…listen
…about the music

Music for mythical sea goats.

Given my astrological sign, I thought this pic I took of very young goats and their mom at the San Juan County Fair last August was appropriate for today. Although, many say that the constellation– one of the dimmer ones up there– is actually a sea goat. Having neither underwater camera gear, nor faith that sea goats actually exist, I’m opting for their gill-less equivalents. I’m guessing that I could put all these cuties in the water and they’d do their best for the photo shoot, but they wouldn’t appreciate it very much. The water right now hovers at around 50 degrees. So land goats it is, much to their relief.

I didn’t realize female goats had horns, but hey, I was raised in a farm animal-free environment and am still playing catch-up all these years later. And there’s an increasing number of all these years. Today is the demarcation and declaration that my body has completed yet another full orbit around the sun. But the view this January looks a lot different than last, due to my latitudinal shift.

I suspect there’s been an attitudinal shift, as well. I especially noticed this when I was in New York for the conference last week. Yes, I ran around and did a lot of things. Busy busy busy. Fun fun fun. But it was a somewhat shorter, less frenzied list of things than in years past. At first I feared that maybe I’d lost my edge; maybe my endless energy was finally waning a bit. There were even more activities that I could have jammed into any already full day and evening. But when I mentioned this observation to my very dear friend Alvin as I forewent a concert and calmly packed up my exhibit boxes on Sunday, he smiled at me and said, “Editing. It’s just editing.”

And he was right.

There’s something very wonderful that occurs as ones brain gets a little dizzier with each solar rotation. We learn what’s important and what’s less so at any given moment, and yes, we finally learn to edit.

I look forward to becoming an old goat, and one who is as good an editor as she is a spewer of things that need editing.

Today’s audio clip in my continuing pixelsonic presentation is performed by another good friend, clarinetist Gerry Errante, whose orbiting sea goat also aligned itself on this very same day of the month. The farm was busy nursing musicians that day!

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