A practiced conceit.

I speak words of despair with a big smile on my face. A big, crazy smile. It scares Jessie.

Re-emergence of that La Folia theme in pieces of the Restoration soundtrack has been playing into my melancholy. Baroque music makes my head swim. When violinists play and they sway around with the bow strokes, it looks like an affect, but I know where it comes from, and it isn't always a place of performance or pretense. Of course, it sometimes is. But sometimes when you play a violin, you feel like a string yourself, vibrating and resonating with all the noise you're making -- as stuffed as that shirt sounds. I miss playing in orchestras. I especially miss playing chamber music. I miss feeling my part of a complicated harmony. It's like that thing you do with your fingers and yarn, and when you pull your hands apart, there's some lovely web you've made, blooming from your fingertips. I'm mixing my metaphors.

I love the baroque music on Restoration. Even James Newton Howard's renditions of baroque music, so much of it having its genesis in variations on La Folia. Only a few months ago, I wrote about listening to the CD at a previous place of employment, and I also referenced having played the Corelli version of the piece at the Governor's Mansion on Guam. And when I go back and read things I wrote -- even things I wrote just a few months ago -- I find myself wondering if it was in fact better back then. It always seems as if it must have been. These days, as much as my spirits flag, I haven't even been writing anything especially poignant. Oh, I want to. But myabe I feel I've shown too many of my cards already. I don't need everyone to know who the culprits are when I'm speaking of disappointment and heartbreak. It takes the beauty out of it.