Day Four - Maybe A Breakthrough?

Hey everyone. And by “everyone” I mean , you who are watching this.

I believe I saw that I have two views on one video and six views on another video. Perhaps by the time you're watching this, there will be 100 views on one of these videos. But that doesn't matter. I don't care. I'm just doing this. I''m trying to make a discipline of showing up every day to offer my experiences for the day along the journey of my next 10 years of creation.

So today, in many ways, I believe, was sort of a breakthrough day for me, because if you have watched any of these videos, you may know that at this time period, I have been preparing for a benefit concert out at a winery on the south side of Ashland called Irvine Roberts, which is a beautiful place, and I determined, when I first conceived of doing this that I wanted to share five new pieces that I've mostly never played before at this event.

It's going to be about an hour of performance, a half hour set, and then a 15 minute break and another half hour set. And ordinarily that would not be any big deal if I was just doing all the pieces that I usually play.

But in this case, I wanted to focus on these new pieces and also on a theme of true friendship or true love, or how we move each other, and I may talk about that a little bit more as I move on through this thing.

One of the things that I've discovered as I've begun to do this is that I have to, I have to be completely spontaneous. I'm not really interested in editing the hell out of these videos. If it's weird, if it's too weird, or I'm saying things that are completely redundant, then I just want to start over. And I don't know whether this will be like that, or perhaps this will be better than some of the other videos that I've put up.

I went back and watched what I’ve done so far. I have to get transcripts of each of these, because I'm going to be putting the transcript up on the website tenyearsofcreation.com. I’m watching these as the transcripts are being made. I'm using the otter app to transcribe these videos. It is kind of noticeable how I sort of drone on, and I've got all kinds of tangents that I'm going off on.

So whether I will ever be able to be incredibly interesting on camera is still a question that no one knows the answer to.

However, I wanted to tell you that today feels like a breakthrough, because I actually played all five of these pieces in the park today! I am knowing them, I'm learning them, I'm getting the hang of them, and that makes me very encouraged that I'm going to be able to make a wonderful performance next week.

To what do I attribute this? one of the things I attribute this to is a heightened level of focus, and that, I am going to say has been assisted by taking 200 milligrams of L-theanine with each of my two cups of coffee this morning. I just felt much more focused. I felt much more focused after my first in the morning coffee, that I usually have around seven or so, and much more focused ever after my second coffee, which usually happens around 11 am or 11:15 am, so for those who are interested in coffee, there's a little something of a report about whether you can get an even greater benefit from having coffee because of the smoothing and focusing effect of L-theanine in combination with the caffeine.

Otherwise, you may find this just incredibly non-essential for your life!

Moving forward, I practiced those pieces this morning. I began to do the transcriptions of the videos that I need to put on the website.

As I described yesterday, two of the main projects that I have in the next few days is being ready to play a great show at the winery, and another is to launch the website. And I'm getting closer and closer on each of those projects.

I had some beautiful experiences in the park. I think I will actually try to share with you at least some of the poem, or, if not all of the poem that my friend Richard, the 91 year old gentleman who comes to the park to listen. She shared this morning. It's called birches, and it goes like this:

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

To me, that poem is so amazing.

Richard edited it and apologized after he read it to me that perhaps the editing was not well done. But he did get the very best parts of the poem.

It seems now to be part of the purpose of being in the park, to be with the people and what is happening with them.

There was a woman towards the end, I would say, maybe in her 40s, sitting over on the bench to my right. She was quiet as I played the last three pieces, and then she came up to me afterwards and said, “Thank you so much. It meant more to me than you can imagine.”

That probably leads me to what I'm beginning to develop to say at this concert.

I started thinking about the idea of true friendship, and how important it seems to be in my life right now to have friends that feel like true friends.

And yet I realized there's something about talking about true friendship that turns it into a thing, which means it's a thing that you may have or you may not have. And one might look at me and say, well, good for you. You have true friends!

But it's not really quite like that, and that's not exactly what it is that I want to share. What I started thinking about was the verb, the way that we use the word “touch”. “You touched me”, not with your hands, but by being who you are, by doing something that moved me.

And of course, touch is a touchy word these days, because we are coming to know as a culture that there can be touch that is not good touch, and there is, then, a cloud around the use of that word.

So I want to use the word “move” and say how there are things that you do that move people. When you move people, you may also be moved by them, by their response. That is what I've been experiencing. That is what has been forming the basis of my life now for a number of years, and I haven't been able to put my finger on it, you know, to touch what it is that makes this bond between us that is so important to all of life.

So I'm going to be talking about that. I need to talk about it more so I can find a way to weave it into my performance.

I was happy to be able to share those new pieces. They're not perfect yet, but I'm getting there. I felt this incredible kinship and even intimacy with all of these people, some strangers, even as I was going to the park, being there at the park and playing and coming from the Park, and it has inspired me, as perhaps you can tell.

I started singing a version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” on my way to the park, getting ready, loading up my bike, and I thought of a way to do it, an arrangement of it, that I want to try out and work on more. Because in a way, it's an easy song, and in another way, it's not that easy of a song, but it's a beautiful song. The words are so beautiful.

So there will probably be more time today after I do this.

This message to you is happening at, I'm going to guess, around six this evening.

I'm hoping I can get the last two transcripts done and start posting these to the website. Then it'll be a matter of proofing the website, making sure I've got as many of the glitches out as I can get, as well as looking at it on my phone to see that it looks good on the phone as well. To do that, I believe there will be a bit of back and forth with chat GPT, because I find chat GPT very helpful in troubleshooting all of those kinds of things.

For now, I have decided not to purchase a bunch of these misters. If you watched any of the previous videos, I was thinking about having misters for all the tables at the concert.

Instead, it seems I have decided to purchase a new set of strings for just about $400 and that is cleaning me out for the moment.

I am constantly having to weigh the different things and try to find a way to make it through on the resources that I have. I'm really grateful every time I can add to the support for my work.

In this case, it was just time to get strings, and there were enough contributions at this birthday gathering I had last Sunday that it it made it possible to do that.

So on the website, I'll be showing the things that have been accomplished in terms of tools and resources, so that anyone who's checking this out can see there's some sort of flow going on, that there is a way that my project of being in the world as an artist and composer and creator and performer is in turn being supported by the world.

I think I'm going to leave it there with you now and whoever you are, wherever you are, I really appreciate you tuning in to what I'm doing, which is admittedly strange!

I I want to just end with a little bit of reflection on the very fact of this happening. I envision it somehow becoming more entertaining, becoming more interesting, including more variety, including maybe some songs, maybe some performances, other things like that.

And still, for me, it's very helpful to be able to sum up what has come through on this the fourth day is that right? 789, 10, the fourth day in the next 10 years of creation.