Hmm, Pope Joan is so very close to being finished that I am doing that strange thing I do when something I want is within reach: I slow down. I feel very much as if I have little energy or patience for the final steps, but I also worry that if I have this attitude I will decide that it is finished and complete when really it's not, or when it could be a little better. I must give it an honest listening-to, take note of any flat spots and fix them accordingly. Otherwise all the hard work to date and brilliant moments will be diluted.

Ah, anxiety setting in!

Hmmm, Pope Joan is coming along. Slowly. The declicking of the speeches is extremely painful and slow. About 5-10 seconds per hour. I am not looking forward to declicking the Martin Polonus speech, which goes for about 2 minutes. I'm interspersing this dreary stuff with wild and free experiments on sounds and texts. That's fun, quick, satisfying. I'm surprisingly good at creating interesting and coherent stuff in this way. I think I'll work on that today. At the moment I'm working on creating chords of stacked 5ths out of tambourine and bell sounds. The files I'm using are rough, raw and somewhat random. It really is within my reach, if I work hard enough and refuse to be distracted by aforementioned silliness, to finish this piece within 2 weeks.