Goals: Fall, 2013

No fancy explications here today, no distracting verbiage, simply the goals I'm setting as I look past the end of the summer break (The Little One's school resumes in 20 days.)
1. Organ: pedal-work, practice, a repertory piece each quarter, study: working toward the AGO Service Playing Exam in 2014. This is the primary goal; time to become the professional I pretend (or feel like I pretend) to be.

2. Piano: continue developing technique and repertoire.

3. Public performances coming in 2014, 2015, 2016, & 2017, perhaps in September each year. Don't know what the rep will be, or where I'll be playing. It might be piano only, or piano and organ. Right now, it doesn't matter. The goal is to make it happen.

The reason for all this? "No More Nebbische" (Jan. 2, 2013) says it pretty well. To summarize it simply: I've fallen into a rut, and it's time to clamber out. Time for Sisyphus to take a sledge hammer to the stone, and carry the pieces bit by bit to the top of the hill. Time to focus on becoming, not just being.

Recently read, 2013

Updated December 17, 2013
(See also "Notable Reads.")

--I believe I"ve missed some here, but I'll try to make the list as complete as possible--
Dancing on Ashes, Anne McGravie
Far from the Tree, Solomon
Too Loud a Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal (barely begun--to revisit)
You Were Never in Chicago, Neil Steinberg (dabbled in)
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The Wild Way, Tanya Huff (also fun)
Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff (a fun read!)
Codex, Lev Grossman (thumbs down)
A Quest Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
The Glory of Their Times
Wherever I Wind Up, R. A. Dickey
The Rose Rent, Ellis Peters
Rainbow's End, Ellis Peters
Sorry Please Thank You, Charles Yu
Tales of Wonder, Jane Yolen
Briar Rose, Jane Yolen
Plutocrats, Freeland (unfinished)
An Antic Disposition, Gordon (unfinished)
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
In the Land of Invented Languages, Arika Okrent
The First Murder, Medieval Murderers
The Golem and the Jinni
The Riddle of the Third Mile, Colin Dexter
From Elvish to Klingon
http://mith.umd.edu//eada/html/display.php?docs=vespucci_letters.xml (must read more of this)
A Doctor's Gold Rush Journey to California: Israel Shipman Pelton Lord (partially read)
Van Gogh: The Life, Naifeh and Smith ((incomplete: a long, slooww read))
Death to Go, Harrod-Eagles (the last of this series for me, at least for now)
Death Watch, Harrod-Eagles
Orchestrated Death, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
The Baritone Wore Chiffon (what's the opposite of "recommended"?)
The Neruda Case, Roberto Ampuero
Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson
Trafalgar, Angelica Gorodischer (transl. Amalia Gladhart)
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/armstrong_04_13.php (Karen Armstrong's review of McCullogh's Silence)
The Art of Fielding
Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music, Glenn Kurtz
Dreams and Shadows, Cargill (abandoned)
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Borges
The Dragonriders of Pern, McAffrey
The Case for God, Karen Armstrong (unfinished; may want to return to this sometime)
The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley (less good than "Parnassus")
Parnassus on Wheels, Christopher Morley (good fun)
Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael, various titles (See the "Brother Cadfael" Post, below.)
Erasmus of Christendom, Roland Bainton (unfinished)
Music, Imagination and Culture (unfinished)
Monk's Hood, Ellis Peters
One Corpse Too Many, Ellis Peters
The Heretic's Apprentice, Ellis Peters
The Holy Thief, Ellis Peters
The Sanctuary Sparrow, Ellis Peters (not notable, but well-enjoyed)
The Language Wars, Henry Hitchings (unfinished)
Brain Bugs, Dean Buonomano (incomplete)
To Play the Fool, Laurie R. King
The Great Night, Chris Adrian (abandoned)
One Hundred Names of Love, Dianne Ackermann
Requiem, Frances Itani
The Trumpet of Conscience, Martin Luther King, Jr. (of special note is the final section, "A Christmas Sermon on Peace")
Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin [first notable book of 2013]

the ordinary

but the ordinary is the miracle.

Ordinary love and ordinary death
ordinary suffering, ordinary birth,

the ordinary couplets of our breath,
ordinary heaven, ordinary earth.

from Derek Walcott's Tiepolo's Hound
(as quoted in Ordinary Genius)

Betwixt Twain and Aristotle

Last week was a wash-out. A waste. A nearly complete miss, which the adverb does sadly little to mollify.

Yes, there are reasons (there nearly always are, after all), but they really don't matter. What does matter is re-starting today. Turn, and begin again. Re-dedication.

It helps that FB is loaded with motivational quotes this morning:

"A habit cannot be tossed out the window;
it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time."---Mark Twain

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."---Aristotle

And, not being willing to argue with the likes of Twain & Aristotle (it sounds like the name of a fine pub somewhere), I renew the plan: Exercise (why? it's healthy for mind (!) and body), piano (why? because I need it, like a painter needs to paint), Hebrew (really? Yes--this matters to me not because it's useful--it may never be useful--but because it's a challenge I want to meet, an enrichment I desire), and, next week, organ technique (because the pedal board is progressing, but I can do better).

Rebuilding requires recognition of the altered landscape--but the wise ones tell us of the importance of building excellence, coaxing ourselves (one step at a time) into being more than we were.

And that, ultimately, is the true goal.