I am giving away a 7-disc set of Chopin’s piano works ($55) over at Handmeon, and in the process did some writing about the collection and how I’ve related to the work. I’m going to continue to post for a week or two, ruminating on the compositions, before I send it on its journey.
If you register (free), you can not only comment on posts, but you can bookmark and request the Handmeon for yourself. As it travels from person to person, collecting the impressions of its hosts, you can either read along, or join the conversation, or, if the stars align, receive it as a gift from someone. Take a look and see what you think.
About the process: I started thinking about making this a Handmeon about a week ago, after listening to all seven discs on a single Sunday. I knew that I wanted to talk about my reaction to the music, and how much of an impression it had made on me. Tonight, when I sat down to create the online presence, I first wrote the inscription, which introduces the idea of why it’s a Handmeon. Then I created a series of posts – but just wrote the titles and saved them. Now I had, essentially, an outline of what I was going to write about to start. I wrote the first five posts in rough form, then activated the object so it was visible online. The I started this blog post, and then pointed to it from the Handmeon blog. [Yes, I am now writing about this in three places, in three different contexts.] All this took about an hour, or maybe an hour and a half. It was an enjoyable was to spend the evening, having some fun with words, creating some meaning around some beautiful music, preparing to pass it along to someone else – someone I may not even know. But that someone, if they listen to the music, will be moved. And hopefully if they also read the sojourn(s) they will be moved to write about it as well.
There’s a “share this page” link on the Arrau’s Chopin home page. If you know someone who might appreciate all this, please send the page to them, or point them here to learn more. Thanks.
November 6, 2007