Wednesday, March 19, 2008

MIND THE GAP


I hate leaving long gaps of time between blog posts but I have this puritanical conviction that I should have something to say or to show before I blog and sometimes I have nothing to say. So time goes by and pretty soon a whole week has passed, or two weeks, and the gap becomes a crack, a canyon, a fault.

I'm wondering if the gap isn't merely fear? Well, fear is never merely. I'm wondering if maybe it's a habit with me, this fearful leaving of gaps. Because it's what I do on a regular basis.

Take the keyboard sitting in the other room, covered by an ethnic shawl to keep the dust off. I bought that keyboard at a sale - can it be fifteen years ago? Whenever. I was wildly excited and decided I would compose songs. I would start from scratch, re-learn how to read music (piano lessons aged about six but didn't touch an instrument since) and then I would do my own thing. So I enrolled in a beginners' keyboard evening class and was doing pretty well for about a year.

Then came the gap.

I practiced less and less because, I said, I didn't have time. I had a contract for a book and there wasn't time to practice, I said. So I dropped out of the class and I even stopped fooling around on my lovely keyboard. I covered it with an ethnic shawl. But I can't cover my guilt, fear. Fearguilt. Guiltfear. The gap has stretched so wide that it's almost an ocean.

All in the mind.

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