Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (09)

t t was yet another exhausting week. I crawled from my flu death bed on Tuesday, and stumbled into work hoping to ease into an easy pace. That was not to be. I was latched onto by our CFO within 20 seconds of my entry into the building, 20 minutes later, I was off at 200 miles per hour (and grinding on one sputtering cylinder) designing and building a analytical software application for crunching Special Education, ELL (English Language Learner), and Preschool student demographics (where do they live versus which school do they attend to receive their high cost special educational services). Good things to know when allocating dollars, staffing, and other resources such as transportation. "Temperatures rising Fever is high Cant see no future Cant see no sky" No wonder I came home each night dead tired, dragging my recovery from the flu out all week. I am still only at about 50 percent. I had hoped to wind down today and have a relaxing weekend (I have stacks of objects and unfinished tasks cluttering every room of my house). What a fantasy that was thinking I might relax. The CFO grabbed the 1st app for some dog and pony show he is hosting, but before leaving he promptly tossed two more onto the stack. Both are much bigger than a breadbox, and one is due Monday morning. Just for the record, I am very loyal to him and am paid well at work. Nevertheless, the necessity to ramp up way beyond natural energy levels pushed me into desperation: my addiction mode -- I began tossing sugary junk into my system to artificially ramp up and by the end of the day I was like some blurry coked out zombie on the final day of a multi day coke binge. I will be working all weekend, and back (oh god I just have to do this) on the dietary straight and narrow. The two prior weeks it was the recreational pain meds related to eye surgery... Cold turkey, has got me, on the run...oh So, two pieces of music this week. One is where I physically am (figuratovely speaking), and the other is where my spirit is off to, somewhere in Shangri-La on a sweet spring day. The first is the ultimate junkie cold turkey song, titled appropriately enough: 1. Cold Turkey. John Lennon had abused drugs and alcohol, in one form or another since his early pre-fame Liverpool days. By 1969, he and Yoko were snorting heroin which made him next to impossible to work with, as painfully captured on film and tape during the filming of the "Get Back to Let it Be" misadventure. That summer, as the Beatles fractured apart into three against one camps (Paul McCartney being the odd man out) John finally went cold turkey on drugs and came out of his decade long haze. This was the backdrop against which they recorded their swan song master piece Abbey Road. It had just been released when John wrote Cold Turkey and approached the band about recording it as the Beatles next single. They declined. Truth be told, by now Paul was in the early stages of a complete mental, emotional and artistic breakdown, and had vanished into seclusion up in the wilds of Scotland to have his breakdown in private. He was to make his decision to leave the Beatles within six months and be reborn as the artist he is today. John on the other hand was newly energized and felt more together than he had in years. He rapidly assembled a band named the Plastic Ono Band, and recorded Cold Turkey. Fellow heroin addict (and he went on to get MUCH more hopelessly addicted before he finally kicked the habit) Eric Clapton shares guitar duties, as does Klaus Voorman (an old friend from Deutschland who designed the Revolver LP cover) and drummer Alan White (later in rock group Yes). 2. Serge Prokofiev Symphony Five (op. 100 Movement Four) Oh what unbridled joy this happy energetic and highly spirited closing movement made from. After a brief introduction on woodwinds which is taken up by the lower strings, we are out of the gate and galloping across a verdant spring landscape fording hedges and streams. There is this rapid and busy (like the flight of a bee sped up 1000 times) string figure that repeatedly punctuates this theme like an electric current of pure joy. Eventually we pause to catch our breath in a short playful second theme, before the galloping commences once again. The joy fanfare repeats once again, but it is slowed and disassembled so that you can make out its parts. Shades of the introduction quickly appear and slow us back down into the second theme once again. This time, we linger longer in this second theme but unexpectedly there is some development but the joy fanfare appears and without warning we are galloping again on our fine musical stallion. But we get distracted and playful and rapidly slide back into the second theme for the last time. The finale is made up of the first theme galloping in full force and with fireworks orchestral trills done in fifths that are like kisses of pure joy. The percussion of snare and wood blocks is unbelievable, and it end with one giant orchestral ascending whoop that puts it all over the top. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your 31.2 Mb bowl of Saturday Night Soup for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.