… to work.

After a nice long weekend and holiday, it’s going to take a Grande double-espresso Macchiato to get back into gear this morning. I’ll see your coffee and raise you a Mozart Overture to the Marriage of Figaro.

Here’s a little joke I heard about Ricardo Muti:

Muti is lost in the middle of a hot, dry desert. The burning sun is beating down on him, and he is miserable.
“Please, God,” (said in an Italian accent) “… please, just send me two drops of water. That’s all I ask, two drops of water!”
A second later, a small cloud forms above Muti. He holds out his hands in front of him, hoping God has heard his prayer. Two drops of water fall from the cloud and land, one in each of Muti’s palms.
“Thank you God!” Muti yells up to heaven. He claps his hands together, rubs them, then slicks his hair back.

The bitter cold weather of December has arrived.

The death of a child is a difficult thing to experience. I have not lost any of my children, but I have had nightmares where I have. A dream like that is enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night.

19th century German poet Friedrich Rückert lost two of his children to scarlet fever. He dealt with his grief by writing a set of 428 poems on the death of children. Composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) selected five of these to set for voice and orchestra. This is the fifth of the set, titled “In diesem Wetter” (In this Weather). Mahler’s genius of composition lets you feel the blowing winds, the stinging raindrops, the anxiety of a parent whose child is lost forever, and, at the end, a sense of peace and acceptance.

In this weather, in this windy storm, I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off, I wasn’t able to warn them!

In this weather, in this gale, I would never have let the children out.
I feared they sickened: those thoughts are now in vain.

In this weather, in this storm, I would never have let the children out,
I was anxious they might die the next day: now anxiety is pointless.

In this weather, in this windy storm, I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off, I wasn’t able to warn them!

In this weather, in this gale, in this windy storm, they rest as if in their mother’s house:
frightened by no storm, sheltered by the Hand of God.

 

Only three workdays this week! Hooray!

go ahead and revel in the joy of the moment – because reality is about to strike …

Only three workdays this week? How am I supposed to squeeze five days of work into three days?

Mozart. Mozart, played ridiculously fast. Mozart, played so fast that the cellos and basses are catching fire. That’s how.

Put this on your iPod and you will not only finish your work, you’ll also clean the house. You might even have time to go to the gym – and you can listen to Mozart there, too. For an extra boost in productivity, increase the YouTube play speed to 1.25 or 1.5!