Spending time in the country allows for many positive results. One of them is time – time to think, time to not think, time to imagine… time to write a symphony. 

I’d always wanted to, but the idea was way too daunting. I had trouble breaking it down in my head because I wanted to be finished with it right there and then. Interestingly, when I ended up working on it, I found myself going very slowly, enjoying every second of it. I soon found myself writing the way I used to… hours on end, forgetting to eat or drink, or even needing to. Like a fish in water. 

This is the 2nd movement of that symphony entitled, “The Despair of Reality” which is born out of the 1st movement, “The Blindfold of Certainty”. In essence, it’s about each of us and our involuntary, yet powerful minds and how easy it is to get used to something, or to feel like there’s no other reality… even if the reality we’re living is not that great. It’s about how blind we can be when we believe there is nothing to learn and no reason to grow… or when we’re afraid to do so.

This movement is about the death of that limited, and limiting, certainty and the despair of the reality that follows… because we were so sure (and perhaps needed to be), and now we’re not. We’re scared. And depressed. And confused. It’s not fun, and it’s not supposed to be. It hurts, and it should – because it’s an an extreme, and extremes hurt. It’s not always dramatic, though it can be. Often, it’s just an inner meandering that has no direction, explanation, or end… which can be, in itself, scary, depressing and painful. 

That said, my goal is not to depress anyone – quite the opposite. It is, as Peter Abelard writes in the introduction to his book, Historia Calamitatum, to share my own experience “so that you may discover that yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of small account, and so shall you come to bear them more easily.” 

While I don’t believe that these experiences are “nought”, or of small account, I do believe that the sharing of them – and the commonality we all share – does make it easier to be the complicated, fascinatingly poignant beings we all are, and to get on with it. 

It should also be noted that the fourth movement is appropriately named "The Possibility of Hope" – for when we allow ourselves to die to the old, limiting beliefs that keep us bound, we gain the opportunity to see what is possible, what has eluded us, and what is actually true.

It is, however, as the saying goes, always darkest before the dawn.