Category Archives: Music

Music Thoughts

other people’s norms/my versions/my own

because using other people’s norms in the normal way is one thing (Rienzi, Das Liebesverbot, and Die Feen.)
adapting them for your own purposes is another, Der Fliegende Hollander, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, but
designing your very own with your purposes in mind from the BEGINNING is enTIREly another! (Der RIng (Rhinegold, Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung,) Tristan, Meistersinger, and Parsifal.
(those are the 13 opera’s by Wagner, the first two of which I believe never saw performance during his lifetime, the next three were him (I believe) adapting existing operatic styles (german, italian, and french, I think.. (Maybe I’m paraphrasing or remembering incorrectly)
and the remainder are his own, mature music dramas.

do not self-judge quickly…

…Rushing to a perfectionist self-judgement of nearly everything you do, right away, even during or before you do it… or to a comparison with other people, be they real or imagined, or simply mis-perceived…

never good.

simply don’t do it.

start by recognizing that you do it.

then just stop.
and move forward. really hard to relax it can be, if you are not used to it.
but you must.
move forward and make mistakes and be in the unknown anyway.
otherwise you’ll just stay where you are, which, if this resonates, you don’t really want to be.

“FREE CRACK!!” (sugar, I mean)

Once, at JAVA JOE’S (it’s been called just JAVA’s for 16 years)
in Rochester, NY (I just told another story moments ago about this same coffeehouse, my first.)
they took all the “solidified” sugar from the bottoms of the glass sugar containers, (most of which were like two inches across, as if they were frozen) and put them on a white paper plate on the counter, and made a sign that said
“FREE CRACK!”
I ate one.
it was delicious.
and I LOVE that they would make a sign that said that.
that shows a sense of humor.
to hell with corporate FAKE cameraderie. sp.
I’m for the REAL thing.
now gimme some free sugar and call it crack.