Continuing a Theme

This week was a (subjectively) good one.  Made significant progress on Cello Prelude 1, which was pretty remarkable given my what I perceive as my limited ability to learn new music.  It's not that I can't learn something new, it just takes me a long time to get there.  I'm trying to understand what has changed this time, so I can be sure to apply it to other pieces.  Going forward I have two strategies: don't practice mistakes, and listen.  Part of what has made this week so successful is  that I've really taken the time, when I have a difficult passage or section, to work that repeatedly until I'm playing it correctly, rather than just forcing my way through.  And for listening, I've got at least 4 different versions of the piece I can listen to: one that is a "straight" reading of the music - essentially unornamented, two cello recordings (Yo-Yo Ma and Colin Carr) and one guitar Recording (Bert Lams).  In a way I'm following along a path that Bert blazed; I couldn't have a better guide. 

I read a good article last week that fits nicely with my resolutions post.  Umair Haque is a blogger for Harvard Business review, and he had a post about resolutions (you can find it here: http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-to-have-a-year-that-counts/).  There were two things that struck me:  dreams and suffering.  The dream discussion (as in, don't give up on them) speaks to the aspirational quality of a resolution - I'd consider replacing the Achievable in SMART with Aspirational when it comes to resolutions.  I would think you need some achievability in the aspiration, but that's a finer discussion to have.  The other aspect of suffering was interesting.  J. G. Bennett once said that you cannot achieve the aim without suffering, and I agree.  There has to be some level of sacrifice to create meaningful and lasting change.

A good bit of writing this week, mostly beginnings and some extensions of ideas I've already begin.  It's interesting, the things that come in a flash, and the exercise of keeping it present in my mind through the process of documenting it.  It's difficult to do justice in text to what I imagine.  It makes me all the more amazed at what my favorite authors can do.

So, off to another week.