Short Items

Following one miscellanea with another, I offer a public service announcement. At one point in my life I was a diligent practitioner of the art of never doing today what you could put off to tomorrow. This even, or especially, extended to my mailbox. I was chronically short of money so I would avoid looking in my mailbox, which would contain overdue bills, until it became stuffed with unread correspondence. I guess the equivalent today would be avoiding looking at your email for weeks on end. This is a habit I have managed to completely erase, I am happy to say. Partly as a result of spending time in the business world I have learned to get things done promptly and this includes all manner of little tasks. The greatest benefit is that if you do something today instead of putting it off for several days, you won't be worrying about getting it done over those several days.

* * *

I mentioned a while back that one of my hobbies is fountain pens which I really enjoy journaling with as opposed to those horrible ballpoints. Here are some pens:

From left to right, a Lamy 2000, Lamy AL Star, Pilot Explorer, Moonman T1, Baoer stainless steel and finally, for all musical tasks, a GraphGear 1000 0.7 mechanical pencil. The Lamy pens are from Germany, the Pilot is Japanese and the Moonman and Baoer are Chinese pens. The mechanical pencil is also Japanese. These latter have a real fixation on stationary and produce the most amazing range of paper and ink products.

* * *

A recent sketch. I keep seeing articles about how the biggest problem many people have is stress and anxiety. I don't seem to have a lot of that myself, but I find that doing sketches is very satisfying and if I had a lot of stress, it would probably relieve it.

* * *

I'm reading a book on the structure of Bartók's music right now and the one thing it is convincing me of is to do my own analysis of one of his pieces. The one I have in mind is his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. A really wonderful piece not least for starting a whole new trend in naming pieces. The piece was written in 1936. Here are two performances. The first, for people who like to watch the performers, is Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducting the Frankfurt Radio Symphony:

The second, for people who like to follow the score, is Ferenc Fricsay conducting the RIAS Symphony.