🌙Gymnopédies

Trois Gymnopédies, three short piano pieces from 1888, all slow, all in three time, all so alike that for a year I thought they were one piece with two pauses.

This is the music for 🔹 Evening shutdown. It goes on when the laptop closes and it covers the three small jobs: clear the desk, write the last line of the day, put tomorrow's card where I will trip over it. The three together last about nine and a half minutes, which is roughly how long the shutdown takes when I do it properly and about twice as long as when I do not.

First used this way on 2025-01-13-Monday, a quiet day at home, and it stuck because it worked the first time.

• The first is marked slow and sorrowful. It is not sorrowful at 18:00 with a clear desk.
• Nothing in them builds. That is the point: it is music that does not ask what is next.
• Debussy orchestrated two of them. I prefer the piano, which sounds like one person tidying up.

Skipped for most of the bad week in February, along with the shutdown itself. I can tell how a month went by how often this was played.