Tuesday 23 September 2003

A welcome day at my desk, and around it, dealing with the various money, diary and general organisation things left over from the weekend, and trying to get to the piles of unread/unanswered mail and unlistened-to CDs beneath the surface layer of recent detritus.

At around 4pm yesterday at Crichton I eventually emerged from my post wind-down-deprivation gloom, after a seriously miserable and sleepless 41 hours, deprived of 6 months' worth of job satisfaction at a stroke. As my brain came back into focus, we were recording the E flat air from the suite by Robert Mackintosh that we'd put together last year, and by the end of the day I was quite enjoying myself, only having exhaustion to deal with. Exhaustion is a familiar foe, and every musician has a whole set of strategies to deal with it effectively.

But what a waste.  We'd been playing the repertoire we learnt and recorded in February with wit, style, passion and grace, the quartet's already grown into a serious musical unit, and it's been great just enjoying one another's company too. But because of one mistake on the part of one promoter, I've been irredeemably miserable for nearly two days. Making music is always precarious, but the last few days have taught me an interesting lesson about just how precarious it can be. Time to start building myself a safety net or two.