Thursday, September 30, 2010

09-30-2010

Last night--which also happened to be this morning--I mentioned how I feel like I may be entering a new phase of my life. The actual phrasing of this only came to me yesterday in idle conversation, but this has been almost a sort of theme for the past couple of months.

In all honesty, I don't think I could have put my finger on it, before this. Something has been in the air, whether it was my romantic situation, or the changing of the music in my life, or the shift with the day job, or the shift in my inner work*. Beginning to attend regular Gurdjieff/Bennett meetings with the local group that is directed by George B. and Elan S. certainly influenced that, I am sure--this especially in light of the fact that if I hadn't, I am not sure that I would have seen the "moment" of asking Tessa to come up to Boston as a "moment" of sorts**.

All this said, I do happen to see this all as a phase that is just beginning. At this point, the question that we were asked to consider--"What is my aim? How can my aim be brought to bear in this moment?"--seems like an incredibly important one to ask, right now. The difficulty of this is that, despite the seeming newness of this phase/stage, clarifying an aim into a single point or task seems very hard. We were told that this could be a big or small aim, and that small aims could be related to big aims. Fittingly, a small aim could easily lead to a big aim, so it could be that this small aim of writing each day for half an hour for the next four days (which should be a full week for myself, in all honesty) will lead to something bigger.

But I think that this is more likely an exercise in focus (granted, focus on something that I have been neglecting for months), only distantly related to what the real (big) aim seems to be: to serve music as best I can. This is such a lofty and insubstantial goal that it almost seems useless to write that out, but there are so many things that go in to filling this aim that are achievable--necessary and faithful practicing, learning musical pieces, working on my time, footwork towards securing a venue for the weekly performance challenge, this writing project, writing and arranging music, preparing myself for the Talking Heads show at the end of the month--that giving a cop-out answer like "serving music as best I can" seems like a truly viable answer.

Well, enough. I've written a fair amount today, and I still have at least three more days to continue this!

*I am loathe to use this term, but it seems to be the most honest one. But then, maybe that's why I don't prefer that term.

**Apologies for that sentence.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

For the next 4 days. . .

I'll be taking time off work, primarily for a personal break. I have some necessary work to do, though, so I'll be committing to writing each morning both text/prose and music, for at least 1/2 hour for each. It struck me that I am very likely at the beginning of the next major phase. . . .