Death on BART

Feeling something like an ice-cream-headache-type pain in my left temple
this morning on the train listening to Beethoven's Seventh while reading
David Foster Wallace's surreal account David Lynch and his movies and the
production of Lost Highway, a recording of the Seventh from 1959 or 1960 by Joseph Krips
and the London Symphony Orchestra that my dad probably bought before I was
born and that I recently ripped from the original vinyl I've been carrying
around for twenty years and have always considered, since it was the first
one I heard, as the definitive interpretation of Beethoven, made me think
of the story I found on Jill Sobule's blog of Jill Bolte Taylor (no relation) telling at the TED
conference what it felt like to have a stroke herself, listening at that moment
to the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh, I say "slow" even though it's listed as
"Allegretto" that I first heard while mistakenly seeing the unforgettably cheesy and strange
film Zardoz as part of a double feature, when I decided that I would
be perfectly happy to die while listening to the slow movement of Beethoven's
Seventh, much as I dislike the though of my last moments being spent on BART--
that would suit me just fine.

25 No. 7. 2nd mvmt Allegretto

Josef Krips and the London Symphony Orchestra