Blog post no. 1

Well, i created this blog over a year ago but have never posted anything. Because blogging is writing, and writing takes time. (It takes me time, anyway.) But since i've done a little writing recently, i figured maybe it's time. I've taken to posting (fitfully) to Twitter recently, and occasionally i find that 140 characters just isn't enough. So the topics demanding more writing should go here, and then get linked from the twitter post.

But first a couple of historical anecdotes: i turned 50 last summer (July of 2008). For my birthday, i spent four days out at Tanglewood, attending the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music celebration of Elliott Carter's 100th birthday. I saw eight concerts in four days, joined on the final evening by my family. It was a fantastic experience, and i had intended to post daily to this space. What i found, however, was that life & experience kept getting in the way of writing time; i also found that i was unwilling to set the life part aside.

In May of 2009, i undertook a playing tour of 8 cities with my good friend Vic Rawlings. (That's Vic to the right.) We basically made our way out to Chicago and back to Boston, playing shows almost every night. We did many solo sets and also collaborated with musicians along the way. Here again, i brought my laptop along and intended to post to this blog, as well as to Twitter. But again, life & experience got in the way. I hadn't toured in a long time and had underestimated how little downtime one actually has. You drive, you get to a destination, try to eat, go to the venue, get set up, play, break down, pack out, get to where you're staying, load out of the car if the neighborhood's not so chill, try to relax, crash, get up in the morning and get going again. I managed exactly two measly tweets. Again, life & experience win out over documentation. And, uh, this is not the first time i've learned the documentation lesson (embarrassingly enough). But i'll save that for another post.