November 19 2007, 09:28 PM Mind The Responsibilities

One of the difficulties with this time of year is the lack of light. There are methods for dealing with this sort of thing: plan ahead to get home for frenzy of activity while the sun yet sits glum in the sky. Invest in lamps. Alternately, close down the house to the snug glow of the gentle bulb by the reading chair, kept company perhaps by a candle, and let the stereo take over to fill rooms with close warmth.

One trick I use from time to time is Irish Coffee: strong coffee, copious sugar, good cream, an a dash of whiskey in a cup. There is supposed to be whipped cream here, too, but I tend to reserve that sort of thing for festive times, and there is little festival in the air these nights. The problem I ran into this evening was a lack of whiskey - that bottle has gone dry, rinsed and set off to the recycling center.

Peterb is going to wallop me one for my next move: Self, I said to me, scotch is whiskey. You've got that. And its good stuff! Are not things made better by better ingredients? Is this not a fundamental (if lately learned) lesson of our childhood? Has it not ever been true? So I pulled the bottle of Sixteen Lagavulin from the rack, tipped a bit of it into the coffee, and let sip.

The result: sort of. All of the notes were there, but some of them did not play too well with the others. Each taste on laden tongue is evidence for both the tantalizing notion that there may well be a way to make this work, even as it makes it clear that this is strange territory, and there's a reason professionals do not put Lagavulin in coffee. Do not get me wrong: it's worth drinking. But it is weird.

As far as the stereo goes, my brother an I have been at work on each other again. Tonight, we started with an utterly incongruous cover, and soon enough the links started flying. We traded paths through American Bluegrass, British House, and Finnish Pop Music. We found things. My brother is now something of an actual artist; he stands in front of rooms full of people lingering in the dim with nothing but two turntables and an elemental story to tell, asking them to step forward and move. He succeeds in this. If you are in the right city on the correct night in the particular room, you will hear him do this. He finds good things.

The thing I found is down that aforementioned Bluegrass alley, a strange quiet lane of American music that seems to me to be ever waking up to stretch, look around, and meet the day with a small smile. The music makers down there don't mind not taking themselves too seriously. They sit in circles on stools in the corners of watering holes, where it's still possible to talk even while the band unwinds melodies at gentle paces. At this time of year on those places, the sweet smokes of hardwoods and leaves hang in the air at twilight.

I like the esthetic. I need to spend more time with esthetics; they're turning out to be important.