… and I suspect that I’m not going to able to predict anything about this year given that there is no way I could have predicted what happened to me last year.
But last year is last year and I really must focus on what I may be able to do this year on a musical level, and that means what am I going to achieve with the piano.
I suspect the best I can do at this stage is to proceed with the CD recording I’ve been planning for a while but have not been able to proceed with for a variety of reasons mainly connected with my eyesight problems. There is always a concern in the back of my mind that I will still have problems further down the track but on the other hand my eye has been stable for a while and given that that is the minimum I can hope for there is now no reason that I can’t progress. Having observed some tricks of the recording trade at Tonya’s concert late last year there is a bit of experimenting to be done but within a very short time that can be finalised.
My main fear is myself – that I haven’t regained the skills I had before my operations, but having played informally for a number of friends over the last few days (on other pianos, not the Stuart) I have been pleasurably surprised by some of the music that’s coming out. Maybe I’m not as bad as I think I am.
Today was spent preparing for and then having the family down for a New Year’s Lunch. Everything went off well and it is very pleasing to know that the family (on both sides) is strong and very much together. I suspect this is something that not too many people can say for themselves and it is something that I value very highly, particularly as I grow older.
The one thing I can be certain about is that music will remain an integral part of me for the foreseeable and non-foreseeable future, and that the Stuart piano, and the network of people this has brought me into contact with, will be an increasingly important factor in what I do.
When I started this blog, I mentioned a number of ‘first impressions’ which I believed were very important in understanding what this piano ‘means’. I’ve no doubt that these remain – and my experiences with people who know Stuart pianos show that these principles are not just valid for me but appear to be more common than I first expected. Hopefully the recordings I do this year will assist others to understand what I mean.