Tagged With: play
Wind, unwind
I find it’s most difficult these days to be truly still and resoundingly empty like a huge stone bowl on a plinth. I’m getting better at it, but it’s taking a considerable amount of focus. I seek to do this now because it occurred to me many months ago (years, even) that I need more […]
in the dark of the moon
The clouds are pale indigo-violet, then a blustery bruised grey shot through with long warm lines of golden sunlight and rich blue – this sets the red reds and the yellow yellows and the living greens in brilliant, stop-in-your-tracks collaboration. I feel as though I’m watching the gods at play in a game where they […]
On empathy and complaint
One of my best teachers gave us a good daily practice. This came out of a discussion about the idea of when one is truly ‘finished’ with something – in this case a painting – but it could be a poem, a novel, practise or rehearsal of a piece, a song, a cleaning project, a […]
Wachet Auf,
Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, Sheep May Safely Graze, Air in G, all the Brandenbergs, Arioso – playing these pieces is like eating home-made split-pea soup on the third day of chilly rain, book in hand, and a woodfire toasting your damp toes. Bach is ‘home’ to so many of us – harmonious, reassuring, refined, […]
Enemy lines
The struggle for six hours daily to make fingers move at lightning speed, and in the balance of the day to re-shape one’s mind into a vast reservoir of history, style and technique, impress the right teachers and build the pedigrees that could make all the difference in earning potential – this felt, to my […]