Hopefully not the road to hell

Good intentions can lead one to terrible places, it appears. Despite my last post, I've not posted anything since - after the trip to my mother's (which went as well as it could have done, in the circumstances), it was back to feeling frustrated about a certain person's absence. Since Tom got back, just over a week ago, let's say my mind has been, well, on other things.

Yes folks, I'm no longer single. Life is good. (That's as much as I'm saying at this stage, because I really ought to check that Tom's okay with my writing about him here.)

On the ever-important musical front, I'm started composing yet another work, entitled Beati qui lugent (i.e. Blessed are they who mourn), which should give a pretty good clue as to the sort of piece it is. Scored for unaccompanied voices (increasingly my medium of choice), it is intended to chart the changing moods of a bereaved Christian, from an angry O vos omnes to an evocation of the afterlife, alternating Biblical passages (in Latin) and prayer settings. I imagine it's the closest I'll ever get to writing a Requiem.

On a more cheerful note, my first date with Tom was at a screening of the 1925 (therefore silent) film of The phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney in the title role. Unfortunately the technical wizardry was rather let down by plotholes, hammy acting and unintentionally hilarious caption cards. Somehow the villian became a lot less frightening with the revelation he was an insane criminal named Erik ...