Apologia

Yeah, I know. Postings have been few and far between these past couple of months. And this post doesn't really count as an essay -- it's merely an assurance to my puzzled readerdom that Rainier96 may be still, but he still exists.

One reason, among several, for my first starting this blog was to provide myself an outlet to express ideas and thoughts that -- sad experience had shown me -- caused friends' eyes to glaze over when brought up in conversation. With a blog, those same eyes may still glaze, but I don't have to watch the disheartening reaction in person.

My problem now -- after three years and 301 posts -- is that I seem to have run out of thoughts that I need to express. I'm hoping this is a temporary phenomenon. A transient psychological quirk: writer's block as a brief spasm of the brain tissue.

Of course, I'm not reassured by the life of E. M. Forster who, after writing five excellent novels, culminating in Passage to India in 1924, lingered on Earth for another 46 years writing nothing else for publication.

Instead of writing, I've been practicing. The piano, of course. I'm taking lessons through a Seattle non-profit organization that provides teaching for all the ordinary musical instruments. My own teacher is an immigrant to this country, ultimately from the U.S.S.R. (where she was educated at the Leningrad Conservatory of Music), by way of Israel (where she taught music in Tel Aviv). She's patient with my essential doltiness, and determined to infuse my desiccated attorney's soul with some small degree of Russian passion.

Admittedly, it's a bit like trying to teach ballet to a truck driver.

I shyly laid before her my rendition of the second movement to Beethoven's Pathétique sonata, which, as I've discussed in earlier posts, I insisted on teaching myself before returning to formal lessons. She's been trying to show me, ever since hearing those fumbling efforts, that Beethoven actually didn't just string a bunch of random notes together, notes which it's now my job to pound off on the piano -- as though I were a court reporter reading back testimony. Old Ludwig's music, it appears, is fairly nuanced and complex, and expresses nuanced and complex emotions. She'd like my playing to display some recognition of this fact.

But my lessons apparently haven't left her in suicidal despair. After a couple of lessons, she asked me to begin working on the third and final movement of the sonata, a movement that, on my own, I'd considered too difficult to even attempt. And this week, she tells me that she wants me to begin work soon on the first movement, the longest and most difficult of the three movements. I'm guardedly pleased that she has more confidence in my abilities -- at least, under her guidance -- than I do myself.

So that's what I've been up to. There is absolutely no reason why I can't write and practice piano at the same time. Well, not at exactly the same time, but you know what I mean. My writer's block must have some other cause, perhaps related to temporary fatigue with our nation's contentious politics, and to the fact that I haven't read any good books or seen any good movies recently. I really should get out more.

Don't give up on me. Something irritating or fascinating or baffling or delightful will soon ignite a spark within. This blog will once more burn brightly, once more a beacon of reason and hope, illuminating a dark and troubled world.