Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, January 23, 2024, or: Another Snow Day Looms on the Horizon…and the Epistolary Chapter (Slowly) Moves Forward

Mid-to-Late Morning, Tuesday, January 23, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone. It’s almost late morning here in Madison on a cold but otherwise lovely winter day. The current temperature is 32°F (0°C) under partly sunny skies. With the wind blowing from the west-northwest at 1 MPH (2 KMH) and humidity at 69%, the feels-like temperature is 39°F (4°C). Today, we can expect mostly cloudy skies and a high of 37°F (3°C). Tonight, light snow showers will pass through Carroll County and the surrounding area. The low will be 21°F (-6°C).

As you can see from the forecast, it will snow in the vicinity of Madison and North Conway tonight, with more of the white stuff expected to fall tomorrow. Oh, well. It’s winter. It’s New England. Snow happens.  I’ll get used to it eventually, just as I got used to summer thunderstorms in Florida. (I never quite grew to like “boomers,” mind you, but I learned to adjust my daily routine to the rhythms of the subtropical wet season.)

On Writing & Storytelling: The ‘One with the Emails’ Chapter Moves Forward – One Email at a Time

Even though yesterday’s novel-writing portion of my workday got off to a start a bit after 2:30 PM, I managed to add approximately 853  new words to Reunion: Coda. I’d set a goal of 1,000 words, but I’ll take the ones I produced because I was happy with the results. I crafted a lovely email from one of my two “leading ladies” in the novel – Maddie, who is Jim’s love interest in the set-in-2000 chapters of Reunion: Coda. (The other major female character is Martina Elizabeth “Marty” Reynaud, who appears in the chapters set during Jim’s high school days in early 1980s South Florida.)

Now, I’ve mentioned in many of these On Writing & Storytelling posts that there are times when I regret my decision to write an epistolary chapter in Reunion: Coda. I’ve played a bit with that literary device before, including in Reunion: A Story, but never on such an ambitious scale. I’m attempting to show, solely through emails, how the relationship between historian/college professor Jim Garraty and classical pianist Madison, aka Maddie, evolves and becomes more romantic even as they’re separated by nearly 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean whilst Maddie is in London to record a new album with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.

As soon as Maestro Masur stopped the orchestra, I got up from my piano bench and walked over to Evelyn, who looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock. I put my arm around her shoulder and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, love. It’s not the end of the world. You’re a brilliant clarinetist, and you can nail this glissando. Just take a deep breath, relax your fingers, and trust yourself. You’ve got this.”

Maddie to Jim, Reunion: Coda

Here’s an excerpt from Maddie’s latest email to Jim, whose responsibilities as a tenured professor of history at Columbia University don’t allow him to join Maddie in the UK:

My Dearest Jim,

Hullo, love. I just got back into my hotel room after eating a quick dinner at Haxells Restaurant & Bar, which is downstairs in the Strand Palace itself. I had the Salmon Supreme, a sweet potato croquette, sprouting broccoli, and salsa verde. For dessert I had an orange and rum tart, served with lemon sorbet and burnt meringue  It was a bit…decadent and more than a bit expensive, but it’s not often that I get to come back to London or stay in a ritzy Soho hotel. Besides, I put it on my travel expense account, even though I sometimes fret about indulging too, too much on the Philharmonic’s Mickey – or Dime, if you prefer.

Anyway, all of us, including Maestro Masur, our executive producer Heinz, the sound engineer, the album editor, and certainly my fellow performers and I, are happy with how well the recording sessions went today at Abbey Road. Or, rather, how well things turned out in the end with the recording sessions after a few…shall we say…bumps on the road.

As you may or may not know, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is not a particularly long composition. On average, it has a running time of about 17 minutes, although some ensembles play it so that it runs a bit over 18 minutes, depending on the orchestration and the quality of the musicians. It’s not as long as, say, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, but it’s not as simple as, say “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

I won’t bore you with the details, Jim, but it took us 15 takes – and several hours, and lots of swearing on the part of Heinz and even some of us in the orchestra. Evelyn Lee, our principal clarinetist (she was appointed to that position less than two years ago after she impressed Maestro Masur and the audition committee – which consisted of the principal player in the woodwinds section and eight other members of the Philharmonic – when she played Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major) is – rumour has it – having marital problems, so she missed a note in the glissando. It was just one note, but it was a total cockup.  Of course, Maestro Masur had us all stop playing and start over from the first measure. He didn’t toss his baton at Evelyn, curse at her, or even raise his voice, but…if glares could kill….

As soon as Maestro Masur stopped the orchestra, I got up from my piano bench and walked over to Evelyn, who looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock. I put my arm around her shoulder and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, love. It’s not the end of the world. You’re a brilliant clarinetist, and you can nail this glissando. Just take a deep breath, relax your fingers, and trust yourself. You’ve got this.” I gave her a reassuring smile and a gentle squeeze and then returned to my seat. I hoped that my words would help her regain her confidence and composure and that the next take would be the last one.

Well, Professor Jim, it wasn’t quite that easy: Evelyn recovered from her slip-up, but there were a few other instances where the strings played a bit too fast, or the brass section came in either too early or too late. It wasn’t until Takes 14 and 15 that Heinz, Maestro Masur, and the sound engineer were chuffed with our rendition of the “RIB.”

“What does that mean in terms of when are you coming home?” you might ask.

Well, dearest, it means that we have two completely good takes, and because we don’t need to re-record any bits tomorrow, that means that we are flying back to New York on Friday, 8 March.

There is more to Maddie’s email than this, of course, but you’ll have to read the novel to find out what else she has to say to her dear “Professor Jim.” (Trust me on this – you’re going to like how witty, romantic, and playful Madison can be with the narrator/protagonist of the Reunion Duology.)

Action This Day

What is my game plan for today, you ask? It’s simple, really: Today is a working day – albeit a somewhat chillier one than I’d like – and I am a creature of habit. So, I’ll stick to my routine of blogging in the morning, take a break to go outside and get some sunshine while I have a chance to, prepare some lunch and read a bit between 11:30  AM and 1 PM, then get back to working on Reunion: Coda until 4:30 or 5 PM. I’ll write Jim’s response to Maddie today – that much is certain – because that’s how the chapter is supposed to unfold. Ideally, I’d write two emails rather than just one, but that depends on how much time and energy I spend on the one that must be done this afternoon. If I can write another email – even if it’s a brief one – that’ll be great.

If not…well, there’s always tomorrow, folks.

Well, I don’t have anything else to share, so I’ll wrap up this post here. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.