Why, Oh, Why?

While first pointing out two harsh truths –

1. There are many, many – I don’t say innumerable, but I cannot number them – other composers out there;  and quite a few of them, quite a few of even the as-yet-unknown (ahem), do exceptionally excellent work.
2. You, Karl, have been at it for quite a few years by now, but have not managed to make a name for yourself;  chances are slender that the situation will change, this side of the grave.

. . . so, with these two prefatory articles on the whiteboard behind us, people sometimes ask me:  Why, Karl, do you still do it?  Why do you persist in composing music, for which there is apparently no call?

I do it because, “There’s No Other Me.”

Saturday, in testing out an upright piano, I had a go at playing both The Bronze Girl’s Spilt Milk and To Melt From a Distance.  I didn’t know what to expect (except that, of course, I knew not to expect anything like Perfection in my, erm, performance).  I had not played them at all since about the time when I had composed them (in Petersburg and Tallinn, respectively).  And I have not much played any piano in a decade or so.

It was, unsurprisingly, on the lurching side.  I suppose I should take it as encouraging, that I feel I should make more regular time to plink at the piano.