15.) If I Loved You

This song is really beautiful.  I like it a lot.  It's from the musical Carousel by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.  I just heard the early Sinatra recording a couple months ago and I knew right then that I wanted to do the song for the project.  Listening out of context of the show, it's a sad beautiful song.

If I loved you

Time and again I would try to say

All I'd want you to know.

If I love you

Words wouldn't come in an easy way

'Round in circles I'd go. 

Longing to tell you

But afraid to try

I'd let my golden chances pass me by

Soon you'd leave me.

Off you would go in the mist of day.

Never, never to know

How I'd love you,

If I loved you.   

However, in context it's not so sad.  Both the female and male characters sing it to one another and then they totally start making out afterward.  So they do love each other, but they're not ready to admit or announce their love for each other yet.  I haven't seen the whole show but I was happy to see the scene that features this song on youtube.  

The majority of this arrangement was written while I was in Vals, Switzerland.  I was playing at the 7132 Hotel for a couple weeks.  It was a really beautiful place, and really nice to have a break from my usual life.  It was a retreat.  There is a lot one must do to keep a house.  But I have also become what one could call a homesteader.  I am very interested in having meaningful connections to my environment, land (even if only a 1/5 acre lot), and especially my food.  So in addition to the usual cooking, cleaning, maintenance, etc, I spend many hours doing things like gardening, chicken-keeping, fermenting, preserving, and farming.  I am a do-it-yourselfer; a jack of all trades.  And I love that.  But let me tell you, it cuts into your artistic time.  In Vals, I couldn't do any of those things.  I was miles away from my kitchen and my yard.  Suddenly confronted with an abundance of time, I first didn't know what to do with myself.  Pretty quickly I established a nice routine.  After breakfast, I'd do some chi kung, some mediation, some journaling, and some practicing.  After lunch I'd take a nice walk in the mountains, soak in the thermal baths for which the area is famous, practice a little more, then I'd play the gig in the evening.  I was able to write this entire arrangement of If I Loved You, memorize it, and finish the next arrangement as well.  

Coming back to regular life, it became even more obvious just how much time the necessities and the homesteading things take.  But I have to say, I wouldn't have it any other way.  I'm really happy with the path I'm on these days - I find a lot of meaning in it.  And it's okay with me that this project is taking so much longer than I originally anticipated.