I went up to Berkeley to visit Mom today and we spent a while on Telegraph Avenue, wandering through various wonderful used-book and -music stores. I ended up with a recording of the Barber songs I mentioned yesterday and a book called A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, which looks like it might be quite interesting, in a music-geeky sort of way. It's actually quite a Symbolic-Systems-y book, since it works from the perspective of linguistics and cognitive science. I'm also hoping it will help me think about some vague ideas I have about composing. I'll write more about that later, maybe.

Mom also taught me a Yiddish word which she learned recently and which I quite liked: verplotchket. It refers to something that has been broken as a result of an attempt to fix it. Quite a useful word, I think.