smoldering

Where there's fire, there's heat, but the reverse is not necessarily true. I made a fire tonight, trying to only use two logs and some newspaper. Yes, and some lighter fluid too. Fires like that can start off looking promising but then quickly die down to smoldering logs. There's heat, there's a little smoke, but no flames. I either get some more paper or blow on it, but it's takes a while, without kindling, to convince two thick logs to really catch.

Which is how I've felt all week. I left my focus, my vision for the future, somewhere either at the cottage or in Chicago. The flames have died down, and, although I'm super hot, there's no visible sign of fire. Hot with potential that is. I'm not too worried, just annoyed that I made little, if any, forward progress. Some days, some weeks are like that. I have to remember this weekend that, just as tomorrow begins tonight, next week begins this weekend. I'm going to have a weekend that doesn't take two days to recover from.

I figured out what's missing this week: a goal or deadline. I forgot to think about the near and distant futures at all this week to find a new one. I say a new one, because last weekend was an arrival point if only in my head. Several weeks ago I set the Saturday night party as a deadline to come up with some new stuff. There was a remote possibility that I would play this stuff at the party. Even in the days leading up to last weekend, I kept telling myself it was a possibility - clearly a lie but one that produced results.

New deadlines have arrived, so I should be cooking with gas next week. First, I came up with some new ideas for the orchestra piece, bringing that idea back from the ashes. These ideas are much more manageable than the vague concepts of chaos and order I was attempting to incarnate last go-around. Second, I got word of a little competition, deadline in a couple months.

The album idea doesn't motivate me right now, but if I can remember why it was important to me, I'll resurrect the best tracks and make another push.

Errata: I didn't leave the house today and am forgoing my weekly trip to the Roadhouse. I'm quitting drinking for a little while. I left my yoga mat out all day so that I can do 5 minutes of stretching every break I take. I can touch my toes again and am working on upper body strength so I can do a handstand.

I'm thinking about joining the circus.

No I'm not. Say no to say yes.

Here's a clip from the South Park I linked to last week. You should know that there's a running gag with Jeff Goldblum making crazy associations. But the punchline comes towards the end of the clip. It's only 2 minutes but will give you the idea.

closing the doors

I'm concretizing. I have a good mental image of what I am looking for, so now it's just a matter of figuring out a method to realize it. The process by which you create reveals itself in the final product, so to really invent something new, you have to invent a new process. My process has always been multi-faceted, and I like it that way: generally, a piece (a composed piece, not those improvised electronic tracks I've been laying down) is born through discovery - whether by improvisation, imagination, or concept - and then goes through an assembly process during which it goes through each of those stages and/or many more. However you generate and develop the ideas is not important; what matters is how you choose among them, separate the wheat from the chaff and then stitch it all together.

I've mostly been working on the orchestra piece, even making some marks on paper. I didn't get too far. I realized, through writing, that my mental image wasn't clear enough. Sometimes only by trying things out can you see that they're not what you want. I then tried improvising, just to get a sense of the first couple bars. That gave me some good ideas but still needs some polishing. I have a new concept, by the way. I've gone through several. I should know better than to talk about it before it's cemented. This one, I think, is a keeper, but just to be sure I'll keep it a secret till it gets more fleshed out.

I took a walk down to the lake. All the floating ice floes are gone, leaving only the two ice ridges. The lake looked soupy, thick.

I also went to the corner shops to pick up some food. My two friends Laura and Ashleigh combined influence led me to buy Chicken Bou-ya. Ashleigh put a couple cubes in with rice to make it tasty; Laura has a huge jug of it that so she can have soup broth whenever she wants. Now I have broth, and I put it in my dinner rice.

That's about all. I made some electronic loop music, but it's just ok. If you haven't heard the one with the guitar solo at the end, you should listen to it now.

Oh, and before I forget, I came to the conclusion that I should close some doors to the past - after an appropriate grieving, of course. So that's my personal goal this week. I wish I had real photos to burn now that I have a fireplace in which to burn them. Preparation for the future, I guess.

symbology of mine

I should probably start with an apology to my parents, to whom I just left the most irate answering machine message - yes, old fashioned, Seinfeld-era, landline answering machine. And now the explanation.

I was in Chicago for the weekend, arriving Saturday morning to feed a friend's cat, getting back to Michigan just minutes ago - around midnight Michigan time. Over the weekend, I went to a fun pot luck and the Symphony Saturday night, another symphony concert on Sunday, taught two piano lessons and had dinner that night with my good friend Laura. Leaving dinner on Sunday was difficult, but I couldn't figure out why. Once in the car, I realized that I wasn't quite ready to be alone for the week and started to feel lonely. But I also felt motivated and excited about the things that I could do this week. Last week really felt like work; this week is more open, so I can do more fun things that motivate me.

I'm planning on starting my orchestra piece - at least the research for it - this week. I got inspired by going to the Symphony twice, paying close attention to the string writing. Writing for winds is easy; brass, less so; strings even less. It's just harder to write "idiomatically" for them. Just like writing at the piano produces certain results, you don't want to just write piano music for strings. There's much more flexibility with dynamics, for instance, since you can have them sustain a note (forever) and then crescendo or decrescendo. There's also the issue of the bow and its direction: how many notes do you give them per bow? and so on.

And so when I got back to Michigan, feeling conflicted and confused but ultimately optimistic, I noticed that my parents had opened a bottle of my wine over the weekend. Ostensibly, no big deal. Ostensibly, it's just a thing, an object, practically immaterial. But in this case, it had become even larger as a symbol than as an object. This particular bottle, I had bought in Paris over a year ago and had been saving it for a special occasion. Somehow, there haven't been any - none that I've deemed worthy. Schade. So the bottle became an even larger symbol - one of the noticeable lack of special occasions. Which I find terribly depressing. And so now I'm finishing it off. And, you know what? It's not amazing. Pretty good, but I'd give it a B. The build up, the anticipation, the idea of the wine had gotten larger than its actual quality. Then again, for the 25 or so Euro I paid for it, I would have expected more. Either way, it's over, and in a way, I'm glad that I don't have this burden any more, this reminder of lack. It's become just the latest thing in a string of stuff - objects, facebook friends, whatever - that I've discarded (with or against my will) to lighten the load I carry.

So now the two original opposing emotions - that my optimism (naive idealism) had managed to subsume - have spawned a litter of half breeds running amok. I think there's a sailor's saying like: sad and lonely at night nothing to fright; sad and lonely in morning, friends and family take warning.