Right now, I’m listening to the overture from “The Marriage of Figaro” for the second time. (if I were John, I’d have typed “Le Nozze di Figaro,” but I’m not as cultured as he is.) I can’t listen to it just once — like Al Franken and pie a la mode, I have to have more and more until I’m satiated. What a little gem of a piece — sprightly and tuneful, one of the few perfect earthly things.
When I tell my older son Charlie that living in heaven is better than anything in this life, he says, “But I like living on this planet.” (He’s under the impression that heaven is a different world.) There are a few pleasures that incline me to agree with him.