a day in the life

When I woke up this morning I had some vague ideas on how the day could develop. I knew I had tickets for two different performances in Kalmar but that wasn't until four so I had plenty of time. From there, the day developed as so often, in unforeseen ways.

During breakfast I follow the routine of flicking through the newspaper on my iPad and check to see what has happened in blip. Usually I go through some youtube clips as well and saw that a guitar-friend of mine, Göran Söllscher, put out a new video, a piece by Fernando Sor that he called "A prayer for peace in the world, regardless of religion or ethnicity". He played it brilliantly of course. I happen to have the music in a score so I fetched it and spent at least an hour on playing it myself, seeing how well it fitted his idea, definitely a piece for an appropriate concert.

Then, when checking what my friends has been up to on Facebook I saw that one of them had liked a clip that moved me to tears, so simple, so honest and so true, by a duo called Larkin Poe, that I hadn't heard before. I watched their song "The Tv in my house" several times and decided I needed to download it and write it down in music so I could come back to it and use it sometime. This took another couple of hours at least.

Another of the people I follow on Youtube had done a "Breakdown" of the latest Beatles song and showed an app that one can use for separating a voice from piano or guitar fx. using AI-technique, as they have done with John Lennons voice in "Now and then". Of course I had to download the app and test it a little. It's total magic! I never thought that would be possible to this extent. A few other guitar-clips on Youtube caught my eye and I spent even more time playing and learning.

None of this existed in my mind when I woke up so after a late lunch and a brisk walk, because I was late, I had to leave for the first theatre performance, a play for kids up to eight years old performed by actors at "Byteatern" The countys professional theatre ensemble. The show was an hour, a very eventful hour, and I just had time for something to eat before the next performance at Kalmar theatre, where I use to work. It was a concert around one of this areas poets, "Johan Stagnelius", who is known throughout Sweden at least. He was born 1793 on Öland and his poetry are in a romantic style. The concert involved a small choir, a string quartet, piano and a puppeteer impersonating Stagnelius. A brilliant performance, actually written, arranged, directed and performed from the piano by my boss at the theatre who, besides being my boss at the theatre also is a skilled composer.
A day of surprising events. Not every day is like this but being a pensioner allows spontaneity.