Every once in a while I get truly annoyed with conservative friends who send me E mails (or blog) with typical right-wing propaganda, or cutesy s…, and I have stopped reacting. Sometimes I delete without looking, depending on the subject line. Life’s too short. I am no longer willing to argue with concrete mindsets. Or those who think something they are putting out there nails a flawed centrist position when it is only mawkish, adolescent crap. I picture them masturbating to their latest perfect essay against reason.

It’s my new persona. They can flounder and self-destruct on their own.

And when I think of conservatives, I also think about religion. One of the things about Bach, whose music I mostly love, is that he was deeply religious. I have forgiven him countless times. Sophie used to say that one had to understand his religiosity in order to play him well. But I countered with the theory that if you are spiritual in affect, even without a focus on a divine being that permeates the universe (wait till you here the latest scientific research on alternate universes – daunting), you will hear the quality of the music without subscribing to Bach’s specific religious convictions. Anyway, he didn’t let his Godliness prevent him from screwing his brains out and having umpteen children.

The historical facts are that he married his second cousin Maria Barbara Bach in 1707. They had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Maria died in 1720, and Bach married Anna Magdalena Wickle in 1721. They had a further thirteen children, six of whom survived to adulthood.

That was before birth control. Bach provided the sperm and the wives went to early graves. I do hope they got some pleasure out of the whole thing or was it wham, bam, thankee ma’am? We’ll never know.

I used to think Bach wasn’t really religious and pretended because the money was in ecclesiastical music. But I may have been mistaken because the quotations that survive are all about (choke) God. Hey, nobody’s perfect.

xx, Teal