It has been a dry, hot summer so far. The grass is parched and brown. Even the deep rooted trees are wilting. Water rationing has been steadily stepped up, as we worry about the draining of the aquifer.

We awoke this morning to evidence of rain overnight. It had mostly evaporated and did little to relieve the hard, jagged cracks in the ground, but the earth smelled good and woodsy for the first time in weeks.

About noon the rain began to fall, lightly at first. Then, with a blinding flash of lightning and a sharp crack of thunder, the heavens broke open. The rain came down in sheets, flooding the gutters, streaming over the kitchen skylight so fast and thick that it felt like we were dining at the bottom of a river. The rain poured down the driveway, plunged through the flower beds and left a river of water and debris scattered for at least fifty feet across the lawn. It came down with such force that it shot out of the downspouts like a water cannon. The stream in back groaned and cracked and tripled in size and speed. An enormous tree limb fell off the box elder with a resounding thunk.

The rain is still falling, but it is much calmer. We are all happy to be cosy and indoors today. It�s one of those days where I wish I were a lonely spinster, curled up in a comfy chair with an afghan, a contented cat, a pot of tea, and some Jane Austen novel or another.

Due to the need to keep AJ entertained, I�ve had to confine myself to more mobile reading pursuits. Instead of delving into novels, I have been catching up on my reading and pondering several thought-provoking articles in today�s New York Times Arts section.

The first was an article about the Met�s intentions to stage an abbreviated version of Mozart�s The Magic Flute for families. The idea is to get more children excited about opera. The premise, however, is contentious. Classical music, despite its history of constant editorialization and revision (especially in opera), is reified in our culture. We are afraid to tamper with it. The concern with this production is not so much with the children, but with the idea that adults will come to expect it. And truly, I understand. I am not a music scholar for nothing, however I already love these longer works. What exactly are we afraid of here? How bad would it be if some adult went to see a shortened version of, say Don Giovanni and liked it? Isn�t it possible that such a person might then seek out the longer version? And even if they don�t, what�s wrong with that?

The real question, it seems to me, is not whether the work is edited but how. What is crucial? What is not? At what point does the work cease to be the original artwork? How do you present an abbreviated work as related to its original to the new audience?

Another article that caught my attention dealt with the Live 8 concerts and their role as a geopolitical lobby. I am of the �We are the World� generation, and I must say that I have not paid much attention to these concerts as a result. I find the cocktail of blatant commercialism, egomania and feel-good politics distasteful, not to mention musically bland. But the sheer numbers involved in Live 8 made me sit up and take notice. Billions of people heard these concerts. BILLIONS. That makes Live Aid look like a bunch of folksingers hanging out at the corner coffee shop. Although the article addresses the problem of the lack of representation of indigenous music (the concert, meant to benefit Africa, casts Africans as victims, not as artists. The few African musicians participating in the events were not part of the webcasts), it doesn�t quite get at the squeamish feeling I get when I hear a bunch of rich, first world, mostly white musicians talking about things they mostly know little about. I applaud the gesture, but there�s something a bit uncomfortable about it.

But what really struck me in the article, although it was never directly mentioned, was the construction of power vis-�-vis the Group of 8. One gets the sense that the musicians of Live 8 had more power (more money, more reach, more technological know-how) than the political leaders of the summit they are trying to affect. Is it possible that our governments are becoming obsolete? Of course, the rich and powerful have always been able to exert more influence than those with lesser endowments. But in a day and age where I am feeling so incredibly alienated by my government, I find it disturbing that changes can be enacted in such a way, even if, as in this case, I think the cause is a good one. What if it weren�t?

And finally, a third article, clearly filler reprinted from the International Herald Tribune on a national holiday, talked about a Czech bluegrass band. There is nothing especially remarkable about it, except as a companion to the other two articles. In this country, thanks largely to publications like the Times, we�re accustomed to thinking of �World Music� as instances of Americans/Western Europeans appropriating music of other cultures. This story was a perfect example of another switch � Czech musicians getting interested in an American style and taking it in an new direction, with their own instruments and compositions. This change in style not only had the effect of the Czechification of something fundamentally American, but also of reviving an art which, like Classical music, is often thought of primarily as a fixed and antique repertoire, a museum representation rather than a living art. In many ways the Czech interpretation is more American in spirit than the present incarnation of the American original.

I think all of these issues are something that we in the temporally based arts struggle with (and should struggle with) all the time. In traditional visual art there is not usually so much of a question of what is the original and what is the copy. There is seldom an issue of abridgement and we don�t pitch public fits when someone buys a postcard of a Picasso painting (of course, there was another article in the Times earlier this week on the problems of holding and displaying a collection of video art in one�s own home, so I imagine the visual arts are coming up with some new difficulties as well). Music is harder to objectify because it�s harder to pin down.

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