Today is a day like any other, except that the Little Caesar's pizza joint downstairs from my office is having customer appreciation day. Medium pizzas for $2.99. Woo! Glad we have our chest freezer; I think I'll buy the maximum I can and freeze for a rainy day!

My server here at work has been acting up. I don't know on what to blame it or how to fix it, but the result has been that my email has been bouncing all over the place. It's really driving me quite batty. If you've tried to email me and have had your letter returned, you may want to try it again; I think it's working now...

God, I'm nervous. This weekend is the big Mid-American Center for Contemporary Music Festival for New Music and Art. It's a "reelly beeg shew;" composers and artists from all over the world come to this thing. And this year, I have a work being performed. My nerves are quite wracked.

This performance is the result of a competition I won last year with this piece. "Dog Light" is a chamber work for clarinet, cello, percussion, and piano. I wrote it very quickly, between movements of my thesis, as kind of a "relaxation" piece for myself. Who woulda thunkit? So now the world is going to get to hear it on Saturday.

I'm finding it very difficult to be calm about this. I'm one of those composers who both loves and hates to hear their music being performed. John Corigliano (composer of both the celebrated "Rage and Remembrance" and the soundtrack to "Altered States") told me that he listened to the premiere of his flute concerto over a loudspeaker, curled up in a ball in the men's room. I myself hate to have anything to do with my performances. I refuse to conduct or play my own stuff; I don't know if I'm afraid I'll "jinx" it or if I'm just too nervous to do anything more than sit in the back row, cringing.

Any composer will tell you, there's nothing like a live performance. For me, it's something akin to placing my child, no, my soul on display for the world, hoping against hope that they will understand, or at least not choose to laugh and make fun. My music is more than my words. My music is the most intimate part of me. To have it mocked, mistreated by incompetent performers, or harshly criticized by uninformed listeners is beyond unbearable.

When I first began to learn music, an "experienced" composer told me, "Hearing your music performed is better than sex." As someone who was as yet inexperienced with both areas, I was unable to understand. Now I know what he meant. With sex, only the body is touched. With really, really good sex, the heart may be touched along with the body. But no sex on earth can touch the soul the way it is touched during a performance, when you're watching a performer, who may be a stranger to you, take your voice, your thoughts, and your being and coax them from his instrument in front of a room of watchers. So mindbogglingly intimate, it can't be fathomed.