Ashes to Ashes

Fuck. I would've expected to be saddened by David Bowie's death, but I don't think I would've expected it to have been a huge hit. But man. Maybe because it just seemed so unexpected. I mean, he JUST put out an album and there'd been no word of his illness (all this going together by design, of course). And at first it was just surprise, looking at facebook as I turned my phone's alarm off on waking. I got to work and was putting up my tribute on godsjukebox (that's the surrogage of This Is My Jam, in case I never brought it up before) so I thought I'd pay homage by listening to his music. Maybe a minute or two into "Heroes" and that set me off where most of the rest of the day was me fighting to maintain my composure. Maybe I wouldn't've thought it'd affect me so much because I'm not as big a fan of a lot of his catalog as many people are. But those five albums I do like mean a fucking hell of a lot to me. And then there's just the fucking power of music. So yeah, RIP Bowie. And it's not a morose sadness because I know if there's anyone who lived the fucking life they wanted it's him...it just hits you. So I'll feel these feelings and celebrate him, and then these feelings will pass and I'll keep celebrating him. Anyway, back to other stuff. Yesterday Mary Beth and I went to the Brooks to see National Gallery, a three hour documentary about The National Gallery in London. It was really good. It was just a series of observational vignettes. There was no narrator or narrative. It was just a series of the camera looking on a wide range of the museum's aspects. From just visitors looking, to behind the scenes meetings with directors, to the restoration process, to docents talking to visitors, to art classes, to other documentaries filming (which was an interesting source of "narration" as they narrated to a camera off in a different direction), to lectures by museum people, to the lighting people setting up an exhibit, etc. It was good. Yesterday evening I spent working on the theme song for the Bernie podcast. I tried to record what I had previously written down, but the different parts didn't really work together when I got to it. Maybe they could have worked out with a larger palette, but the thirty second ended up being even more tight than I'd expected. I ended up just starting over from scratch and recording one track at a time and layering new parts that I'd write as I added them. It started going much faster than I'd've thought and started really coming together. And I think it's coming along pretty well! I'm happy with the results so far anyway. What else? ServiceMaster got a new logo that they rolled out today so everyone got a bag of stuff including a shirt and a bottle and stuff like that. I left it at work though. I need to remember to bring it home. Anything else exciting? No. Nothing else.