Yesterday a fellow writer from Vancouver came to visit and we talked about our work. She was astonished to hear I do not feel I am a successful writer. Yes, the few people who read my books and essays tell me they enjoy them, but almost nobody knows about them. I’m far removed from the CanLit in crowd. Maybe this at least partially explains why I’ve not been working on the new book. Who cares?

Later she sent me the most lovely text that I’ve printed and will keep close. “You are a terrific writer. I LOVE your books. You bring something different to reading: your personal gaze, your focus, vulnerability, love … How did you do it? Carve out the time, tear free the physical space, fight the insecurities and self-doubt, the loneliness of doing it all by yourself, and being a woman! …

That means a great deal. I thank you.

I wish I were not a weeper. Last night’s weeping was at a concert at Hugh’s Room, an independent music venue which a few years ago very kindly moved from the far west to Broadview Avenue, an eight-minute bike ride from my house. Then also very kindly started presenting classical concerts as well as the folk and pop for which they’re known. I saw the magnificent Angela Hewitt play last year in this intimate space, and last night I went to hear her again.

She’s famous for Bach, and she’s phenomenal, last night playing by heart, with passion and force, all seven parts of the Partita No. 5 in G major. Her career began in Ottawa; my parents used to watch her play with great pride and interest. She has since gone on to a stellar international career, yet here she was, in a hall that seats 220 people.

But then, a treat I did not imagine: Mozart’s Piano and Wind Quintet in E-flat major. I urge you, if you love classical music, to listen to this. The conversation between each wind instrument and the piano — exquisite, soaring, beyond beautiful. Tears. The man wrote this around 250 years ago. He died at 35. 35.

The fabulous wind players were from the Toronto Symphony; I was especially interested in the bassoon player, a young woman, trying to imagine a little girl picking up a huge bassoon and saying, “This is my life.” But obviously she did.

Love of classical music is a gift given me by my parents. Love of all music is mine. Here’s what I posted here exactly ten years ago, on March 10, 2016. George Martin had just died. Son Sam had just won a big cocktail making competition which entailed a gift flight to Barbados.

“March 10, 2016: It has been an overwhelming day – my son’s success and happiness, George Martin’s death, sunshine. Two students sent me moving, evocative pieces about depression which drew me vividly into an experience I can empathize with but cannot understand. I spent time looking through photo albums for pix of a little Sam during our trips to visit Uncle Loris in Barbados, thus reliving two decades of family life, which is joy and pain in equal measure.

And I’m now sitting here after supper, sobbing out loud, sodden, eyes flooded, listening to the red album, Beatles #1, the early compilation that would not exist without George Martin. This music haunts me, feeds me, devastates me. It’s not chords and singers, it’s my very soul I’m listening to.

… Why do I erupt into sobs? What is it about this music? Am I thinking of my young self? Right now, “Eight Days a Week” is on, and I am dissolved. That’s just the way it is. This universal music and the stellar musicians who made it mean more to me than I can say, cut so deep, as deep as I go. Nothing I can do about it.

Here’s “Yesterday,” with the string quartet suggested by Martin the perfect background for this limpid, lucent song. Thank you, George, for all you gave. You were lucky, no question. And so were we.

I weep because John is dead and George is dead and George Martin is dead and they were geniuses. And I am somehow, inexplicably, sixty-five years old with grey hair and wrinkles, and all you need, all you need, is love.

Hello goodbye.”

Later this week, I’m going to hear the TSO play another masterpiece, Dvorzak’s cello concerto. My cup runneth etc. I agree with Albert Schweitzer, who said, “There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.”