Lichtenbergian goals:

After days of trying to craft a response to Diane’s request for a full, uncensored accounting of myself, I gave up on polished elegance and just created a bullet list of blunt statements: I don’t know why I’m painting again. What began as a joke is now the focus of all my artistic efforts. I don’t know how to mix colors.

She responded, and here’s where we are: she recommended a couple of DVDs from an artist she respects as a teacher of portraiture , those have been ordered , and rather than a four-day long Art Camp, we’ll begin with a one-day work session, to be followed up with homework and further sessions. I’ll be heading up to Clarkesville on Sunday, July 11.

I finished Prelude No. 3. I am fairly pleased with the results, although the ending sounds too easy, and I am constantly haunted by the fear that my stuff is too short. When we hit the end, it sounds to me as if we’ve skipped a really major portion of a really good piece. But I don’t know what to do about it.

Prelude (no fugue) No. 3: score | mp3

I had an idea for Prelude No. 4, so I got the germ down in a Finale file. I need to go back and work on No. 2.

I need to go and start working on themes/variations for Resignation and Rondo. (Later, in the labyrinth, I did just that. Because of my inability, for the most part, to transcribe what I hear in my head , when I can force myself to listen for it , I usually just “draw” notes and the shapes of melodies in the little music notebook I work in. Later, I have to try to reconstruct whatever it was I thought I heard based on the literal scribblings in the notebook.)

Taking a break from the music, I applied white absorbent ground to pieces of cardboard for later painting.

Lichtenbergian distractions:

I finished The Red Pyramid, by Rick (Percy Jackson) Riordan. A ripping yarn, as usual. I also read some more of The Idea of Justice. Still tough reading, but I’m enjoying it.

Via dailylit.com, I’ve been reading Middlemarch and loving it, but I slipped maybe a week ago and now I have acres of it to catch up. Isn’t it funny how you get behind in something like that and you resist the simplest solution: just read? I also got behind in my crossword puzzle solving while I was at GHP for the week, but I’m almost caught up there. I dutifully read through all the New York Times art sections , one must stay courant, ne-c’est pas? , and clipped all the crosswords, stacking them chronologically. I’m almost through that stack, nearly caught up with the actual day I’m living through.

I was gratified to notice that they changed the layout of the crossword page this past week. You may know that the crossword puzzle is always on the corner of a page, so that you can fold the paper in quarters and have the puzzle and all the clues neatly in front of you. This past year, they’ve added a number puzzle called Ken-Ken to the page, and it was always right above or below the other side of the fold, only not quite far enough away from the fold to make it comfortable. Thus there was always a moment of refolding, which of course interfered with the self-satisfied Zen experience of solving the Times crossword.

This past week, though, the editors moved Ken-Ken to the other side of the page, so that after you fold the paper, it is tidily situated on its own quarter. One less design problem in the world.