084 - Another Decade

When I started this post I was 69 years old.

When I finished it and set it to be distributed today at 1:00PM, I was 70.

To clarify, I go by astronomical time, not this asinine “Daylight Savings,” therefore the next day doesn’t actually begin until 1AM. When I was born 70 years ago the curse of daylight savings time was still a few years off.

I was going to fill this space with some semi-autobiographical details of what I’ve experienced up to the point where I’ve reached this ridiculous age but quickly came to the conclusion there really is no way to condense such a thing. This post would become long and tedious. Who needs that?

I will say I was lucky to meet and marry Teresa, who has, so far anyway, tolerated my idiosyncrasies and blessed me with two great children, Preston & Iona, & perhaps before it’s too late for us to enjoy them one or the other of those two might manage a grandchild (or two). Assuming we make it to this coming November we will have managed to stay together for 40 years.

With the exception of my hearing, which is atrocious, I don’t have any major health issues, so I’m hoping I can keep this blog, or something like it, going for at least another decade (which is a ridiculous overabundance of music when you think of it), keep directing the mandolin orchestra (MOOKC), and finish a few more major composition projects, hopefully producing some lasting pieces that enter the literature.

It’s my opinion that music, more than any other art form, truly reflects / expresses the personality of the composer. When I’m sitting at the piano playing some Mozart, for example, I can sense his character and get a feel for what he must’ve been like in person. John Cage deliberately tried to remove his personality from his music and at that he failed miserably as his playfulness and humor is everywhere in his scores. Perhaps at some point when I’m long gone this stuff will persist for a while as a bit of an echo of what I was like.

Or perhaps not - it won’t matter to me as I’ll be dead anyway.