Allowing the Music to Find Itself

I dreamt that in Paradise we all have mailboxes, but they never deliver junk mail....

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Men usually grow base by degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle.

— Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson.”

What I find with my weekly Physical Therapy is that in the first place it is enormously helpful (though the accumulated benefit discloses itself over the long term) and in the second, typically my brain is sufficiently taxed that not only do I have to rest through the remainder of the day, but I need to pick my energy battles the following day, as well. I wished to get more work in on the new clarinet line in Dark Side of the Sun today, but at first what I found I needed after lunch was a nap. The nap did sufficiently recharge my batteries that I felt more or less equal to applying myself to the task before needing to head out to make my way to Lowell for tonight’s Lowell Chamber Orchestra concert. I found, though, that my path to the desired result was to work smarter, not harder, and let the clarinet find its own way, keeping in mind that some space in the piece should in fact remain open. I’m leaving the question of whether my work is truly done until tomorrow. The first Henningmusick of tomorrow, though, will be another performance by the Redeemer Recorder Consort of the Opus 198 Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia.