Saturday, February 02, 2008

Damnit, I'm TRYING to be super productive this weekend, but failing miserably.
The only project I have to work on is my piano trio. For the last few weeks, I've been able to go between projects and have a sense of being productive on something at any time. There seemed to be a natural flow to things.
That flow has slowed to a puddle.
I'm getting some stuff done, but I was hoping/needing the creative stuff to just be flowing out of me this weekend. Anyway, the good thing about staring at my sketches and the computer screen for hours without actually producing anything new is that I'm getting to know my own work quite well. I'm starting to see how it is all going to fit together. I'm not terribly worried because this is how it usually happens - I take an inordinate amount of time to piece things together internally and then I am able to sort that out in the real world (well, as real as the computer or manuscript is). The problem is that I can't rely on that time having elapsed early enough for me to get all my work done, so I'll just force myself to do what I can so that it will get finished by the weekend. My lesson is on Tuesday, but I do want to have some sense of finality going in there. My goal is to have it in some form of completion by tomorrow night so that I can just work on the finesse of the piece.

I am excited to think ahead to ... well anything other than this weekend. Next weekend, I will be done all of my immediately pressing projects - it's been a LONG time since I haven't had some kind of deadline looming over me... probably since November.
Also, the weekend after next weekend, I am going to Quebec for Carnival! I've been feeling stupid/lazy/uncultured lately - thinking about the fact that I live 2 hours from Toronto, yet I still haven't gone. This area of the country has a lot of opportunities available, so I need to take advantage of them. I think I'm also going with some grad student friends to see the TSO playing Mahler next weekend.

When I was deciding on grad schools, I convinced myself that it would be more advantageous to live somewhere(London) close to a big big city with lots of culture(Toronto) than to live in a moderately big city with moderate culture(Edmonton). I think I was wrong. The arts and cultural influence has to be right around you. I'm going to start forcing myself to go to Toronto more because, let's face it, London is not good for my artistic soul. School is great and I'm learning a lot and I love it, but there's also all of that stuff that people learn outside of class.
In conclusion, wherever I go after this degree, that choice will be driven by the desire to live within a strong artistic community.
I hope I don't sound too negative, the other side of that is my plan to make the most out of London. Once my piano trio is done, I will have time to start working with the choreographer on some kind of project for the end of this term as a precursor/ research into my thesis project for next year. I am also going to put efforts into starting that improvised music group at Western.

Ok, too much time typing on the computer... back to work!

1 comment:

Jonathan Evans said...

Move to Vancouver!