Where has all the music gone?

Spring is a funny time for lessons teaching. On the one hand it's great - it's where we can work on the nitty-gritty things that really improve technique without the distractions that come with all those contest auditions that have all already taken place. On the other, though, it's tough because it isn't easy to get all jazzed about yet another finger exercise. I write my own exercises a great deal of the time (clarinetists don't have a real library of great method books as other instruments do - we're still one of the new kids on the block in many ways) which does tend to help with the variety problem, but it is still sometimes difficult to negotiate with the call that Summer* has on a young person's mind.
Add to this the fact that I might, myself, be a little distracted by my own...stuff.. lately and you have a recipe for really strange lessons.

All of that is a long way to say, well, that I'm just in a weird funk lately. I've long cut out many of the political blogs and news stories that I used to read daily and even the majority of the members of St. Blogs and the various artsbloggers are just not able to hold my attention. I can see there's interesting stuff being written, but my mind is just someplace else so it's more my fault than theirs, anyway.

In the CD player now: The overture to Der Freischütz... which is just the kind of mood I'm in.

So, count me as a person who doesn't really enjoy the Spring and who kind of wishes that Winter would return. I seem to get a lot more accomplished then and it's easier to stop and smell the roses when there aren't a billion and a half competing for my nose's attention.

*which is what happens when you don't live in a place where you have Spring. (grumble...grumble....)