Last night I attended the Mendocino Music Festival’s third orchestral concert of this year’s festival, my wife a cellist in the most excellent orchestra. The second half of the program was Symphony No. 2 in E minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff, a massive work that lasted more than an hour. The third movement of the four-movement symphony was especially moving to me—the glorious music swamping my psyche and catalyzing several epiphanies about the novel I’m currently writing.
Posts published in “Essays”
A gentle rain keeps me company in the wee hours as I pen these words. We desperately needed it. Throughout May and June, storms danced…
“But my father’s dying.” I didn’t want to say the word “dying” because I still had hope for a miracle and was superstitious about such…
In our present digital age many once-beloved pianos are junked rather than sold, as a trying NY Times video of a couple years ago unsparingly…
Author’s Note: For the first time in over seven years, the Ford brothers — Mark, Patrick, and Robben — will share the same stage —…
When Barbara McNair died in February of 2007, not a single obituary mentioned her role in bringing down the lawyer who effectively owned Erhard Seminar…
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On their way to a matinee of the San Francisco Ballet, Roger and Susan must stand for the entire journey in a crowded subway car.…
To protect my identity, I am going to call myself Bonnie. To give you some history, I was in a relationship that broke up and…
In a way, the Not-So-Simple Living Fair reminds me of Lao Tzu… the Chinese sage whose mother was pregnant with him for 80 years until finally, he was born an old man. Even though the Not-So-Simple Living Fair is only five years old, the idea was conceived a long time ago.
We are deep into 2014 and the drought ain’t about to quit. Already, we’ve had some barn-burners this summer — you can fry a bass…