Health Report
I overdid it a bit yesterday. I got up gung ho and had a good chat with Curtis Birky my therapist. We agreed to skip our next appointment due to the holidays with the reservation that if I get to feeling like I need to talk to him I will contact him for an appointment. Then I drove back from Glenn where he lives and practiced organ for an hour or so.
In the afternoon I began to notice some weird fatigue. My energy pie has changed due to the surgery I’m sure. I didn’t have much energy for the rest of the day. And in the wee hours of this morning I felt an unusual weakness and didn’t get up until after 7 AM. It was a good rest and I took my first shower since the surgery this morning (Too much information?).
Today we will get a Christmas tree and I will do the usual prepping for tomorrow’s Eucharist. But I need to take it easy.
Beethoven’s doing the trick
For some reason I have been playing a lot of Beethoven post surgery. My cellist and I read through some of the first movement of his cello sonata. Then the trio played some of his Op. 1, no. 1. Yesterday after gaining a slight second wind, I sat at the piano and played his entire Sonata in G major, op. 31, no. 1 and the first movement of the Tempest piano sonata which follows it..
This morning I showered, cleaned the kitchen, and made coffee listening to the first three movements of the Eroica symphony. Great stuff and exactly what I want to hear right now.
I generally associate Beethoven with a nobility of human spirit (the way I associate Mozart with a joie de vivre, joy of living). But mostly I like the melodies, the turns of phrases, the chord progressions.
I think that listening for form in symphonies might not be the ticket for me. I like listening more viscerally, for sheer enjoyment. I think that my training pushed me away from this kind of listening. Thank goodness i still manage to play and listen to music for fun and the sheer wonderfulness of it.
But I don’t think it’s Beethoven’s nobility that is attracting me right now. i think it’s the beauty in the music, the melodies and the sheer logic, that does it for me.
And of course facing cancer I’m very glad to be alive at this moment.
Audio Articles – The Atlantic
From Arizona to Yemen: The Journey of an American Bomb
Good journalism. Tragic story.