Reflecting on Luck

 I’ve seen smarter analyses on impulse tattoos.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

It was a special quality, among the many admirable qualities possessed by Mr Pecksniff, that the more he was found out, the more hypocrisy he practised. Let him be discomfited in one quarter, and he refreshed and recompensed himself by carrying the war into another. If his workings and windings were detected by A, so much the greater reason was there for practicing without loss of time on B, if it were only to keep his hand in.

— Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

We had an excellent Henning Ensemble rehearsal on Friday, 6 Feb. We intended another rehearsal on Saturday, but Mother Nature had other ideas, largely in the of of fresh snow and bitter cold, so we chose instead to work a bit later Friday. I probably repeat myself, but I am a fortunate composer in having colleagues who carried on with rehearsals in January when I was indisposed, and also in having a colleague who has stepped forward graciously to assist with various admin tasks. Our concert at Redeemer is this Friday, February the 13th.

Very separately, I have been slightly unfair musicologically to Pierre Boulez for decades. At this point there is no knowing the source, nor the degree to which I have deviated therefrom, but I had this idea that he had made a pronouncement to the effect of “No music written before 1952 is worth listening to.” It appears that this is not anything  Boulez (whom, be it noted, I will always respect as both composer and conductor) said, and I have no notion of where I failed there. But fail I did.  What he did write, which is no whit less inartistic and wrongheaded, was: [A]ny musician who has not experienced — I do not say understood, but truly experienced — the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch. Fortunately, as with Wagner, the rubbish Boulez pronounced does not alter the fact that he was a great composer.

The Return of the Brave

 I recently misspelled “Punxsutawney.” I wish to apologize to groundhogs, wood-chucks, nutria, wallabies, & three-toed sloths everywhere.

So if the groundhog watches the super bowl, there’ll be nine weeks more of dumb beer commercials?

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

If a nobler waits for thee,

I will weep aside,

It is well that thou shouldst be

Of the nobler, bride.

— Geo. MacDonald

Some time ago, my friend Olivia Kieffer composed a set of 55 short pieces for toy piano, The Texture of Activity. I am the dedicatee of a piece titled The Brave, whereof our mutual friend Carson Cooman just uploaded a performance:

A Time of (Mostly) Non-Doing

 My music never lies, but at times it may wink roguishly.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

... and today when the satellite net is crammed with the stupid drivel of the Hot Humorous 100, where can a gone cat like yourself get the laughs that we were making then just for you?

— David Ossman as Dexter Fong

Mostly what I have not been doing is, finishing composition of Janky Juke Joint. It’s one of those times when I seem simply not to feel motivated to write. Before my stroke, I simply worked on at least one composition, and I was not concerned with motivation. I lived motivation. Is it my brain behaving differently since my stroke? Lassitude resulting from most of the Universe’s indifference to my work? It’s unclear and I don’t seek clarification. I know that I shall write more, but not today. (For one thing, I plan to include the piece on the April program.)  The q. of the Universe’s non-need for my work does not occupy my thoughts one way or another at present. I am simply at musical rest.