5/19/10 Eleanor Rigby

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

To this day I still believe there's value in periods of isolation, where one puts heart and soul into creating something no one will (ever) hear.

In the late seventies I would take the bus up to North Campus in the evenings (best if it was a Friday or Saturday night), walk to the Music School, and play in a deserted concert hall, or inside one of the dozens of practice rooms, all empty save for one or two diehard musicians. There's a creative spark that occurs when one is alone while others are partying. Of course, whether those partiers are experiencing more or less isolation/desolation than you is an open question.

Once I played for an hour at an upright piano at the front of a lecture hall in the Modern Language Building on Central Campus on a Saturday night. When I finished, I was startled by a guy who had snuck in at some point, taken a seat near the back (of the darkened room), and applauded, 'Bravo!'

I love the images the lyrics of Eleanor Rigby conjure.

So how do I deal with the anguish of having only made a small fraction of the gains I 'foresaw' coming my way? During the relentless rally over the past year, making a grand in one day would have seemed no small feat. Making a grand today, by comparison, felt hollow- it should have been twenty grand. What the hell.