Dear Diary,
I was discouragingly exhausted physically and emotionally yesterday. I wanted to plunge into working on my composition and harpsichord. Instead I allowed myself time to attempt to relax and distract myself.
I still managed to do some work in “Dead Man’s Pants.” Actually quite a bit of work. I sketched a transition, wrote string parts, piano parts, xylophone parts. But I didn’t touch the harpsichord.
Finished reading Stieg Larrson’s last volume, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. After having read all three of these, I conclude that Larrson could have used some strong editing especially in the second volume. But still they were perfect summer reads for me.
I spent some distracting time with Schumann on the piano.
Today I need to come up with a plan for next Sunday. I have chosen the hymns to be recommended already. I was hoping to use my sax player friend on the prelude and postlude but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I will choose organ music in case I don’t hear from him this week.
It is crossing my mind to start a compositional project after I get the Aug 5th gig up and running. I am feeling much freer about my composing and think it might be interesting to write a more extended work, possibly for piano, violin and cello. I don’t really have any specific musical ideas for it yet. But my personal resolve seems to be strengthening.
Part of getting older seems to be accepting and even embracing one’s own eccentric stuff. In my case that means a very human idea of musical performance and the joy of story and words and honest creating in general.
I feel calmer about my role at work. Part of this is realizing how disinterested I actually am in much of what preoccupies the staff there. The people in the community who bother to connect with me personally keep encouraging me with their enthusiasm and support. This is extremely satisfying. But it would help if they paid me more justly but that’s probably a pipe dream. I’m lucky to get the emotional support.
And I am lucky.