Keeping Lists

I usually have a collection of lists on my desk, of pieces or books or films that I'd like to hear or read or see.  For example, here's my little opera list: 

  • J.A. Hasse, anything.
  • Giachinno Rossini, Guillaume Tell (have heard but have not seen on stage)
  • Carl Maria von Weber, Oberon (the English original)
  • Hector Berlioz, Beatrice et Benedict
  • Hugo Wolf, Der Corregidor
  • Giselher Klebe, anything
  • Henry Brant, The Grand Universal Circus
  • Louise Talma,  The Alcestiad
  • Virgil Thomson, Lord Byron
  • Robert Ashley, That Morning Thing
  • Richard K. Winslow, anything

Nothing on any of these lists is of particular urgency, but each item represents a gap or a curiosity that I'd rather have filled than left open.  Keeping lists also functions as a kind of negative image of the listening, reading or watching which I have done.  I realized recently, for example, that I'd never seen the 1934 Ozu film, Story of Floating Weeds and since Ozu's 1959 re-envisaging of the film as Floating Weeds is such a favorite, this got promptly put on my to-see film list. 


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