Intellectual Family Tree (of sorts)

[aestel]

Recently I was playing around with a trial version of Mindjet's MindManager, which is billed as a help for "nonlinear thinking." Supposedly the novelist Richard Powers uses it to write his fiction. Several years ago I created a kind of flow chart or family tree of literary/intellectual connections in my personal history, so I decided as an easy

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[aestel]

Schopenhauer is difficult for me to place. I think I've read more *about* him than actually of his own work. I suppose I'm in general sympathy with his bleak outlook, his belief that humans are not very rational, and of his mystical view of music (such as I understand it). But I never went through a period of intensely reading his books and saying "wow" for the next week.

Nietzsche, however was another youthful passion my senior year of high school, during which I toted around The Portable Nietzsche in my backpack.

Composers would, I think, be hard for me to chart out like this. Most of the basic repertoire I discovered through the jumble of my mom's old record collection, and I just liked whatever hit my ears right. Other things like Ralph Vaughan Williams, I discovered by hearing on the radio, jotting down the name (I still remember I wrote it as "Von Williams" not knowing any better) then looking next time I went to Tower records. Still getting in RVW did get me into other English "mystics" like Delius. Do you like English composers? I know they are kind of a minority taste in classical circles.