I cannot wait for New Year's Day. It's the best holiday. Even if I'm hungover, I always feel new and fresh on New Year's. It's arbitrary, of course, to feel new. It's all in the mind, but so are we.

That reminds me of a professor who said to one of my classes that dreams don't really have a narrative strand. He said that people just experience abstract stimuli like colors and sounds, and the mind makes a story out of it. At first I felt saddened by this, but then I realized that right at that moment, all I was getting was a mess of sensory information, and that my mind was putting it together. Heh. I thought of that a few beats too late to raise my hand, though. Probably just as well.

Remains of the Holiday

As usual, Christmas has blown through our lives like grapeshot, and now it's time to see what's new and what's left. Today I'm back in the office with the same tenacious cold with which has been my constant companion since last Wednesday. But today I'm wearing a new sweater and this huge ring that looks like an ivory rose, so that's an improvement. It's very quiet here today, and it's supposed to snow. I will believe that when I see it!

Human beings need light. I am convinced of this. I am also convinced that my concentration is being severely effected by the fact that I don't get any from the sky. Ever.

Aside from that, I've had one small triumph today. I had hoped to find some medieval polyphony that came from a nunnery OTHER than the famed Las Huelgas codex, but the desired manuscripts were out of reach. Not even IU has these things! And even if I were to get my hands on a facsimile, there's that concentration issue. Oh yeah, and Christmas. So I just wrote to the scholar who had listed the sources and asked her if she knew of any individual pieces that might have been published. She was very nice and gave me a couple of dynamite leads...on English polyphony from nunneries!!! This is exciting, because English polyphony is irresistably sweet and charming. Anyway, my bosses are letting me go early tomorrow to go to the library (which closes at 5, dammit).

Maybe I should go back to grad school just so I could have enough time to study. It breaks my heart to think of my poor, neglected German project, just languishing there in its binder.

In other news, our office building had its Christmas breakfast today. Mini-quiches, lattes, spanikopita, tiny cupcakes, which were the best thing by far. Lots of fluffy icing and not too sweet. And "Dickens" Carollers. I nearly cried, for some reason, when I heard "Angels we have heard on high." It was not moving. It's just that there's no sunlight, and my emotions are confused right now.

More Compline-ing

I'm all alone in the office today, which almost never happens. There's nothing for me to do except tidy up the notes and translations for January, and sort of sit here and wish I could take a nap instead. I started my new practice regime this morning, which is to say that I rose early and went to a nearby church to wail in the new day. It was great! It was also dark the entire time. This, combined with the memorization of chant, gave me a nice well of concentration, from which I also drew the feeling of being an actual nun at my own private Matins.

I learned recently from that thing that is currently circulating the web, that I am left-brain-dominant. At first, I was surprised, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes; even as a musician, I tend to think of things in the most practical terms. Go ahead and laugh, but I'm talking about the way I go about learning the music and words, and the way I conceptualize it. It's hard to explain. This is something that has always frustrated me. Some people seem to grasp music intuitively, and I've always felt sort of locked out of that level of understanding. But what the heck; one keeps trying.