Weird story: somehow, it came about that a guy I'll call JDM (the "D" is for doppelganger) and I were put in touch with one another.  Evidently, we look alike; or is it that we have the same taste in music?  Or perhaps it was that we both like Rilke?  Possibly, we both look like Rilke, but I don't think so.

Contact was made digitally, thus exemplifying the power of electronic media to abstract people as they unite them.  It's hard to say whether or how we might have met were it not for Facebook.  Our social connections are tenuous, and I'm neurotic.  Also, I think he has a child, which puts him in another stratum of maturity and depth.

Anyway, we have these chance digital encounters: messages, posts, blog comments; once, incredibly, his iTunes Music Library briefly showed up as a network resource on my computer, indicating that he was close by.  Indeed, he lives near me, in the Garden District.  I believe I know his place; he certainly knows mine.

Without having met him, I am reminded when I interact with JDM of my great friend Evan, who always intimidated me slightly.  It's difficult to say why, precisely, but around some quite intelligent people I feel like a polymath; around others, like a dilettante.  Both senses are probably, like most of my perceptions, unreliable.

When I returned to Baton Rouge the other night, after having been in New Orleans for a few days, I found with the wad of advertisements and coupons that comprise my mail a small stack of CDs with a pencil through them and a note (written in pen):

    "The Disintegration Loops    by William

Basinski

    are the sound of music falling apart.

    Happy Birthday

    JDM"

I've received excellent presents this year, maybe the best of my life in terms of their consistency, depth, and potential to improve my existence:

    -three books by Simone Weil, and a fourth on the way

    -Anthony Flew's rejection of atheism

    -a CD of McDowell and Liszt

    -a 750 GB backup hard drive

    -an iPod Shuffle

    -a memoir by Garry Kasparov

    -a book by Steven Pinker

    -sweet clothes from Banana Republic

    -a cigar

    -gift certificates to Waka House

    -cookies

Honestly, it was sort of overwhelming.  Everything on that list is unexpected, not something I'd get myself, and therefore a treat.  It was pretty moving, and this was a year when the presents helped ease the pain of the day itself, which kind of blew.

JDM's present, too, was wonderful.  I've been listening to The Disintegration Loops for a while now, with a somewhat negative effect on my mood being offset by my thrill at the experience.  They are beautiful to hear, although they make me melancholy.  The effect is as described: one is listening to the sounds of music dying, in a particularly random and heartless way.  As extensions of JDM's phantasm-like role in my life, they seem even more disembodied, ethereal, vaporous.

I read about Basinski online, and one of his critics petulantly noted that he had not "made" this music through the direct application of technique or talent, not in any traditional sense.  Of course, that question has no bearing at all on whether it is beautiful or significant, culturally or personally.  I suppose it might be relevant to whether one imagines one admires the artist, but the further away we get from that issue the better, inasmuch as appreciation of art goes.

Anyway, the whole thing was a kind of extraordinary experience, and a cool capstone to a weird birthday.