I'm back. And I can play!
I went to the first rehearsal Maureen's as-yet-unnamed quintet had, tonight up in Evanston. We spent about an even split of our evening playing and talking. I think everyone is interested in getting along at least as much as playing well. From some of the stories Jenny and Mary-Therese told, it seems like personal relations were the single biggest destructive factor in the ensembles they've been part of in the past. I'm not sure. But we spent quite a bit of time just talking about things, thinking out loud, trying to figure out a direction.
And, we played. And from that, I realized I hadn't lost as much of my skill as I'd thought. I was, nonetheless, glad we didn't play for three solid hours. My lip probably couldn't have made it through night like that. I need to ease into it.
I like these people. I think things will work out well, if tonight is any indication. Saturday afternoon we're going to meet at Maureen's house, which she shares with a couple of non-musician grad students a few blocks from school. Tuesdays and Saturdays, at least, I now have something to do.
I went back and read the things I wrote last night. I went back and read the things I wrote three or four weeks ago, when I started this. It's amazing to me the things I'll say here. I would hope this starts to spill over into the "live" parts of my days. It amazes me, the things I think about sometimes.
I need to play, and that will let me write. I need to read, and that will remind me to write. I need to think about things, and maybe I will write about them. And, more to the mundane, I have to call someone tomorrow about a writing a school feature out in Buffalo Grove somewhere.
It's not as cold today as it was the other day, and it's really clear out. Driving back down from Northwestern tonight, I cut across South Boulevard to Sheridan, out where it goes around the cemetery at the lakefront, and there was a huge sepia-tone moon up. Once I got down closer to home, it was harder to see -- Chicago is, after all, world capital of high-pressure sodium lighting -- but it was nice to see it for a couple of blocks. By Friday it's supposed to be awful again, that sort of weird mix of rain and snow that this area seems to wallow in. In Minnesota, it snows, or it rains. It does not do both.