How'm I doin' Keri? Living up or down to expectations. Should I go back to 150 whatever aphorisms? No can do anymore. You have slit the bag open and the cat is on the prowl. And out of sheer perversity it may be a long shift. Or not.

In the interest of full disclosure, not that it remotely matters, not that I know if one person, even Keri, is reading this or cares, I must confess that some of what follows, in vastly regurgitated form (I will not consult the manuscript and just have a vague idea of what I wrote for 700 pages except I know it was pretty nasty). Before proceding on with one of the heroes of this blahhg, I just want to tell those who may be nervous that it all ends happily with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, when what has seemed arbitrary if you had actually slogged through it attempts to have meaning which keeps getting swept back out to sea. But there are large planks of wood.

Johannes Brahms was a fairly normal Austrian or German child except for his habit of going for walks in the woods and sneaking up on sparrows, grabbing them, biting their heads off and calling it lunch. Musical critics much more critical musically than I know the influence of this act on his music, for example his use of the key of F (for flying, even though it is something else in German). Anyway, Johannes was quite an ambitious young composer of no great talent but he was obsessed with how Beethoven,  that deaf prick, had used his own talentlessness to become a composer of great acclaim throughout with world without even hearing most of what he wrote. What balls! The royalties on Fur Elise music boxes alone allowed him to buy a castle in Saxony.

The inclusion of the life of Brahhms in this blahhg is not quite as arbitrary as it might seem at first.  All else aside, it is full of useful information you will not find anywhere else as the author was privy to the first sketches of Wikopedia made in the 19th century where it was called Vikopedia. From it we learn, for example, that if you put the keys of all the movements together, in this, the piece that finally got him the worldwide notoriety that Beethoven had, it read (in German of course), "Sparrows forgive me. I love the taste of blood."
One of the other myths that Vikopedia destroys is the one of Brahms walking around for 40 years before he wrote his first symphony saying, "You have no idea what it is like walking in his footsteps," referring to Beethoven. But Vikopedia retranslated it more truthfully as, "I wish I could kick that Beethoven in the tuchus. Yes, I am famous, but not nearly as famous as him. I must figure out a way to become more famous."

And he did, but that, my children is the subject of another story, so let's all put our digital nightlights on Brahms' Lullaby and have a good night's sleep, for there will be much excitement tomorrow. Brahms may or may not appear again but definitely one or the other as we are not in Schrodinger country yet.