It has been a while

the fairy garden

Over the last 8 years I've average a post a day. On April 1st of this year I just stopped. I'm starting up again (obviously).  This ramble has a point - trust me.

I was chatting a friend yesterday about taking "breaks".    I was in the midst of my dissertation - now about 40 odd years ago - and realized that I had bitten off more than I should and was choking on my hubris.  Coupled with a failing relationship, some "job" angst, performance pressures and my general inability to not express displeasure, I was pretty much overloaded.  

I had a huge seminar paper due, my last doctoral course, and my topic was the effect of the Franco-Russian Alliance on Musical Composition.  I read everything there was to read (no Wiki back then...just moldy books) and came to the conclusion that "governments and artistic society" were two different things.  Actually that is a pretty good observation.  True to this day.  So my "paper", 18 weeks worth of work, was 1 paragraph long.

The professor was apoplectic and demanded to "see my notes".  I gave him the box.  He told me I was lazy. I told him that my paragraph was all there was to say; can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.  He told me he was going to block my degree.  I told him to try it...just try it.  Things got tense.  Hot actually.

The Dean of the School was called in. He suggest that everyone cool off and that I just find some sort of Happy Gilmore "happy place" which I did.  For a while I did nothing but go to that place far away from everything, work on the part of my dissertation that was fun, sleep, clear my mind, chill.

That wasn't exactly what I've been doing this last 3 months but as I try and simplify it seems to be a reasonable explanation of the writing drought.  However listening to this piece (below) after 40 years still gives me the willies.