NYE resolutions and all that!

Some January's I'm full of great sounding New Year's resolutions. Usually they fall by the wayside, but occasionally some do resonate through the year. I saw a blog post by the wonderful opera singer Joyce DiDonato about her suggested resolutions for 2017, and they did speak to me ... particularly the one about Practicing (singing, music) with Purpose. So I think I'm going to appropriate a couple of hers and see how they pan out! (Of course that one would fit it well with other parts of my life too!)

I also saw a videoclip on Facebook - an interview with the amazing English pianist James Rhodes, about his new book 'How to Play the Piano'. From what I understand, this book is about learning (or re-learning) to play the piano, and to play one Bach piece in 6 weeks! (It does involve serious commitment to daily practice etc!!) And he quoted an email he'd got from someone who'd recently retired, saying that doing this - immersing himself in music, learning to play an instrument etc, had made it the best time of his life. I could say the same for my life (brain surgery notwithstanding!), but of course I do know there are other reasons besides music for this!

And joy oh joy, I'm allowed to drive again from the 13th January. Which means I'll be able to go back to my yoga class in Byron (or Suffolk Park as it is now, even further away!) However ...

I know I posted somewhere about re-starting my yoga practice a week or two after I got home from hospital.  But then I got hit by all these totally unexpected bouts of total exhaustion ... yes, 'unexpected' despite the many warnings I'd had about this, especially if I tried to do too much! Like spend weeks driving (being driven) to and from Lismore for rehearsals etc etc!! I thought I was fine at the time but I think I was just running on adrenaline!!

Anyway, my yoga practice disappeared down a black hole, and I've really only started again a week ago. The first day I practiced again I couldn't even touch my fingertips to the floor! And I still haven't got to the end of the standing poses even though I'm leaving a few poses out. I can at least touch my knuckles to the floor now so I guess that's some kind of progress!!

I really should have learnt this lesson from previous times! Not a good idea to stop practicing for more than a few days, specially when your body isn't that young any more!! Ah well, another life lesson in not being attached to wherever my yoga practice may have been ...


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Another update (No 3)

Another week, another update on my health! I think this past week has been a case of one step backwards, two steps forward ... at the end of last week I had a couple of days when I was really really tired. Collapsed on the sofa all day, no thought of doing any yoga, finding myself falling asleep around 7pm (!!) in front of the tv...

But things started to get better over the weekend, and I haven't actually felt anything like as tired since then. Of course, when I re-started yoga earlier this week I did have to start from the beginning again ... Surya Namaskar B is still hard (energy-wise) - and I think I'm just now back at the stage I'd got to ... in other words, 3 x Surya Namaskar As and 2 x Surya Namaskar Bs ... Its going to be very interesting to see what happens when I get to some of the poses that I used to find challenging - eg UHP (balancing!!), and Marichyasana C - will I still be able to bind that I wonder?! Well, hopefully I'll find that out in the next couple of weeks!!

Next week is my last 2 rehab sessions in Tweed Heads - I definitely think they have helped me a lot. And then the following Saturday afternoon I'm having an Alexander Technique treatment which should be really interesting.

And the singing, the choir practice (of The Messiah) goes on, filling a lot of my day, happily. Today a friend is coming round in the morning bringing coffee and cake (!), and we may do some singing too ...


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Musings on life and changes of direction

(( Warning!! This post contains a lot of 'navel-gazing'! ))

I've been thinking lately how it's funny that when you (I) make a big life change, you can think you have a plan for how it's going to be ... And it all turns out completely differently! I mean, really I shouldn't be surprised at all. I'm always thinking that I'm in control, and then discovering I wasn't! But anyway ...

I had this fixed idea about how my life would be when I stopped working in university IT and moved down to this lovely green area with soft green hills to the west of me, and beautiful beaches just to the east. I was going to do more yoga - get to more Mysore classes (tick!). I was going to find a good classical choir to join (tick again!).

So those ideas have worked out wonderfully.
But the other two are a different story ... !

Having come from a website/IT background I also had a big focus there - and it had been something I'd really enjoyed (well, the website side anyway!) So I was planning to do more website development, finally learn Python properly, and really get into learning other coding languages / stuff, and other website-related things.

And another thing I'd thought I'd maybe like to do - albeit a bit more of a distant possibility, was to get back into curtain-making. I always loved working with fabrics, and did a 2 year course on soft furnishings at the London College of Furniture years ago while living in London. I then had a small soft furnishings business both there and in Sydney.

And when I was packing up my old house in Kholo I just couldn't bear to get rid of the cutting table we had gotten made in London for the curtain-making business and then brought back to Australia. Had done virtually none of that since we moved up to Queensland (and lost access to people with wealthy connections who could afford to get expensive curtains made for them!!) But I still had all the 'stuff' from those days and so ended up bringing most of it down to my new home ... Where it now sits either in the garage or stored in cupboards! (And I still don't know when if ever I'll do anything with it all ... !)

However ....... Since I've moved I've hardly lifted a finger to do anything website or curtain related! Oh I still look after a few websites, and did spend a few weeks working on the 2016 edition of the foame.org poetry website. But, despite getting heaps of techie emails from places like Sitepoint and online course offers from Coursera etc, I have felt no inclination to dive in and learn new things.

No ... Most of my available attention seems to have been drawn towards music - classical music in particular. I'm loving the choir. I'm loving learning to sing. I'm even loving trying to learn music theory! I'm spending at least 1-2 hours virtually every day practising singing exercises, music for the choir, songs that I'm learning to sing at a little private soirée (!! Being run by my music teacher and his partner, just for their students ... But still a very scary thought!!) And then lots of extra time spent puzzling out things like the relationships between major and minor scales, identifying intervals, etc etc. All of which would be a doddle to learn if I was 5, but having a considerably older brain, is painfully and embarrassingly difficult!!

And as well, yoga is definitely getting a lot more attention now. I can see/feel the difference from the improved effort that I've been putting in, and from making it to at least 3 Mysore classes a week (up from just 1 in my previous life!)

I guess the moral / lesson here for me is - once again, to be open to unexpected things that life offers. I'm so glad I was, this time!!


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Space Oddity - performed in 'real' outer space!!

Amazing YouTube video of Canadian man on the International Space Station doing a version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" ...

happy party

Had such a lovely time at the party! Everyone was really happy and it was just great! One friend insisted on singing (declaiming?) a song from Shakespeare to me (as a birthday thing), other people told lurid embellished stories about my youth, and a good time was generally had by all! The only thing I was a bit sad about was that my iPod playlist that I laboured long over putting together, was really only heard by the people sitting closest to the kitchen (where the music machine was). But the 2 girls working in the kitchen said they really like it, so I guess all that work wasn't completely in vain!!

Photos will follow in the next few days, although some are on my Facebook album now.

Yoga has gone a bit into abeyance as I've got my mother staying at the moment. But I'll be back to it on Wednesday, and expect to be stiff!

Yesterday we trailed round Brisbane showing my brother-in-law and his wife round various art galleries etc before their flight home in the evening. They had flown up from Sydney specially for the party, as had my nephew. Jo, the nephew had to fly back to Sydney early on Saturday morning to help organise another birthday party that night for his girlfriend's mother! So it was such a sweet thing that he came up just for my party!

Today I'm having a bit of a quiet day - you know, washing, reading, playing on the web!

Woodford Folk Festival

Well - Woodford is over for another year ... Such an amazing 6-7 days ... I did yoga, drove musicians to where they were performing, listened to heaps of wonderful and different music, rehearsed and sang in the festival choir, danced my feet off, sweltered in the 40degC + heat, and cooled down sitting in shady places ... Ate wonderful food, met up with friends, talked for hours, slept a little bit! And lots more!

Yoga wasn't ashtanga - run by a group called Radiant Light yoga. Still, so good to do yoga though, and a lot of the poses were the same. I'd done a bit of yoga in the week before down at my Mum's place in Bowral, but it was good to do a class for 3 days.

Really, 'Woodford Folk Festival' is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, there's some lovely folk music, but there's also heaps of blues, jazz, world, pop, reggae and other music. Pretty much the only music they don't welcome there is country (thank goodness!!!) Plus Tibetan monks, various types of dance, cabaret, circus (lots of that this year), puppets, weird and wonderful street performers and who knows what else!!

Music that I really loved this year included Chris Berry's Panjea, (American band including a wonderful anti-death penalty song - "Why do we kill people ,who kill people, to teach people that killing people is wrong?"!! Right on!!!), Bomba, (fabulous big reggae band), Fruit (3 women singing gorgeous harmonies) and Ash Grunwald - great young Aussie blues/roots singer.