This week Mainstay Monday began it's 4th year of concerts (with few exceptions) every Monday night. What a fun night with the incredible fiddle player Nate Grower! 
Over a decade ago, I began working as Musical Director for the annual Women Helping Women concert in Chestertown (sharing the responsibilities at first, eventually assuming them solely). This unique show has me accompanying/supporting a stage full of stylistically diverse performers, one at a time (around 20 or so) over the course of an evening. And being in this position aligns with my strengths. Or my strength. I've long said that if I'd ever have to choose between solo piano performance and accompanying, it would be no contest (Of course, I wouldn't want to have to make that choice). And allowing things to evolve as they will (or to allow providence to unfold) without getting in the way brought me to the next level, if you will, of this journey. Mainstay Mondays, which can have the effect of enlarging one of the 4 minute Women Helping Women blocks to fill an entire evening, allows me to partner with a single artist to create an complete program. With Nate Grower, it was a wonderful experience of crossing the street, back and forth, as I joined him on some traditional fiddle tunes, and he challenged himself, quite successfully, to gain command of some jazz standards. Cherokee, especially, was just great fun. It's all great fun, and a wonderful privilege. Full steam ahead into year 4 we go! 

I lost an important person (to me) several weeks ago. She no longer suffers, which is comforting, even as she is sorely missed.
Candy was an avid doll collector, and would often leave something on my shelf when she would visit my house, creating this little scene. Today it reminds me that life (the one we know in the here and now) is short. And fleeting. And precious. And how many days do we have? All I know is that I have fewer than I did yesterday, and (probably far) less that the number I've lived up to now. 
 I just turned 59 (she was the same age), which is not the point at which I would have thought one ponders these things. But what do I know, I've never been this age before. I do know that my age is when people often start (continue) talking about retirement. That's something I don't think about as it's not an option for me, circumstantially or temperamentally. I seem to be at this paradoxical point where I feel that my more energetic days are behind me, while my more significant contributions (depending on how one measures them) may be in the days to come. Do the good you know to do. Trust, not understand. Be grateful in all things. 
I come back to this doll scene often. And remember that there is always a bigger picture.  

Conducting an experiment of sorts today, to do something I have been resisting for years now. First thing in the morning (whatever defines morning on a given day) is perhaps my best time of clarity. A good time to write, except for a commitment to playing the piano first, ideally before anything else. This has served me well for the desired purpose of opening up the creative space and allowing me to more easily find it throughout the day. For some people, the creative space involves words, but for me, not (or at least much less) so. Words often lead me to spaces in my head, and the absence of words can more easily allow me to find the spaces in my heart. As much of my lifetime that I have spent tangled up in my head, it is easy for me to understand my PTSD of sorts regarding the concern (or perhaps fear) of losing my space (in the space) when I need to find it later in the day. And I'm talking now about when at the piano, which I've come to embrace as my (main) communication portal. That portal goes both directions, inward and outward, to the connections I can make beyond myself. Of course, words can communicate too. And I'm not incapable of using them. In fact, some times it can work out quite well. But only sometimes. This evening (since I'm writing on a Monday) will be another Mainstay show, where I'll have to speak in addition to playing. My stock line that I will often say is that it's a crap shoot every time I pick up the microphone. What I won't often say is that it can also a crap shoot every time I sit at the piano. And my responsibility to play the odds in my favor, so to speak, whenever I perform. Since I am performing most days, it is a lifestyle choice of sorts to revolve my day, and even my life to a large extent, around the piano. So here I am, sitting at my laptop, living on the edge.