A Composer’s Journal Entries: October 15-30, 2005

Journal entries by composer and pianist Laurie Conrad

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A Composer’s Journal Entries: October 15-30, 2005

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More Mail in the Fairies’ Mailbox; A Composer’s Journal Entries: October 15-30, 2005

Sunday, October 15

Rainy again today, but still fairly warm. The colors deep, vibrant out the windows. The gardens still without a first frost; soon I will bring them all inside, the hanging baskets and pots. A forest in the large upstairs room.

An e-mail from the Cornell professor’s group. They have applied for grants, and want to perform my piece for piano and strings next fall. I wrote back saying that I would like to play the piano part, and asked what stringed instruments would be available. I would like to add a bass, if possible; a few other changes to the score as well.

Tuesday, October 17
2 a.m.

Warm again today, in the low 60's. M. returns from N.Y.C. late tonight. Another message from the Cornell group - they are delighted that I will perform the piano part. Karel called and cancelled our visit; he is not well, and next week will be in Kentucky. A music festival of some sort, they are playing his pieces. He will call on his return. One of the big harp magazines lost my CD, would I please send another so they can review it. Apologies. Two magazines want to review The Spiritual Life of Animals and Plants, I sent them to my publisher. Another harp magazine wants to review the CD and sell them. The goldfish I sent healing to is feeling better today, does not look half dead. More requests for Healing: the UK, and US cancer; depression in Germany; brain injuries, a child in New Zealand. Sometimes it’s difficult to even open my Healing file, such sorrow. A new meditator on the other side of the world. Letters for the Living Rosary took all evening to write: Benin, Togo, Zaire (Congo), S. Africa, Ile Maurice; the prisoner in Cameroun. He has signed up many members; poor fellow, I wonder when his term is up. A replacement check from my book publisher, I lost the other one. Brought in more plants from the gardens. A normal day.

This was a bit new: an animal communicator wrote and asked what sort of bird Nigel was, and why didn’t I ask him where he was now. She was referring to my story about the bird practicing his songs outside my window. I wrote back and said I had no idea what sort of bird Nigel was, and that this was thirty years ago, I was afraid it was a bit too late to ask him where he now was. She wrote back and said to contact him anyway, wherever he was now. I asked myself if I truly wished to bother my friend Nigel, but did inwardly contact him to thank him and I felt his presence near me. Wrote the communicator back with the news. He is a good friend, and she does have a point; in a way, I am being wasteful of a good friendship.

Wrote to Bob Spear: he is still emmeshed in his string convention, no time to correct the main score of the Quintet. Or to hold rehearsals for the final recording. He wrote: “I will be largely out of my mind until the convention ends and everyone goes home on Thursday morning. Then I am going to have a nervous breakdown. I’ve worked hard for it; I deserve it, and noone is going to deprive me of it. We can talk further after that, if you are willing to speak in short sentences and monosyllabic words.” I asked him to call me when it was all over. Meanwhile I might begin working on corrections to the piano Quintet, and copying out that score and the string parts. I have missed working with Bob and the Albert Consort. Next, poor Bob will spend many long hours entering the first movement of the string octet with choir into the computer; then I will have to correct the main score. Tasks neither he nor I am looking forward to.

Thursday, October 27

More rain; woke to a brown and grey sky again. Chilly, in the low 50's. Dinner with Chris and Sarah. The conversation turned to my clairvoyance. I said that until I was thirty years old, I didn’t even know what clairvoyance was. That I merely felt socially inept. Chris said: “What?” I laughed - that did sound a bit strange. Explained that when together with other people, I was reading their hearts and minds and their emotions - which now I realize often conflicted with what they were saying, perhaps even with what they were consciously thinking and feeling. I never understood how others knew which thought or feeling to address in their conversation - the spoken or the rest that I was perceiving. Not to mention the being from another realm standing in the corner of the room. I felt - socially inept. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what topic or feeling to address and what to say. Chris was still a little puzzled, so I continued: for instance, I might be feeling and hearing anger and angry words from the person speaking - but their spoken words were saying something else. I did not know how the other people knew which to address, talk about, respond to: the anger or their other, spoken-aloud words. Chris said I should put this in my Journal, in case someone else was facing the same problem. So I have included it here.

Saturday October 29

M. is in Atlanta, at a conference of some sort until late Sunday night. Went to a ballet rehearsal with Sarah and Chris this afternoon: Alice in Wonderland and Carnival of the Animals. The performance and dress rehearsal were at the old State Theater downtown, with its twinkling star lights in the ceiling, the coat of arms emblazoned above; the marble columns and heavy chandeliers and high balconies above, left over from a richer time, when Ithaca was the center of the movie industry. A castle built for the arts, a dwindling genuflect before American artists. The dancing was quite good, although neither Sarah nor I recognized any of the dancers. We are getting old. Cindy Reid, wearing sweat pants and a bright red winter scarf, was onstage correcting the dancers when we arrived. She illustrated some steps, her extension still extraordinary, her movements precise, sculpted. “Kangaroos, a more energetic back leg please”, “Birds, you need to be more determined. Concentrate, keep your postures true and remember those soft arms” ... We watched the run through that followed, the costumes’ deep, rich colours reaching into my very soul. Vivid, moving paintings on the stage, the geometries of the choreography bringing order to the story. I remembered performances of the same pieces many years ago, when Sarah and Cindy, Nan and Lavinia were all still dancing. Outside again, the colours and lighting of the world so listless and faded by comparison. The magic was gone in the outer world, and it took quite some time for it to return.

Towards evening Lauren and I went to Binghamton, to see a rehearsal of Lucia di Lammamoor, with the Binghamton Opera Company. Only a few singers were there, with the pianist, who talked the audience through the story. The pianist made many mistakes as he played the score, he did not play very well; I inwardly sighed. I was used to my Callas recordings, and her bel canto, la Scala style of interpretation. The voices followed the pianist, and so the entire musical effect was metronomic, well articulated but without the traditional Italian flourish and rubato. Although deeply moved by the voices themselves, I was disappointed. Outside, I met a tall, thin young man standing by the doorway. He approached me and asked who I was. I told him that I was a concert pianist and a composer - he said that he had guessed as much, that he knew I was a musician. He played bass in the orchestra, and had come up from New York City to play the coming concert. I told him to contact Robert Spear, that perhaps he would show him around his workshop and let him play his new instruments. He shook my hand gratefully as I turned to leave - and I think I will always remember him; a young, thin man standing in the shadows of a large stone building under street lamps following a rehearsal, in an almost empty neighborhood of Binghamton, late at night; two visitors, two artists, two musicians following their dreams while most of the world watched television, or talked about their day or future, or slept. I cannot put it into words, but the connection between true, aspiring musicians, even in a brief meeting - is not new to me. As I look back over the rough landscape of my remembered life, I see these brief meetings scattered here and there, landmarks for me to remember with gratitude and love. As though I lived in exile and occasionally was allowed back into my own country ...

Sunday October 30

Walking past the climbing rose today, I noticed something in the fairies' mailbox: a long, thin strip of heavy paper crayoned entirely blue, folded and taped together. Also a small note that had been rained on and had faded out to the point that it was no longer readable. I carefully undid some of the tape and opened a corner of the blue packet. Within its folds I found innumerable small, light yellow flower petals. From a wildflower, I assume for the fairies’ tea table. I found an orange Chinese lantern that had almost disintegrated; the lantern now a delicate fiber mesh, still in the shape of a lantern, with its large orange seed within, clearly visible, like a small sun. I placed it in the mailbox with a short note thanking the gift-giver for their present; the fairies would remain under the arbor until the first snows, to return again in the spring. Last week I had noticed a class of kindergarten children stopped in Fairy Hollow with their teachers - but this gift for the fairies was from another child I think; one old enough to write.
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