Guys.... @Guy Bacos is correct.
I don't think he is,
Noam. First of all, Guy suggests that my words were written in anger, which is not true at all. Some mild annoyance at first, yes, but anger? Not a sprinkle. (Guy should know actually, cause when I
do write in anger — something which he has been witness to, and even the recipient of, in the very distant past — my language and message are entirely different, in a most unpleasant way, from what I've been contributing here.) Come to think of it, except for one febrile moment during the Spitfire Studio Series discussions, I haven't written anything in anger since, well, I can't remember actually, but it's certainly been a few years.
Guy also insists, for some reason, that I've been taking things personally. Again: totally wrong observation. (And Guy knows it of course, it's just that it's inconvenient for him to admit to it.) Apart from the fact that 15 years at V.I., and carrying on the way I have, tends to strengthen one's dermisses a bit, there is nothing here that I could ever have taken personally. It needs more than a bit of clumsy sarcasm or the odd feeble insult for me to start taking things personally, I can assure you.
The only thing that really got to me, if you must know, was Greg's vile attempt at derailing Romy. That rankled a bit, yes. Firstly, because it was such a despicable manoeuvre, and secondly, and much more disappointingly, because I never expected such a thing from Greg. For me, one of the sadder experiences at V.I. in many a year.
Guy also misreads my words entirely when he says that I used Mr. Kersten's piece "to get back at him". I didn't do anything of the sort. I merely got acquainted with the music (and rather more thoroughly than giving it the 8 minutes you deemed it worthy of), gave my honest opinion about it — an opinion which I would write again tomorrow and not change a single word —, and I also said that, still in my strictly personal opinion, its quality (or better: absence thereof) didn't justify in any way the Pomp And Kerstenstance with which it was introduced to us.
I will admit though — it would be paltering with the truth to deny it — that I would have phrased certain things differently if the work had been presented to us with a modicum of humility. My private opinion about it would have been exactly the same, but I would have written it down wearing the velvet glove rather than revealing the naked iron fist. (If, that is, I decided to write anything down at all, because, as I said before, my first reaction was to stay out of this thread altogether.)
And that the OP's personality rubbed me the wrong way is something I would think I don't have to explain or apologize for. If you ask around, you'll find I'm not alone. Forums are littered with people who feel the exact same way. Mr. Kersten appears to be a wrong-way-rubber extraordinaire. Wouldn't wanna have to feed all the wrong-way-rubbed, is what I'm saying.
By the way, Noam, you do realize, I hope, that selectively quoting from what I wrote, presenting those quotes without context and omitting to include what led up to them — you never even read what led up to them, it appears — , is a rather unfair and unbalanced representation of my thoughts on the matter.
And there seems to be more that you either haven't read or read inattentively, otherwise you wouldn't have put that comment about me not offering any helpful advice in bold yellow type. As I explained before: the OP made it very clear early on that
he wasn't interested in any of that. He descended from the Reno Heavens upon us to grant us — poor salieris who suffer from rigor zimmeris — the opportunity to bask in the glowing beauty of His Music. And he expected nothing but glowing reviews — no advice, no suggestions, a certainly no criticism — in return. That was the idea.
And then the thing started which Whitewasteland summed up so admirably on the previous page of this thread.
Look, you may keep pointing at me as the torpedo responsible for its demise all you want, but if the USS Kersten has been making fatal amounts of water, it's got only its captain to blame. No one else.
_