Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt: Am I on the philosopher’s path, or winging it?

How about winging it on the philosopher’s path?

Aren’t we all kind of winging it? I mean, we can study all we want to, but when it comes to bettering ourselves, we can’t necessarily follow anyone else’s exact model, because our circumstances are all different. We can get that essential grounding in ethics and then we meet the real world and try to do the right thing. But that’s why it’s a path. You learn, you get better the next time. The main thing is to keep walking.

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Listening to the new Shostakovich recording, this time the 14th symphony. I’m struck by the amount of space in this recording and the deftness of mixing of the voices with the instruments. It seems like both are at just the right level, and there’s a lot of detail that it brings out. There’s a delicacy here I haven’t heard in many other recordings, and the soloists are very expressive–you hear the narrative in the poetry, which sometimes can get missed. I do think the tempo on “Delvig, Delvig” is a little faster than I’d like. It’s the emotional heart of the work, and it needs to be drawn out a little more, but the strings are gorgeous in it.

I had my massage today. I am definitely going back to this therapist. She kept up a conversation all through the appointment; turns out a neighbour of hers growing up made pedals for Geddy Lee and she remembers meeting him. But the best thing was the massage itself. She found a really stiff/seized place around my right hip bone and just about every other spot that needed attention. It was wonderful.

There was also Black Widow, which was terrific (if perhaps a bit later in the series than it should have been, given that she heroically sacrificed herself in Infinity Wars.) But there was another amusing bit. So the setup for Black Widow’s backstory in the movie was that she initially grew up in Ohio as part of a created family of more or less spies. Her “father” turns out to have originally been the USSR’s answer to Captain America, Red Guardian. So Black Widow is busting him out of prison and I catch his name: Alexei Shostakov. Well, I gotta research that, because that can’t be unintentional. (Shostakovich isn’t a Russian name to start with, it’s Polish, and would mean “son of Shostak”–and Shostak is a legit name; I’ve seen people with it). Someone’s having some fun there. And it turns out that that particular incarnation of the character and that name dates to 1967. You do not just pull that particular name out of a hat in 1967.

The big news for today was the fact that the province is going to enter Stage 3 a week from today. That means, all of a sudden, indoor concerts are going to be possible. Not that there are going to be any, at least that I’m aware of. (Maybe the KW Chamber Society will pull a few from their hat). Pretty much all of the festivals have been cancelled or greatly modified to be able to be held outside. We’re back down below 200 cases today, and apparently the province is approaching 80% for the first dose and 50% fully vaccinated, and showing no signs of letting up on the gas. I have a call on Sunday with the CWH Sunday crew, and given this, I’m wondering whether they will get us open next weekend. That would be nice.

Tomorrow: I have the MEDATS lecture on the clothing of King John (as recreated by one of the authors of The Tudor Tailor and perhaps a couple of KWHSS classes. It’s supposed to be nice, so hopefully a walk. Hoping to also drop in on the online sewing event in the evening; I might actually get to the beading part of my latest project tomorrow. Sunday is just packed insanely tight–I’ll be leaping from activity to activity–listening to my Discord composer friend’s new piece, then on to the CWH meeting at 10:30, a heralds’ meeting at 11, gaming at 1, then maybe another heralds’ thing around 3:30, then my other rpg. Just a little bit nuts,