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Affirmations


  As the dying Mozart no doubt found time to affirm in the middle of giving a pupil instructions for finishing the Requiem which he had always believed he was writing for himself.  Or that Franz Schubert surely used as his daily mantra when he was making sketches for a tenth symphony while typhoid killed him. Or Jane Austen said with sister Cassandra as witness as she struggled to write Sanditon while the Brill-Zinsser disease took hold. Or as Kathleen Ferrier was thinking when cancer in its final stages caused her femur to disintegrate mid-performance at Covent Garden... 
  Or not. Just not. 
  

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