I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!

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This morning the mrs. went to yoga and then had to strike a show, so I took myself to Austin Diner (formerly Laura's Bluebonnet Cafe) for a nice Sunday brunch. A seat at the bar, some good coffee, a flirty waitress, and an uncracked copy of David Foster Wallace's meditation on infinity, Everything and More.

Halfway through the meal, I was enjoying Wallace's digression on the cognitive dissonance between what we "know" intellectually and what our everyday experience tells us is true in the real world. We "know" that "space is curved, that colors do not inhere in objects themselves", etc. And then, in the midst of a bacon bite, I came across the following sentence -- well, fragment -- that stopped me in my tracks. We "know" that:

our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrified pate.

(Many of my favorite artists get a lot of mileage out of a juxtaposition of the profound and the mundane...c.f Woody Allen, Robyn Hitchcock).

After brunch, I took my electrified pate to a few record shops to while away some time looking for cheap vinyl. Lots of listening, and then finally, a $4 copy of Duke Ellington at the Bal Masque (not on CD! cool cover! lots of tunes he never did anywhere else!).


| posted by Alex at 6:59 PM