personal sharing, written in the spirit of “sharing joy makes it greater.” There are certainly subjective opinions and places where my understanding may not be academically rigorous.