Happy Thought for 2 February 2024

Have a Happy Thought:

You’ve not only survived the week, you’ve survived the entire first month of the year!

On the other hand… how are we already in February?!

If you ever feel that time is moving too quickly, there are lots of ways to slow down.

One way might be to listen to music. Especially if you can do so in a beautiful location. Maybe you could try the Halberstadt Cathedral in Germany:



Image: Hoger.  Cathedral of Halberstadt, Nave looking east. CC BY-SA 3.0


As for the music, try the composition As Slow as Possible.

As in, that’s literally both the name and the intent.

This piece of work is written for the organ, which can hold notes for a really long time – especially if you have a continuous bellows and you weigh down the keys and pedals with sandbags. (It probably helps that they built an organ specifically for this performance.)

The special organ for playing Organ2/ASLSP, which will last 639 years, in the Halberstadt Cathedral or Church of St Stephen and St Sixtus in Halberstadt in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Source: Wikipedia commons


The next note change in this song happens in just a few days – February 5th, 2024.

The current note will have been playing for two entire years.

Sad that you’ll miss this note change? You’ve got two-and-a-half years to plan your trip to Halberstadt, Germany, for the next note change in August 2026.

Wait, you say, two years for each note?! How long is this song going to last?!

639 years. Six hundred thirty-nine years.

And don’t blame the composer for that length… the duration was actually chosen by the church who are hosting this performance… because when they planned to start the performance, they would have had an organ in that church for 639 years already.


Really puts the recent trend of long movies into perspective!


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