Day Two - Uphill Climbing

All right, I am once again reporting from Ashland, Oregon, from the little place across the street from the high school gym where we live, in my studio on the eighth of July, in the year 2025.

I'm hoping that you don't see food In my teeth. on this video.

We're at the tail end of quite a long day. It's around around eight o'clock in the evening, and so many things have been happening.

I think the first thing that I addressed this morning was the benefit concert, which is very important as a sort of foundational step for all of the things that I want to create out into the future.

It turns out the weather prediction is for very warm weather. We're going to have a streak of 100 degree days, and it may be that on the 17th it goes down maybe 10 degrees, we'll see.

But this was a problem last year when we tried to have a benefit concert, and I actually ended up canceling it because I just could not see why people would want to come out in such hot weather.

How it is here in Ashland is that the temperatures sort of peak out around six or seven, So it'll be at the hottest part of the day, theoretically, at least. That's how it it seems in my mind, and that is troubling me.

So I went online. I have used in the park these misters, little fans. I got some at a local store here. L and I both use them. If we're out on a hot day, you can turn it on and it fans and you can squirt it and it shoots a mist of water on you. You can keep it in the fridge, and it can be nice cool water that gets misted on you.

So I made the suggestion to Dionne over at Irvine Roberts: “How about if I got a bunch of these for the tables, so then in my marketing, I can put this mister on it. Make a make a photograph of me. with the mister?”,

Listen to me from the Dark Ages. I'm going to make a photograph. I'm going to take a daguerreotype, whatever. So anyway, I suggested that, and she is really a wonderful, gracious person. I didn't hear back from her right away.

I also, I have been making rooibos tea to ice to take to the park.

Now remember, this all comes back to a creative life, and I'm there in the park on a hot day, and I've been trying to figure out what, besides water I can drink, and it turns out rooibos tea is so wonderful. Has a nice flavor. You don't have to sweeten it, except I think I cut the steeping short so it's not as strong as it was last time, and so I'm taking note of that. It's a fine batch. It's just not as strong of a taste as I would like. And especially if you're going to make it iced, you want it to be as strong as possible.

I'm trying to dial everything in, including, I have a second cup of coffee before I go to the park. And I don't know if you who are listening have seen the research about how actually helpful it is to have coffee, especially if it's filtered coffee, two or 300 milligrams of caffeine per day. Then there's even more research that shows if you have L-theanine with the coffee, it helps to smooth the buzz out and make you very focused.

I tried that this morning. It was true! I had the cold brew there at Noble, where I go, and had some L-theanine, 200 milligrams. It was so good, so smooth. Really got the most out of my coffee.

I also managed to visit with three of my friends there, spontaneously, three of my most creative friends: my friend Aaron, who's in charge of the AI club here in Ashland, my friend, Michal, who's another cellist, really a great cellist, who has his own little trio, and my friend Casey, who is not only a wonderful videographer and filmmaker, but a great musician as well. So I was able to have a little bit of that time with some of my creative friends.

Went to the park after that. There is a beautiful unfolding story with Richard, my friend who just turned 91.

He's bringing poetry every day. I ask him about it. He'll share a poem. He has something prepared usually. Today he shared that wonderful Robert Frost poem about “The Road Less Traveled” with me. I usually wait for a time when there's maybe only a few people around, some people who might appreciate it. His voice can be a little cracked. He's 91, after all! But it's so beautiful to listen to him share that poetry.

So that was one of the things that happened in the park.

There were several beautiful moments, including - very close to the beginning - a couple. The woman had been a cellist and she was very eager to hear some cello. That was wonderful to be able to play for them.

So the park session was good as it often is, and afterwards I had a visit with one of my very best friends, Jack, who wanted to have lunch with me for my birthday.

There was a beautiful moment at this place we ate called Vida. It's basically a bakery, but they have amazing sandwiches there, and it was very hot outside. My cello was on my bike. I didn't want my cello to get overheated, because dry heat will crack the cello, and I had to go through a little process and actually talk to the manager who let me roll the bike into this relatively small space in Vida, still leaving room enough for the people there.

So I had enormous gratitude to this woman, the manager at Vida. I got to put my bike with the cello out of the heat and then we ate a delicious lunch.

Then I made my way back home. At this point it was time to do my workout.

I do three workouts a week that are programmed by a friend of mine, who runs The CrossFit gym here in Ashland - Iron Haven, it's called - but he just sends me a spreadsheet every week with different movements on it.

Some I do at the local Y and two I do with kettlebells.

I've been a little bit behind because of everything that's been going on, so I felt like I absolutely had to get the kettlebell workout in today. And I did!

What am I creating? I'm creating the most healthy me that I possibly can create.

So I have a cold plunge. It's a freezer that's been modified with a liner and a temperature control so that the water stays at 42 degrees. And I got into the cold plunge I usually do about five minutes. It will really flood your system with all the kind of wake up chemicals that you need to be able to do a body of work, and I did my kettlebell workout, and then I knew that I was going to need to do this video, because that is what I'm committing to, to be able to share with all of you every day, every incremental step of progress that I'm making in my 10 years of creation.

I did hear back from Dionne. She was thumbs up on the idea of having misters at the concert next week.

There's really just two other things that I want to talk about.

One is I've been wanting to sing more. For my birthday, I made a request of my daughter, who is a singer songwriter in Nashville. Her name is Ali. She has a wonderful song called “Mortal Heaven”. I asked her if she would give me an idea what the chords were, send me the lyrics. I'm going to work on learning to sing it, making my own arrangement on the piano. She's already produced it with this wonderful singer songwriter and producer, Joe Pasapia, in Nashville, and it is on her Spotify.

I believe I'll leave a link with this video so you can hear it, and I might include the lyrics as well to this song, because it's a beautiful, beautiful song about what is good about being on Earth right now, which I am wholeheartedly embracing. So I received from her a little tutorial, which has my granddaughter in it, strumming on her guitar. Ali is trying to show me the chords and singing a little bit. And Hennie Lou, who is about a year and three months, is there in that video. She's so beautiful!

So I'm going to be working on “Mortal Heaven”, to arrange and sing.

But the big project is learning four two minute pieces that are part of a piece I composed over Christmas called “Verdaderos Amigos” for a family of Venezuelans who live in North Carolina. I’ll also be performing one piece that I also composed around that time called “Our Friend Sisyphus”, which was commissioned by a very wonderful supporter of the arts here in Ashland. I want to be able to do these pieces justice.

I've never performed them publicly. It's it's going to be - more than likely! - a push to be able to learn these pieces.

What happens is I compose these pieces, and in the moment, a lot of it is spontaneous. I create a sort of bed of harmony and chords and some melody, and then I play the cello part. That's usually one of the last things, and then I'll fill that out with some strings or other cello parts.

And I love these pieces. I am very, very happy with these pieces. “Our friend Sisyphus” is a big piece. It goes places. So I'll be sharing those as well.

I think we're going to do a video of the concert, or at least some of the pieces in the concert. We'll see what we can what we can produce from that.

Maybe the very last thing is the decision making process I'm going through. I believe that I'm going to have the money to get this powerful video editing and audio recording workstation, computer, which for a long time I've been thinking would be a PC, built by my friend, Marvin, but I'm actually leaning at this point more towards the Mac universe, which I'm more familiar with, and I'm trying to put together what that system will be. That's something I'm going to take some time with, to make sure I get it right. Because it's foundational. it's really going to be a system that I use for some years, hopefully.

So I guess you could say that I am, even though at the end of a challenging day, still very, very grateful for the life that I'm putting together, in my journey through my next 10 years of creation.