Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

More poetry (Day 19/365)

Posted on by Dale

I went back and worked on that missing line in the second stanza:

A trip, vacation time, a deep design
to get away from life. The car is flying
down the state. I’m on 341,
avoiding interstates. We’re free, begun
already, driving green and vacant roads
to gain the ocean, waves, the beach, the coast.

Shooting out of Perry onto shaded
road, pecan orchards on either side,
I see the square, staked sign appear,
a proclamation unexpected here.
It’s almost past me, gone before
I’ve read it: Georgia’s High Tech Corridor.

What? The image, the idea won’t
clear itself, resolve: these orchards don’t
have anything to do with how we live
in any area but this. I give
my head a little shake. So what possessed
the Georgia Legislature to suggest
this thing?

Assessment (Day 18/365)

Posted on by Dale

Not that anyone is going to call me out on it, but I haven’t lived up to my end of the bargain this week. I haven’t done a creative thing every day.

Well, of course not, people will say. You had to take Grayson up to Guilford. You had things to do, emotions to deal with, huge rainstorms to drive through with stinging tears rolling down your cheeks, etc., etc.

But it seems to me that part of a project like this is that you do something every day. It’s part of the discipline of the thing. And I haven’t found that discipline and that rhythm yet.

I completely understand that the creative process requires downtime. Even when I’m not sitting in front of my computer or music notebook, I can be mulling over what to do next with “Milky Way.” Often your best ideas come from after you’ve walked away from the problem. That’s happened to me all the time.

Still, that downtime can be spent on other projects, which is why I have tried to get several things going: William Blake, the symphony, the 341 poem. And this week I’ve just slacked off.

One of my biggest weaknesses, and you’ll hear me whine about this a lot in the coming year, is that my abilities as a composer are really hit or miss. I have no formal training in composition, so I’m usually floundering my way through whatever it is I’m working on. What this means for the daily discipline thing is that I am unable to sit down and work for a quick ten minutes, say, on the “Milky Way” problem because I don’t have a trained understanding of the mechanics of the solution. That is, knowing that I have to extend the climactic nature of the passage, delaying it for another eight measures (for example), is no help at all when I don’t have the knowledge set of how to do that harmonically.

Ah well, as dear Sammy Beckett always said, “Keep going. Going on. Call that going? Call that on?”

More poetry (Day 17/365)

Posted on by Dale

More work on the 341 poem:

A trip, vacation time, a deep desire
to get away from life. The car is flying
down the state. I’m on 341,
avoiding interstates. We’re free, begun
already, driving green and vacant roads
to gain the ocean, waves, the beach, the coast.

Shooting out of Perry onto shaded
road, pecan orchards on either side,
I see the square, staked sign appear.
– / -/ -/ -/ – here|clear|near
It’s almost past me, gone before
I’ve read it: Georgia’s High Tech Corridor.

What? The image, the idea won’t
clear itself, resolve: these orchards don’t
have anything to do with how we live
in any area but this. I give
my head a little shake. So what possessed
the Georgia Legislature to suggest
this thing?

On getting old: a post (Day 16/365)

Posted on by Dale

I’m now officially old.

I know, everyone will roll their eyes. How can I be old? I don’t look old. People younger than I look years older than I do. I don’t act old. There are people who now have tattoos who wouldn’t if it were not for my influence.

But I’m old. Yesterday, I proudly put on my rear windshield the obligatory sticker: Guilford Dad.

I could have chosen just a plain Guilford decal, or one that said Guilford College, or one that had their new oak tree logo next to the name. But with a strange feeling in my stomach, I bought the one that says what I am: Guilford Dad.

I’m not as old as the doctor from Louisville, 73, who has seven sons: the oldest is 41 and the youngest, 18, now at Guilford. This is a man who obviously does not know when to quit.

But I’m old enough to be qualified by a rear window decal: Dad. Someone who is old enough to send an ungodly amount of money to a wonderful college to educate his son. And clearly someone who is proud of his son for making it possible for him to send an ungodly amount of money to this institution.

Yes, he slacked his way through high school, preferring to come from behind for a finish that was “good enough,” and I’m worried sick that he has shortchanged himself in preparation for the tough courses ahead of him, but he’s smart, he’s funny, he’s kind, and he’s good. He’ll be okay. He’ll be better than okay. Of course, if he would email or call, I’d know right now how okay he was. See, I am old.

I feel like Monet in his garden, or Charles Ives after he quit composing. I don’t know why; their old age issues had nothing to do with sons. They just spring to mind. With any luck, I can be Monet and keep working, instead of Ives, who didn’t.

An even less creative day (Day 15/365)

Posted on by Dale

How uncreative am I today? I just drove back from Greensboro, NC, in the driving rain, gently weeping most of the way. Because of a scheduling screwup in the orientation proceedings, Grayson was not on campus for the parent lunch. We had to leave without saying goodbye. This really sucks, and if anyone thinks creativity is enhanced by unhappiness in the artist’s life, they are seriously Romantic and probably hopelessly blue.

Dissatisfaction (Day 12/365)

Posted on by Dale

So I’ve been going back over and over and over the four measures I wrote on Thursday for “Milky Way,” and I’m increasingly dissatisfied with them.

The germ of what I want is there. I’ve structured the piece in a quasi-sonata allegro form, and this is the B theme:

the B theme of

(You can click on it to hear it.)

That pattern of duple notes in the third measure has been used enough in the piece by the time we hit the climax to be a motif the audience would recognize. So what I wanted was to take that pattern and build it on top of itself to keep expanding out and out and out.

Continue reading “Dissatisfaction (Day 12/365)” →

A slow day (Day 11/365)

Posted on by Dale

I didn’t do much today: looked back over my work on “Milky Way,” read back over some of my notes in my Lacuna notebook about William Blake. In fact, the next four days will be pretty slim: we’re getting ready to take Grayson up to Guilford. I’ll do my best to write or hum or something, but I imagine I’m not going to have time or emotional energy to do much of anything.

A quick post (Day 10/365)

Posted on by Dale

Just a quick post tonight: I’m in the middle of working on the climactic moment from “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way,” itself the centerpiece of the entire A Visit to William Blake’s Inn. So far, so good. It’s only taken me an hour to write three and a half measures.

If I would actually sit down and tinker at the keyboard and write this stuff down, it would take me half the time it does to input something into Finale, listen to it, tweak it, listen to it, etc, etc. Still, my musings from my Moleskine have come in quite handy for this bit.

Later: All right, an hour and a half, and I think I’ve got a good grip on it. Here’s a link to an .mp3 file of those four measures. I don’t know if this will work for you, but it works in my browser, Firefox. There are couple of moments of silence at the beginning, in prep for the pickup notes.

The lyrics are:

“I shall garland my room,” said the tiger,
“with a few of these emerald lights.”
“I shall give up sleeping forever,” I said.
“I shall never part day from night.”

A brief explanation (Day 9/365)

Posted on by Dale

I guess I should take a post and explain what this symphony thing is.

In its simplest form, I want to see if I can do it. I want to see if I can write a piece of music in the highest form of orchestral composition in Western civilization.

I’ve thought about trying it for a long time, but of course I’ve been stymied by my own lack of skills and lack of time. But now seems as good a time as any to start. What does it matter if I fail? No one’s career is going to be derailed, for sure.

Continue reading “A brief explanation (Day 9/365)” →