In his dazzling, fragmentary book A Lover’s Discourse, Roland Barthes wrote, “Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.” When I first encountered this analogy in my early 20s, I felt somehow relieved. I […]

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Every year, when stores clear their shelves of Christmas kitsch and bring out Valentine’s Day paraphernalia, I feel what must be post-industrial existential dread. Paper plates send out X’s and O’s. Companies I’ve never heard of peddle plaques, keychains, and jewelry that can be “personalized.” My social media feeds suggest romantic dinners and getaway experiences […]

The post An Actually Romantic Classical Music for Valentine’s Day Playlist  appeared first on VAN Magazine.

Have you been searching for your perfect summer jam? Are you also the kind of person who occasionally, if not frequently, finds “a little truth” in stereotypes about zodiac signs? While I’m skeptical of Astrotalk’s claims that Geminis are Chihuahuas and Scorpios are extra sexually active, I’m not above a trip to an astrologer’s office, […]

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Joplin’s was a curious story. His compositions became more and more intricate, until they were almost jazz Bach.— Music publisher Edward B. Marks, 1934 In 1991, when I was eight years old, I found a simplified version of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” and relished playing it for most of the year that I was in […]

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Early this fall, I asked friends to tell me which pieces of classical music they believed to be “the all-time sexiest.” I promised there were no wrong answers. I wasn’t being disingenuous—though I was thinking about how erotic classical music playlists on Spotify and elsewhere, if not “wrong” or “bad,” are full of famous pieces […]

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In the spring, while stuck at home avoiding the coronavirus, I read Lea Singer’s forthcoming novel, The Piano Student, which tells the story of Vladimir Horowitz’s affair with a 23-year-old male protege, Nico Kauffman. Drawing from Horowitz’s actual letters to Kauffman, Singer depicts a forbidden relationship in which Horowitz vacillates between ardently declaring his love […]

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As the Midwestern fall turned into a frigid, icy winter, I listened to Glenn Gould playing Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and read Philip Kennicott’s Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning. Alternating between listening and reading, I found myself overwhelmed by emotion and flooded with the desire to do something. I wanted to clean house, dance […]

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