2025-02-01: a night for dramatic pronouncements

i had my guitar lesson thursday night and played a piece for my teacher that i'd been working on for a little bit. one of my own compositions, i mean. and while he was very effusive in his praise for it (it's as good as satie — which, !!!!, but also, uhhhhh —), but he also declared that the classical guitar was dying, and i didn't know what to make of that.

"what do you mean?"

fifteen, twenty years ago i used to have twenty classical guitar students a year. now it's just you. i've got other students, but you're the only one doing classical.

true enough, but i wonder how much of that is the death of the classical guitar and how much is just a long post-pandemic fallout. i know another music teacher who kept up a studio of consistently around 15 violinists and violists every year. after the pandemic, she's down to 4 or 5. i think those years just really fundamentally broke us. fully, completely. we gave up, and gave things up, in so many different ways.

yesterday at lunch after i walked the dogs through the fields near my house, i sat down with my guitar and started fiddling some more. found some new satie-like voicings. liked it. wrote it down. i'm hopeful i can have something ready by my next lesson. it feels strange, feels wonderful, to be composing. it's new and exciting, and i haven't yet really squared my image of myself as someone who can do that. fortunately, i don't really have to. i just have to keep doing it, and see what i can make.

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