After weeks of listening to it obsessively, and running it past at least one strings teacher of my acquaintance, I have tonight submitted Variations on ‘Resignation’ to my contact at the Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra in Scotland.

My stomach hurts. I have no idea whether they’ll actually like it, or , more likely , they will find parts of it too challenging to play. If that’s the case, I just go back to the drawing board and take it down a notch. Somehow.

I’m supposed (I think) to write a second piece for them, and that will be Rondo Mobile, the sketch of which you can hear here. I’m thinking I want to make it a rowdy, PDQ-Bach-esque piece, musicologically-speaking-wise. In the sketch, you can already hear the theme falling apart and restarting. I want to make more of that idea, with the sections getting crankier as things go wrong, lots of finger-pointing, ending up with a full-scale riot which the conductor has to silence with a coach’s whistle.

I have been remiss in my blogging for the last month. I promise to make it up to you. I have several posts in the works even as we speak, and after tomorrow , school’s out! , I will have time to churn these out to the delectation of readers everywhere.

I have a post on my Lichtenbergian goals, both a look back at this past year and a look forward; a rant on school funding and running schools “like a business”; a rant on why I oppose the legalization of alcohol; a serious rant about U.S. drug policy; and a strange little meditation on better living through sound effects.

See you then!