A Mendelssohn kind of day

Today has been a Mendelssohn kind of day - lots of scampering about, but no real highs or lows. Okay, I know, that's unfair on Mendelssohn, whose music I actually think is terribly underrated. As normal, it's all Wagner's fault - most of the commonplaces people pedal about Mendelssohn come from him, despite Wagner's obvious debt to Mendelssohn. Wagner learned most of what he knew from Mendelssohn, but has since rather eclipsed his disavowed mentor .... Which is a shame, because I think we'd all be better off if our lives, our societies, our worlds were more Mendelssohnian, less Wagnerian - more Midsummer Night's Dream, less Gotterdammerung.

All of which is to say that a Mendelssohn day isn't too bad. I had far too many Wagnerian days earlier this year. But we won't talk about that.

Instead, we'll talk about diaries again. Walking home from work, I was thinking again about the connection between diaries and poos (in terms of web-logs). They have a lot in common: they're both generally things people do at the end of the day, and they're both seen as emptying, purging, cathartic acts. The diary is, in a sense, a way of excreting the day.

I can't promise to excrete this diary every day - I've managed two days in a row, which is a record since I was thirteenish. Back then, my short-lived, adolescent diaries would all have the same narrative structure: start diary when fancying a new girl; carry on diary whilst pursuing aforesaid girl; throw away diary when aforesaid girl told me she'd rather eat her own eyelids than have anything to do with me.

Given that I'm now married, that narrative structure is no longer open to me, so I'll be looking for different kinds of stories here.

So what was the story of today? Went to work, taught something or other, came home, had tea, couldn't find any beer in the fridge, excreted a blog entry, had a bath, went to bed. Not much of a narrative structure there. Rather Mendelssohnian, in fact. And that's just fine.