I’m going to predict the future — new conclusion

I’m continuing to take you on my ride in story building. The last time I posted here was three years ago (https://steemit.com/self-help/@pianopsych/i-m-going-to-predict-the-future-conclusion) as a conclusion to my exercise in story building first posted here on Steemit (https://steemit.com/self-help/@pianopsych/i-m-going-to-predict-the-future).

I was never satisfied with that conclusion. There would come a time in which that event could be reinterpreted in a new way to make it a better story. That time has come.

In the last post I mentioned being only a little proud of the video that resulted from my story-building exercise. More accurately, it’s a little embarrassing because of a gaffe while playing the last page of the music. The video has some nice moments but it is, at best, an example of how my system was effective in recovering from an error.

I knew at some point that gaffe was going to have to become part of the story.

After that apparent failure, a story-building exercise that I had begun over a year before starting this one perfectly came to fruition. I referenced that in my last post. A month ago, I had an opportunity to go back to this story associated with Beethoven Sonata #31 and try it again. Here’s how that happened.

At the time of this post, we are over ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic. One silver lining of the pandemic has been the establishment of online ways to share music. Isabella Li, a professor at the New England Conservatory Preparatory Division (https://necmusic.edu/faculty/isabella-yan-li) started something called Musicale (https://www.wearemusicale.com), and its first event occurred in December 2020. Pianists of all ages were invited to share a video of a performance of music by Beethoven, whose 250th birthday was on December 17, 2020.

I heard about the event only about a week before the deadline for participation. As luck would have it, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #31 was the only piece I wanted to play because it felt uniquely soothing during the dark time of the pandemic, and because my story-building exercise recorded here on Steemit never fully resolved to my satisfaction. The deadline for submitting a video was December 6, so on December 5 I recorded my entry. Bev’s beautiful Kawai piano in our living room was troublesomely out of tune so I chose to make the recording on my electronic instrument.

In the Schenker edition of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, the opening page of this sonata has the date “December 25, 1821” prominently displayed in the upper right hand corner.

That prompts me to think of this sonata as Beethoven’s Christmas gift to the world, and I’m not alone in thinking that this sonata is Beethoven’s clearest expression of certain spiritual ideas. Here’s someone who can write about this idea much better than I can: http://www.kevinclass.com/masterclassbeethoven110 . This Sonata #31 is the center of Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas. He took time away from composing his solemn mass (Missa Solemnis) to work on them. The sonata shares spiritual connections with the Missa Solemnis, and it behaves like the center of a trinity, making its association with Christmas more poignant and relevant.

With Christmas in mind, I enjoy the coincidence of the “White Christmas”-like snowstorm that occurred on December 5, while recording the video. It was a pleasure to view the snowfall while playing. It enhanced the performance.

There were 54 entries in this inaugural Musicale event. Two eminent judges, Michael Lewin (https://www.michaellewin.com) and Mia Chung (http://www.miachung.com/bio.htm) awarded prizes for the best entries. I received a Gold prize for my entry and was featured with the 17 other prize winners in the last of two recital videos that were a compilation of all the winning video entries. My video was the final one of the entire 17. The first video was of one of a five year-old girl, so they generally went from youngest to oldest, but the final act in a program represents a position of honor, and that was granted to me.

An important aspect of the story I started to build here on August 7, 2017 when I posted my first Steemit post was that the video would earn praise from a reputable source. The founder of Musicale, Isabella Li, left a glowing comment acknowledging my Gold Prize and suggesting that my playing reflects a deep understanding of Beethoven and this late Sonata. So here is the video to now consider as the appropriate conclusion to the story that began 1,265 days ago or just more than 3-and-a-half years ago here on Steemit:

A couple of days ago, on the Locals platform, Scott Adams wrote a post about his hypothesis regarding the importance of subjecting oneself to potentially embarrassing experiences as a factor in recruiting luck. I’m writing this post to close off this prediction episode with a more satisfactory ending, but it also means exposing myself to embarrassment. Reading through these posts has been difficult at times as I recognize just how grandiose I sound and how exposed I’ve made myself. If this exercise works, it means that people will be reading this series of posts and I’ll no doubt become the victim of some ridicule by those who like to do that. That’s potentially embarrassing, but that seems to be an important element.

Here’s my response to Scott’s post on Locals:
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@ScottAdamsSays I’ve also been working with a hypothesis regarding how one recruits luck (or programs the simulation). I believe your ego hypothesis gets at an important part of it but I think there’s more to say.

I still keep an email you sent me back in July 2016. You sent it in response to my email letting you know that the principles in your “How to Fail...” book helped me win an international amateur piano competition:
https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/son-san-carlos-resident-wins-amateur-pianists-san-diego-international-piano-competition

Right after that, while continuing to use your principles, a story I envisioned became the front page of the Boston Sunday Globe on January 8, 2017. https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2017/01/05/she-loved-him-and-died-holocaust-now-her-son-bringing-his-music-back-life/M4yW8pio3QwC9bnh1AhKaN/story.html.
Here’s a short video summary of that story:

I have other stories as well. My favorite highly improbable story outcome is not a big one, but it was big for me. It occurred in April 2018. Here is a short video that describes the story:

This video clip was part of a lecture on managing performance anxiety in which I also publicly gave you credit for helping me with this problem:

In your blog post of May 1, 2016, you drew our attention to the ideas of cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman who suggested that reality is an illusion (or that “consciousness is the ontological primitive”). Like you, I have now experienced what it’s like to have the universe do twists and turns to make an affirmation story work out. I don’t know what you call that, but I’m happy to have found it and will gladly continue fostering it. Perhaps I’ve earned the right to say something about how it’s done. I endorse your ego hypothesis, and agree that the willingness to take risks that could end in embarrassment may be crucial for obtaining the luck factor, but it seems to me that your ego hypothesis could be productively embedded within a larger framework that would dovetail with Dr. Jordan Peterson’s self-authoring insights.

Maybe this note begins a new chapter in my story, the one where I get to begin meaningfully interacting with you. We could have a very rich dialogue.
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I predicted in this revision of the first post (https://steemit.com/self-help/@pianopsych/i-m-going-to-predict-the-future-an-update) that someone other than me is going to get Scott to read this series of posts. Let’s see if that works out.