what is the signal-to-noise ratio? yes, yes, bad, and getting worse. as time increases, s/n is going asymptotically to zero (fast! O(c^t), c <1). but not because the signal is falling. the signal is rising exponentially, O(a^t), but the noise likewise, O(b^t), and surely b>a>1. but, thanks be to Goog, the filters are also getting better exponentially, O(d^t), d*a/b > 1. [note: anyone tried wolfram alpha yet? i'm afraid to. it might suck, which would suck, or it might deliver as promised, which would be sort of bone-chilling. thus, the obvious truth will be that it will be "good for some types of things, but so-so for most".]
well so the upshot being that we're all screwed. but not because we'll all drown in the tsunami of noise, as the babies keep screaming (noisily). rather, the screwage is due to the filter-aided tsunami of signal. by the time he was my age, montaigne had probably read every masterwork in existence. everything. now, it's hopeless. there are so many treasures. treasures without end.
this all of course inspired by the latest treasure. sitting there thinking about how amazing beethoven's final piano sonata is, search youtube to see maybe a clip of the crazy ragtime part and there is this treasure:
and haha he says he hates when people call that part a "pre-echo of a boogie-woogie, which many people seem to feel here, but i really protest... [plays] so ecstasy, yes, but boogie-woogie, no." so great.
so but ok fine that's six minutes of your life but you're not going to spend $27 for the dvd so your cheapness saves you from the tsunami of signal, right? wrong. because when you search to see whether there are any other little treasures of schiff doing masterclasses OH NO! OH CRAP! you find this page with free downloads of him doing a lecture-recital on every single one of beethoven's piano sonatas! oh man that's like twenty hours of treasures to listen to. i'm doomed. when am i going to find time to listen to it all? doomed, because they're treasures. here's a bit of the one on the final sonata, op.111 (same sonata as the video, but a bit later in the piece):
"this is where i would always like to stop in a concert. it's like this is the faustian moment where you would like to stop time, but that's the moment where you would sell your soul to the devil. so, we have to go on, but, this is [plays]...in the theme we had [plays]... and so why do i want to stop time here? because, this is [plays] ...again, the ground and the heavens, the greatest possible distance between them, and this is i think beethoven's question: where is our place as human beings, between those two levels? so, let me play [plays]... so how does he come back from that faraway land to home? [plays]..."
how sublime, to be able to share with an audience like that, asking impossible questions of the air and then answering the unanswerable questions by playing.
the one on the moonlight sonata is fantastic. now i've got them all on my hard drive (almost a gig!) and i'm just going to have to start at the beginning and plow through.
and i'll get through, obviously. i'll survive this deluge of crystal clear signal, but the larger issue remains, and grows more critical every day. if there are now a hundred lifetimes' worth of treasures available for free, and i've only got one, what the hell am i going to do? what the hell am i supposed to do? what the hell. gotta go.
