I wish there were more (Day 100/365)

The 100th day. Probably it’s time for one of those soul-searching assessments.

On the whole, I’ve accomplished a lot: finished the composition for William Blake’s Inn, started the orchestration of same, putzed around with the Hwy 341 poem, mused (before I got heavily into the William Blake problems) about a putative symphony, and ranted liberally from time to time.

There have been more days than I care to acknowledge on which I simply didn’t get anything done. But when one’s time for this kind of thing is measured in hours, one, two, three, not days, then there are days that are just lost to the other demands of life.

I have not given myself credit for those days when I thought seriously about what I needed to do next or wanted to accomplish. I know that’s part of the creative process, but I’ve fallen victim to the trap of considering only product, not process. So sue me.

I worked on Milky Way tonight, but everything I put in (working on four measures, starting with the Tiger’s “I shall garland my room”) would not play back: all overload and feedback. I’m going on Saturday to Lenox Mall, to the Apple Store, to chat with the children that work there as to whether a new laptop (a MacBook Pro, now with 3GB of memory) will play my music without distortion.

On the other hand, WE TOOK BACK CONGRESS. And DONALD RUMFELD RESIGNED. I know it might still land me in Gitmo, but damn it all to hell, that man is a war criminal. Let’s turn him over to the Hague before Cheney secretes him away in an undisclosed location. Cheney, too. I know that leaves Pelosi next in line, but you know what? I’ll take my chances. Yes, I know that technically Hastert’s next in line, but with any luck Bush can last past January 20 before collapsing or strangling Laura in the bathtub or whatever he’s going to do before he finally realizes his own complicity in the worst foreign policy [cock]-up* in U.S. history and goes completely wacko. If there’s any justice, that is.

Where was I? I was supposed to be analyzing my creativity of the last 100 days. Okay. I worked all night on four measures of Milky Way, but I couldn’t tell you whether they work or not because of the distortion of the playback. I can’t figure it out: there’s not any heavier load on the output than in previously orchestrated pieces, but when it gets to m. 64, the whole thing goes ugly. It has discouraged me.

Thank god for Donald Rumsfeld.

*Not the word I would use in casual conversation.

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