22 July 2007 (Sunday) All-day circle meeting

Rise and brief morning exercises, then shower and out to the store to get lunch items for today. Back to the house, pack the cooler and most of the car. On-line search for the Hughes produces a different, but close address. Scanning the map of the area and consulting my sense-memory of driving there last, I can recreate where I need to go. A very interesting process to watch.

Chris is delayed getting to my house, but we are able to leave by 9:30. Arrive at the Hughes' shortly after 11:00, but still before most of the team. All but Dev arrive and are set up at about 11:30 (Dev is delayed), so we begin.

- C Major up & down in four octaves takes us about 35 minutes.

- From here, we work on the base pattern for the day: C Major, (1) up three octaves, (2) down two octaves, (3) up three octaves, (4) down three octaves, (5) up two octaves, 6 down three octaves; change to 5th position at (3) and return to open position at (5). We work on this for about an hour before Dev arrives, adding in the Bb and F# in alternating octaves (so the 16 octave pattern for the work is C Ionian, C Mixolydian, C Ionian, C Lydian, C Ionian, C Mixolydian, etc.) Once he is incorporated into the circle, we continue this work for nearly another 90 minutes, when we break for lunch. Though we do not complete the pattern, there is some high quality work and listening going on.

- Lunch, and some nice time out in the back yard. Also bring up the possibility of the work day at Royalston on August 5th. Not many are likely to be available, but that's fine.

- After lunch, more work in the large circle, and then a break into two smaller groups - the Invention 1 circulators in the house, the other four of us in the back yard continuing to work on the four octave challenge. After about 45 minutes, we are able to complete this, then we make three attempts at the basic four octave scale but are unable to complete this. In to the house and on the floor to listen to two versions of the Invention 1 circulation, one slower one faster.

- After a break, back to more work on the basic pattern, the regular four octave circulation (if you made a mistake, you would drop out and the circulation would restart), and an attempt at quickly circulating three octaves, as well as another pass at Invention 1.

Victor suggested that we not meet for the next two weeks, though he is available for lessons, and suggested some personal work, and staying in contact with Invention 1, Passage, Askesis and Third Relation.

I had a sense of real confidence in the group with the first three octaves. I also had a sense of the average amount of attention available to the group - this would be about 35 to 45 seconds. If we could push this to a minute, some things would really open up. I also noticed that I would easily fall into an automatic mode in certain instances, and had to work to remain in contact with the exercise, and not let my muscle memory do all the work. I was tired, but not in the usual way, so I had a sense that something got created today, and some of that energy was still available.

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Home, out to grab dinner (Subway was closed, so I settled for McDonald's - I should have just made popcorn). Some on-line poker, and then to bed.