Concentrate

I've been thinking about concentration and wondering, perhaps rather flippantly, whether this is a gender issue. Perhaps if you're prehistoric man out hunting you need to concentrate on your prey and nothing else. Whereas prehistoric woman needs to have her eyes and ears on many things: do those chickens sounds as though they can see a predator, is the fire still burning, is that pot boiling, is the baby crying, is my mother calling for me to give her a hand, is the meal I am pounding ready yet...?

The fan, who has a tendency towards fatalism, and likes to believe we are "hard-wired" by personal and shared history and our genetic inheritance considers this theory of mine to be self-evident. But I'm not convinced. Surely if I'm hunting I need to keep my eye on the gazelle - I don't want it running off before I've bagged it. On the other hand surely I need to be aware also of the snake I'm about to step on, the marauding neighbours coming over the ridge at me, not to mention the tiger over there to the left who may also have his eye on my gazelle, but may also be wondering how nice a dinner I'd make. Surely total concentration on that gazelle could as easily result in my death as that of the animal?

Whatever the reason, I've struggled today with tunes, nothing other than the Rowan Tree being totally reliable, day in and day out. I'm also finding that I've misremembered tunes, and then learned the mis-remembering, so now need to go back to the dots and readjust. I can still play the King, but it's a struggle - each note is hard fought. And the new tunes go nowhere, don't feel like tunes, don't speak to me, somehow.