Schedule Madness

Ok ok, I admit it. I thought I could do it at a push, but I know now it was too much.

What?

My schedule over the last 4 days. Overnight flight wednesday, 5 and a half hour drive home thursday, 9 hours of sessions friday, rehearsals and an amazing concert with my son and some of his friends from school all day saturday, rehearsal in London sunday, then driving 300 miles and giving a (surprisingly ecstatic) Vaughan Williams and
Britten Metamorphoses then driving to Heathrow, all on monday, and now getting a flight to Moscow tuesday and performing this evening there.

All of us crazy musicians are trying to find a work balance between doing what is needed and required of us, what we WANT to do, what we do to keep the wolf from the door and what we somehow end up doing by accident and without proper planning or forethought. That balance is very hard to find, and last night I clearly lost it as I fell asleep at the wheel on the M40 and drifted quite casually onto a delightful metal barrier which woke me rather rudely and made not as much a mess of my car as I expected.

It could have been very nasty indeed, 2 metres further on and a tree down a bank would have been what woke me or worse. The strange thing is I remember in some weird way thinking that just a little nap would be ok…

Today everyone has my patience and love and tolerance and I feel at peace with the world and genuinely excited to be alive. Everything seems reborn, as do I. I know, I’m probably in shock, but its beautiful while it lasts.