I’m supposed to post something cultural today, by my own proclamation. Unfortunately I’ve had a long day and that would entail a great deal of thought. In lieu of the meat and potatoes I thought I’d go over some of my feelings on the cultural scene.

I was a strange kid. I played sports and did normal stuff but frankly, most of my time was spent reading books. It was a serious addiction from a very early age. We had these encyclopedias that were in book form…I don’t know how else to explain it. It was a set of maybe fifteen volumes with titles like Great Civilizations, Countries of the World, etc.

I was seriously hooked on these things and I probably read them soup to nuts about fifty times between the ages of eight and sixteen. Back then there were no PCs or video games so reading and playing music was how I spent my time. In the course of reading these encyclopedias I developed interest in all sorts of things. I vividly remember reading about countries in Europe and looking at all the pictures of these castles—I was hooked. I made up my mind that I had to go see the Rhine River in Germany and visit these castles. I started saving money, cutting lawns and shoveling snow and when I was sixteen I went to Europe on a school trip with my German class and there they were. It was fantastic. And while I was there I saw a lot of art, churches of all kinds and the snowball effect was irreversible.

And I went back to the books and learned more and wanted to see more. I never listened to classical music as a kid, I listened to Led Zeppelin. But the books talked about classical music and different composers and one day I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, I was so bored by it that it was painful. I decided that in order to give it a chance, I would listen to it every day for thirty minutes to see if sunk in. Day in and day out I did this. Just put on NPR and listened and eventually they played pieces that I really did enjoy and once I sorted out the different composers and periods I came to love it. It took longer for opera, but I came around to that too. I eventually saved enough money to visit Salzburg during the Mozart festival, which was an incredible experience.

To make a long story short I really learned to love music, art and literature.

Granted my knowledge in a lot of these things is shallow in spots. I’m not an expert in anything, but I get a great deal of enjoyment out of these pursuits. Yeah, I take a good bit of ridicule from people I know, but that’s another story.

What say you people? Any interest at all?