Vexatious Genuflections

I can’t properly enumerate or describe all the topics that we’ve covered in our conversations but I can give the reader an idea. These have ranged from deep explorations of music, what it is, what it could or even should be and isn’t, theories of music personal and historical, to our own compositional practices and the work of other composers, anthropology and paleoanthropology including human origins to social pressures on music and the practices resulting from trends, fashions and commercial or industrial forces. Cacology, dendrology, ethnoichthyology, gelotology, glottology, heterology, ktenology, ludology, mastology, morology, ideological morphology, pantology. Fears localised and general burrowed into our composerly conference, both Italian and Scottish. Who wants to smell bad or spend money? Including:-

Anemophobia
Anthrophobia
Anthropophobia
Arachibutyrophobia
Astrophobia
Ataxophobia
Atychiphobia
Automatonophobia
Bromidrophobia
Cacophobia
Chrometophobia
Chronomentrophobia
Decidophobia
Dendrophobia
Dentophobia
Genuphobia
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia
Lockiophobia
Papyrophobia
Phobophobia
Pyrophobia
Scoptophobia
Zuigerphobia

Lesser known topics fell upon us in the depths of hard winters when the birds fell out of the sky: historical vexillology, the study of knocker-uppers, codicology, the multidisciplinary analysis of medieval flamethrowers, all the timer avoiding and critically banishing the idolatry of cats, lizards and beetles. We have touched frequently on technological matters, though never setting out a stall under the banner of fetishists of the new, or the old, taking a somewhat principled though obvious stance to the effect that what we have will suffice, unless something truly better comes along. I confess to having flights of fancy at times, enthusing about things when I should know better (and spending money needlessly), at times merely to irritate people who fetishise technology, at times because of the 84,000 neurotic states of mind the totality of which is unpractised by me as of this date, with 84,000 solutions but of more relevance the 21,000 rooted in attachment or having the character of attachment.