6.00 am. I awoke one hour earlier than anticipated, having read my alarm clock incorrectly. The moon burned in the cold air behind storm clouds fractured by high winds. I’m working single-handedly (quite literally) these days, and for the next few weeks; the other, butchered, hand is as useless for typing as an oven glove for knitting:

8.30 am. A climb to the top of the inbox pile before initiating requests and setting-up my teaching for the week. I resigned myself to a morning of admin tasks that could dispatched one-handedly.  It’s always best to bite the bullet sooner rather than later.  I listened to Strauss’ Vier Leitzte Lieder. The ‘Beim Schlafengehen (Hesse)’ is, arguably, one of the most emotionally complete songs ever written. It’s music for endings, in prospect and retrospect.

1.30 pm. Over lunch, I returned to Handboard 1 and its annex, which I’ll use to process the raw sound of the ‘Graven Image II‘ material.  (Lesson learned: Velcro and cotton-wool bandaging don’t mix. Rather, they stick.):

2.15pm. One of the most frustrating and dispiriting admin duties of the year: changing my university login password. This time I managed to create two versions ‘based on two words’ and another two ‘based on a Spanish dictionary word’. Poppycock! What a senseless waste of human life. 2.45 pm. Back to The Floating Bible scan fest — a task eminently suited to the solo manus. I managed two further verses. Nothing can be rushed. Emails flew by — in and out — like birds overhead.

6.30 pm.  One-handed practice session 1; (right-hand, double-picking, cross-picking, and tremolo exercises). Where there’s a will … . When forced of necessity or by circumstance to concentrate one’s attention on a single aspect of the discipline, that aspect becomes everything. As such, my relationship to plectrum control had a very different focus, both critically and experientially. Less was made to do/to be more than, perhaps, it would otherwise. There’s a pedagogical lesson in that.

7.30 pm.  I continued building the final Art/Sound PowerPoint. An additional hand would expedite matters more swiftly.  But … where there’s a will …  :

9.50 pm.  One-handed practise session 2.