An Introduction, and a Disclaimer

For most of my life I’ve been obsessed with something or another.  Most of these obsessions are ephemeral, but they also affect me quite strongly and I often find myself investing a lot of resources in whatever project happens to be my current fixation.  To a certain extent, this is a good thing. As a composer or conductor, this isn’t always a terrible curse - it gives me the energy to delve deeply into a new composition or a piece of the repertoire before I inevitably move on to the next one.  It certainly has its drawbacks though, and I find myself struggling to tackle problems like consistency and routine when my natural approach seems to be infatuation followed by disinterest.

All of that is to say that I hope this journal provides me a place to voice some of those obsessions, to try to get it down on ‘paper’ and communicate some of the ideas that get stuck in my head and stay up there for weeks, months, sometimes years at a time.  I don’t have any particular goal with these posts, and I suspect they will run the gamut, from personal musings and anecdotes to analyses of my favorite pieces of music. I don’t have a timetable either, because again, I intend this to be an outlet for when a fascination takes hold of me and doesn’t let go.  It would be amazing if I could control that! But I can’t.

So I hope you’ll enjoy some of my writing.  I don’t promise a cohesive blog or a timetable or even consistency, but hopefully there will be something in here that speaks to you or sparks your interest.  Enjoy!

-Joseph Cieslak