Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

I’ve been having trouble coping lately. I don’t know why. I’m panicking: I can’t make decisions: I feel like my mind is fragmenting into 100 little pieces and I cannot keep any of them in place for more than a moment. I can’t concentrate, I can’t pull my brain together, all the little fragments go tumbling away and are lost.

When I was younger, my mind used to "blue screen" once in a while, when I was under a lot of stress. Then I would cease being able to function: I couldn’t speak, or move properly: my brain would go into lockdown and I would just sit there and stare and jitter, or fall into this kind of sleep. That rarely happens full-on anymore, though it’s always something I have to battle against. When stress comes (which is often), I can sense it lurking there and I have to force my hands not to start doing the weird twitchy thing, force myself to continue speaking in full sentences. But that feeling I had then — of being completely isolated inside my own skull, is pretty much the same as the one I get so often now.

I’m sitting inside my brain, and everything there is happening super fast, and the world outside is slow and numb, dulled and gooey. But inside me everything is going so fast that I can’t pay attention to the outside. Of course, from the outside, it’s me that is slow and the world that is normal: my coordination is shot, I can’t pull myself together enough to say half a word before whatever i was saying/thinking is lost to me.

I always was susceptible to losing my mind, as it were; when I concentrated too hard on one thing: a programming problem set, a computer game, something like that. It seems to be a lot worse with screen-related things (i.e. computer programming problem set vs. organic chemistry problem set). But at the same time, back in the day, when I wasn’t flipping out about something or other, I was really smart: I learned things extremely fast, I was very good with words and writing and descriptions, I could figure out just about anything, and right quick.

But now — I’m just slow. I’ve forgotten all the words I used to know: so often I’m trying to explain something and I simply can’t recall the word I know I want. Writing this damnable LJ post is in fact agonizing. I’m much slower at figuring out new stuff: I sometimes really have to concentrate hard to understand something, and then after I finally do, I realize how simple it was, and how stupid I am for not being able to grasp it immediately. I forget things, when I never used to. After work every day, it’s a major effort to keep my mind functioning enough so that I can make the drive home without running into anything.

It frightens me so much, watching all these little pieces break down. I feel tarnished: not only has my brain turned into mush, physical things which were easy before are a struggle now. My body doesn’t work like it used to, my hands — my poor hands! — are stiff and uncoordinated.

Yesterday was the first rehearsal for the Philanthropic orchestra. We were reading through Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet , and my hands just… failed. During the runs, my fingers would actually seize up; my left hand turned into a contorted claw, I had to take it off the strings and shake it out before I could play again. I played the Romeo and Juliet way back at NEC, when I was 14, the semester before we went on tour to Italy. It’s not an easy piece, granted. But I remember it, and the difference between my hands then and my hands now fills me with horror. I can’t really verbalize this feeling. Another musician would understand it, maybe. It’s like a betrayal. That same shocking sick feeling in your stomach. That same sudden inability to breathe. The same awful realization that a thing you so treasured is gone.

I feel broken. I think I have to stop something. In fact, I think I know what it is, but I can’t face it right now.

So, yeah, I’ve kind of dropped the ball.

3 weeks, huh?

Something tells me the lightning just killed my internet so I’m writing this post in emacs, old-skool. I shall post it later. I remember my first year at MIT where was computer illiterate and wrote all the papers for my short story course in naked emacs. Yup. I only discovered the awesomeness that is Latex about a year later.

The last three weeks have been busy, discouraging ones. After the Jazz festival gig I stressed out horribly for a week til the wedding gig. It was held in a gorgeous 1920s-era hall where only the toes of the most elite brisbanites can touch the carpet (yes, oddly, Brisbane does apparently have socialites) — the kind of place that is all rich dark wood, scrollwork, high ceilings, and pool cues with padlocks on them (!?)

The wedding itself was good – we played quite well, in fact, and the wedding guests were psyched (and a wee bit sloshed?), which was the point, after all. There was one horrible moment for me personally, but no one else (except my fellow tenor sax and the band director) noticed.

It was really my fault. We were playing this chart we used to play all the time, so I hadn’t bothered rehearsing it. As we played merrily along, it slowly began to dawn on me that the notes I was playing, the notes written on my music, simply weren’t the notes I remembered. For a few moments I was puzzled: then a a horrid chill came creeping down my neck as I realized that I was, for the first time, playing the *1st* tenor part – we hadn’t played the chart since I bumped up from 2nd tenor. A sudden premonition of doom seized me: I glanced frantically down the page. Yes, there is was, some 17 measures: tiny font, tons of ledger lines: marked in boldface: SOLO. In abject horror, I glanced at the music of the guy playing 2nd tenor. 16 measures rest. Glanced at the music of the alto sax. 16 measures rest.

I think at that moment my heart stopped. It was, as they say, like realizing you are suddenly standing in your underwear in the middle of a very public place. The band kept playing merrily along: wedding guests dancing and lurching about. All sorts of crazy thoughts flitted across my mind: should I fling my sax at the band director and run? I am good at sight reading, but there was no way I could sight read, at that speed, a whole load of ledger lines and palm keys, and transpose them from weird sax clef to concert at the same time. While having stage fright. No Way.

The awful moment arrived all too soon (in fact, it arrived sooner than I thought, because in my horror I lost my place). The sudden vacancy in the melody spurred me on, and I played…

E-flat. I played a lot of E-flats. With different rhythms. It was a low moment.

I tried really hard with the other solos, and I thought they were fine, but in the last song, the band director took my solo away and gave it to a trumpet. Of course, that may have been because that particular trumpet was one of his buddies, a really awesome trumpeter, who we had hired to fill a gap since we were down one trumpet, but the paranoid person in me said IT’S BECAUSE YOU SUCK. YOU SUCK. YOU WILL NEVER BE A DECENT SAX PLAYER AND YOUR SOLOING AND IMPROV ABILITIES ARE A JOKE! A JOKE! MWAHAHAHAHAHA POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Anyway. Enough of that. For a day or so afterwards I was so incredibly depressed that I thought I would give up playing first tenor but then I decided that was just dumb.

Otherwise — I have a bunch of contracts that I’m trying to decide whether or not to accept or not – slightly long story there, but not interesting enough to post about — and I’m also in the process of building my sister yet *another* website! Almost done, in fact.

The Philanthropic orchestra I played with last year is on again: first rehearsal this Tuesday. Once again there is fantastic repertoire, including Rhapsody in Blue (AND NO GRAINGER!!!!!) so I’m really looking forward to it. Of course, I will have to cheat on my current orchestra for about 4 weeks since they  rehearse the same day, but hopefully the conductor will not be too mad…

I’m so beat. Have not been getting much sleep, what with gigs and contracts and websites and people coming over and worrying about family members and other stuff (post later). I’m so glad all the gigs are over with, for the next month or so anyway.

Ok, so freakin’ Grainger was at least partly Australian. (Why was I told he was not???) I actually took time to read the Wikipedia entry. (Then again, we all know about Wikipedia’s authenticity)

It says he was a sado masochist vegetarian who hated vegetables (???) and designed his own clothes (togas, muumuus and leggings, all made from towels, and also intricate grass and beaded skirts) but never ironed his shirts and wore his best clothes to rummage through garbage bins in the wee hours.

Whoaaaaaa.

I am pleased to announce as well, that he grew to loathe his piece, Country Gardens, which I loathe too.

In the immortal words of Captain someone from Tintin: Szplug!

The day started and ended with Percy Grainger.

I need say no more.

I read this and laughed for about 2 minutes.

Maybe the guy is being rude/disrespectful. Is he? I actually don’t think so, but I guess I can see how the other poeple are horribly offended.

Funny.