I met with D yesterday. We talked and lunched (curly haired painter Jasper joined us for eats), and rehearsed today’s script. The drive to and from Perry Park was autumnally beautiful, with changing leaves providing moments of gorgeous color. Coming back it rained in varying intensities all the way to Sedalia, giving that gentle valley a certain peaceful ease.
Dinner last night at The Walnut Room, followed by chatting with the knitting group at the new knit shop, Lamb Shop. The shop is a gorgeous space, with the shelf-lined walls presenting vibrant rainbows of color made of balls and hanks of yarn for sale.
Midnight. I practiced naming the minor scales, focusing on which accidentals are in each, as well as which major scale each is related to.
I visited the world of the folk song Div‘ pļaviņas es nopļāvu, exploring how to translate it into English. A challenge is the concept of tautu dēls. Even the concept of tautas is not part of the English vocabulary: people who are not of the family, specifically, a marriageable girl’s family. It is the exogamous pool from which a girl’s husband will be drawn. A tautu dēls is a potential husband. In this song, he is a neighbor, so he could be, say, „a handsome neighbor.“ But he could also have arrived from miles away, like the sailors in Pūt, vējiņi and Jūriņ prasa smalku tīklu. Literally this term means „son of the people“ as opposed to „my farmily’s son.“ It seems that a collection of descriptors will be used to translate the concept, depending upon the specifics of each song. Each translated term will have to be poetic and singable, too.
Piano. At knitting last night, Brad talked about the concept of purchasing a grand piano. „My little spinet has mushy action and no nuances in the damper pedal.“ We discussed how a poor instrument can negatively impact playing. „I never make any progress with any of my pieces,“ Brad asserted. I talked about this as not just a function of lack of practice, but that it can most definitely be connected to a poor instrument. I talked about how things I could never do on the Brambach became possible on the Steinway.
I ponder Sunday’s Piano Salon. I would like to also practice talking about one of my pieces in progress, perhaps the Gnomenreigen. I believe this is a very valuable thing to share. But I’ve never done this before, and find myself feeling oddly nervous about doing it. I remind myself that these salons are a space explicitly created to PRACTICE activities regarding piano playing. There is no one to criticize me, other than my inner voices. (Of course, with friends like those inner voices, who needs enemies?)
MANA DZĪVE / MY LIFE. I continue formatting Dreamways journal entries to match the blog format that I’ve devised. Yet again, I move through those months of my life, this time backwards, with the goal of reaching March, 2005, when Connie and I first talked about a dream group.
I mull over formatting and storage issues regarding my journals. Until this week, each month of journalings has had three physical incarnations. First, the words were recorded by hand in my paper journal. Then they were imput into a word document. Finally, the word document was downloaded into Movable Type. This has been rather time cosuming.
I ponder how to speed things up. I am now experimenting with eliminating the handwritten step. This saddens me. Writing by hand, with my left hand, is hugely valuable. But logistical realities are pressing in on me. If I want to post to the Dreamways blog with regularity and some sense of ease, it seems that I will have to eliminate the paper journaling. Technical constraints always impact upon a fellow, guiding how things get done. In this case, however, I do resent that computer realities are mitigating against pen and paper. But, as I am learning over and again, I must be flexible, I must practice crawling, if not flying, out of the shoebox of my conventional thinking.
In terms of records retention, it is sobering that a document in Moveable Type can be easilty deleted and is gone with the wind. Therefore, it seems that I will always want a Word version of each journal entry as a backup. There is the issue of generating paper versions, which I don’t know if I can from the blog. And, too, I will want to extract parts of journal entries, say „PIANO“ writings for other purposes. Ay caramba, it becomes so complicated, in all its digitalized ease!