mm-blog(37)/Brad Garton

previous months: 8/5/2024 -- 12/31/2024

1/3/2025 1/16/2025 1/30/2025 2/11/2025 3/10/2025 3/25/2025

1/3/2025

Oh 2024. Oh 2025. I'm a couple of days late on the start of the new year here. Somehow it doesn't seem like a "thing" yet. But it is. Rainy, cool weather for the start. I'm just not sure about what 2025 will bring. Jill and I had a nice dinner on the 1st. I worked on some music, did some exercises, all the good stuff I believe I should do on the first day of the year.

1/16/2025

Much going on. Much, much much. I can't keep up here, but I'll maybe record a few random things.

Brenda and I did our final 'clearing out' of our Wood Lake home. Such memories! We will probably never step foot there again, at least not with most of the things we collected through the years (decades!) intact. The estate/auction people are coming tomorrow to start the process of eliminating everything we've left. so we went through a lot of it last weekend, and captured what we wanted, what resonated, what was a part of us. In the process, discovering what was important.

We saw Dad. He's pretty fuzzy now, but fortunately it wasn't a bad visit. I will take "I can't really remember what I wanted to say" over "THIS PLACE IS A PRISON!!!!" any day.

I drove down from the Indianapolis airport through a significant snow event. I haven't done driving like that for awhile. It seemed appropriate.

Here's a panoramic photo I took from our back windows. The memories, the memories...

I took these photos two days ago, after getting good news from my oncologist appointment with Dr. Kwok out here in Seattle. I'm here for awhile, now, I hope.

1/30/2025

Good lord, Trump is even worse than I had imagined (and that's pretty bad!). I really don't know how this will all 'play out', but it won't be good. The truly appalling aspect to me is the realization of how many people support what Trump is doing. What's wrong with them? Don't they know how bad these things are? (A "pause" in funding that is necessary to sustain people's lives? The attempt to override the Constitution by executive orders? RFKjr for god's sake?) Jill said I live in a socio-cultural-political 'bubble', and that's true (a Columbia professor, living in the Seattle-area Pacific Northwest and the Upper West Side of Manhattan... our home for years was in a town named "Roosevelt" for goodness sake!). But it doesn't change the facts of what Trump is doing. It's evil.

2/11/2025

Ok, I'm really depressed. Dealing with Mom and Dad issues, working to sell our Columbus house to some recalcitrant buyers, my general ineptitude (and especially my unbidden ability to annoy Jill about most everything) and my inability to offer my kids strong support (especially Daniel). Ha ha, I can write these things here now because I'm fairly certain no one reads this blog. Blogs are so... last century! Some day, perhaps, I'll read through all of this again, with a wry smile I'm sure.

All of this is buried within the ongoing horror unfolding in the world. It's getting downright scary. Trump/Musk and their band of raving lunatics are doing serious damage to things I value greatly. It has to end somehow, but I can't think of the some that will be needed for the how. God help us.

I did finish two more pieces. A friend, commenting on the current world scene, suggested that one thing we artists/composers/poets/writers can do is work to make our little corner of the world nicer. This is my latest bid to do that; I tried to make it... nicer. To tell the truth, I'm pretty happy with the results:

chordal

And this one is my latest rock-star political commentary piece:

springfield

I had fun doing it. It will do nothing in the world, though. depression.

3/10/2025

I was in line for the ferry, waiting go across to stop by Lian's home and then go pick up Jill at the airport. She's returning from a whale-watching trip to Baja California. I just returned a few days ago from New York, where I gave several presentations at NYU, Columbia, Johns-Hopkins/Peabody Conservatory AND celebrated Mom's 91st birthday! I've missed noting a few of these milestones in the blog here. It's been just overwhelming, though. Trump and his happy band of idiots just rescinded $400 million in grants to Columbia. More to say later, when I can coherently say anything.

I was listening to Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians, one of my favorite pieces. It was raining, and as I listened I watched the drops gather and slide down the window. I remember doing this exact same thing, sitting in my apartment (NOT doing the work I should have been doing) when I was an undergraduate at Purdue. I was depressed then, too. Blank. Watching the water, watching it slide and flow, listening to the gentle but insistent pulsing of Reich's music, barely imagining that there was a better life beyond this. The two points in my lifetime fused. There I was, here I am. In the moment, and not really a good one. Oh, the world.

3/25/2025

Too much is going on. I can't keep up. When I go back to read this part of my blog, I will have to realize that it is no longer my 'document of record', or whatever I imagined it to be. I've missed noting birthdays, equinoxes, holidays. All kinds of things.

Here's on example: a few weeks ago, Brenda and I met in Columbus to go visit with Dad, take care of some house-details, etc. Just before I left, I finished another (yay!) new piece. The link:

metals

But only now am I posting it here.

Things are all wrong, except for the music, which is going well. The trip to Indiana wasn't good -- Dad was very difficult to deal with. Columbia was just beginning at that point to implode, and now it is in full-Trump capitulation. I believed so much in my University! It was so good! A big part of the malaise I am experiencing is because of the life-context Trump & Co. have established. It has taught me new depths of hatred. I truly, truly hate that man and all he stands for. I hate him. I hate what he does. I need to find a way to compartmentalize and somehow nullify this. Hate.