compositional therapy and anxiety

 

After seeing my therapist, I planned time at the organ to go over some of the composition I’m working on as well as other organ pieces. I discovered that one first draft needed to be thoroughly revised. I did that this morning. I’m planning to get over this afternoon and see what my revisions sound like.

Who knew that shrinks were so interested in composition? That was the main topic of my session with Dr. Birky yesterday since that’s what’s occupying most of my time and thinking.

Last night I had a classic anxiety dream. I was the accompanist for a concert (the director was to be Dennis Tini, a teacher I had at Wayne State U and a good conductor). I was away from the city that the concert was to take place. It wasn’t clear where any of this was happening. Just that I was about an hour away from the concert. I discovered that I was already late for the preconcert warm-up which was scheduled for 7 PM. I began madly trying to get going so I could at least arrive for the performance. I found my car need to be reassembled for some reason. I would rent a car instead. By the time I got to the car rental place (which was more of car repair place), I realized that I hadn’t completely put together my new phone. It was made of clear pink plastic and took AA batteries. And of course it didn’t have any of my phone numbers. I thought if I could get to a library maybe I could log on the internet and get the phone numbers somehow or even contact people online. It was at this point that I realized I wasn’t going to make it. I was going to let everyone down.

One person in my dream said something like they hated to tell me this but I was probably going to be subject to legal action regarding missing this event.

I think I’m a little concerned about  my composition and the May recital.

Today I learned

that the Phillipine American war was the bloodiest war of our history dwarfing the deaths in the Civil War and until recently was the longest war in our history. Historian Greg Grandin talks about this other aspects of American Imperialism on today’s segment of On The Media.  

I think that Grandin points out that Phillipinnos were American Nationals (not citizens) at the time of the war which means ALL of the casualties were American. Anyway,the On The Media segment is clearer than the Wikipedia article I linked above.

SOUNDS FROM THE FIELD – Anthony Burgess in Iowa City: How Clockwork Orange’s Author Came to Write a Symphony for the University of Iowa – Rita Benton Music Library Blog

I am changing a little bit about Burgess’s compositions. My brother gave me a CD of them a while back and I wasn’t too impressed. However, the documentary I linked here recently had information about his compositions and some performances that interested me a bit. My problem is that I do best when i study scores not just hear the music. I’m not sure much of his work is published but this link came across my Facebook Burgess feed.

2 thoughts on “compositional therapy and anxiety

  1. Ohmigosh, I’m sorry, but that dream is hilarious. I have concert-anxiety dreams too, but this one has some great details. Like your car and phone being in pieces and unusable.
    And especially the legal action part!
    I’m sure it was unpleasant at the time, but perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that I read it to Mark and we both enjoyed a chuckle?

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