Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

New music?

Posted on by Dale

The Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra, which has visited Newnan from our sister city of Ayr before (2005), will return to these shores in the summer of 2011. I have been asked to write a piece for them.

We’ll see.

Of course I want to, and I’ve agreed to the project, without question, having emailed their founder Wallace Galbraith this afternoon to introduce myself and get the ball rolling.

But we all know what happens when someone makes plans to perform a work of mine. Inexplicable complications ensue, up to and including sudden, unexpected retirement and H1N1 epidemics in China.

However, we shall proceed as if no such omens from the universe were expected.

So, what shall we write? You can hear the orchestra on their downloads page: very competent, sprightly interpretations of mostly Celtic dance pieces. They don’t list violas as part of their instrumentation, and the photos are too small to see. I see an accordion in their large group, and I hear a drumset on the mp3s, but the first question I asked of Wallace was what instrumentation would be coming next summer.

I also asked about length. I’m guessing we’re not in the market for anything as long as “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.”

Finally, I asked about character: would they prefer something closer to their usual repertoire, or would they like to show off in a different direction?

My goal is to write three to five sketches based on Wallace’s response and let him pick the one he’d like to see finished.

Oh, and I asked for a deadline. Of course.

Labyrinth: the Cloud Sculpture

Posted on by Dale

Just when Jeff thought it was safe to presume there would be no baroqueness, I unveil the Cloud Sculpture.

Several years ago we were in Decatur, doing their Christmas Thursdays thing, and in one of the shops they had these “cute” lawn ornaments constructed of screen mesh, painted and shaped. I thought at the time that one could do damage with such a concept, and I promptly bought a roll of screen mesh and a can of black paint.

And what did I intend to do with this material? I don’t know. Something like this, perhaps?

I did this earlier this afternoon, just oil pastels on a photo of the labyrinth.

Here are some more studies, done upstairs later with gouache:

I think it extremely unlikely that I will even attempt such a thing, materials to hand or not. But what a staggering concept, eh wot?

Moral thermometer

Posted on by Dale

Snowbound as I am, I have been surfing the Intertubes and came across the National Insitute of Health’s Images from the History of Medicine, and specifically this image:

It appeared in the Journal of Health, v. 4, p.5 (Philadelphia, 1833).

I don’t know quite what to do with it other than to be amused by it in some undefinable way. I’d love to see it in context, to read the article to understand exactly what the medical community thought it was clarifying. I thought about making some kind of Assignment for the Lichtenbergians, but I couldn’t define what it was I thought should be done with it.

So, commenters, what are your thoughts?

Listening experiment

Posted on by Dale

Not really an experiment so much as a controlled experience. I noticed, or thought I noticed, that iTunes was focusing on certain CDs to the exclusion of others. So I created a smart playlist for classical/orchestral music which excluded anything that had been played since June 1 of this past year.

I was right. There were a couple thousand tracks, some of which I had not heard since 2007 or even earlier.

That’s what I’ve been listening to for the past week, and I’ve got three and a half days of solid music still to go.

At the moment, I’m hearing Bach’s Keyboard Concerto #2 (Murray Perahia on the pianoforte) as if for the first time. It’s gorgeous, of course.

In a scan of the contents of this playlist, I notice that iTunes tends to shun the first CD of any 2-CD opera set. I’ve been hearing the ends of operas, but not their beginnings. Actually, I haven’t been hearing most opera, and some other thorny 20th-century stuff, at all, since at school I had been listening to a “culled” classical playlist that excluded stuff that I thought might drive other people crazy. But since my clerk’s been abolished, I listen to whatever I damned well please, and everyone else can just catch up.

As Charles Ives once said, as he beat a concertgoer over the head with his program, for protesting the “modern” music being played, “Stop being such a God-damned sissy! Why can’t you stand up before fine strong music like this and use your ears like a man?” (The music in question was that of Carl Ruggles, which is still tough going even today.)

Lichtenbergian Goal #6

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #6: in conjunction with all of the above, produce a lot of crap, i.e., produce boatloads of work

Right. This one may be the hardest one of all.

First of all, it requires time. It’s all fine and good to say that the more you produce, the more likely it is that you’ll produce something of value in the midst of all the crap, or that “10,000 hours of practice” blah blah blah and you get good at whatever it is you’re doing. But producing a lot of crap also requires that you have the time to do it, if you’re going to be mindful of what you’re doing.

And that’s the problem anyway, isn’t it? Lichtenbergians don’t really procrastinate, we just don’t have time available to us to sit down and work. Just now, for example, I was stopped in the middle of a sentence by the appearance of my lovely first wife with marching instructions for my day off. This is in my upstairs study, where she never comes, at a time when normally she should be at work. And that’s just for a quickie morning blogpost, never mind the ELP or the symphony.*

Real life intervenes. Leaf by Niggle. Family and friends. Nine-to-five. We wait for a block of time that never comes, and we keep pushing our hearts’ desires forever ahead of us, out of reach.

, , ,

* Polemics aside, I am bound in honesty to say that my lovely first wife is not a stumbling block to anything I need to accomplish. Quite the contrary: she is amazingly supportive in almost never demanding my presence when I’m trying to get something done. Just had to say that.

Clarification

Posted on by Dale

When I said I had a “dread feeling” about getting started on A Perfect Life in the previous post, I didn’t mean that I have some silly premonition that I’m running out of time to do this. I meant that I have a real dread of the messiness, the incoherence of how I think I need to approach the project.

I have a vague image of what a finished version might look/read like, but of course I cannot sit down and start writing that finished version. First of all, I only have a vague image. Duh.

Second of all, there is no second of all. I only have a vague image of what should be in the book (“Everything!” is the only answer I can get out of the Muse), and absolutely no idea of where to begin.

So I must simply begin. Open the book and start writing about my life and how I live it, here in Newnan, on College Street, in the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

How I wake up and get ready. What College Street looks like, winter, spring, summer, fall. My study. Driving through downtown. Walking through downtown. Being married. Being a father. What I wear. What I don’t wear. Front porches, their decline and fall. School. Parks. The theatre. Lichtenbergians. Lichtenbergianism. The ELP. William Blake’s Inn. The changes in all of the above over the years.

“Everything!” says the Muse.

And that fills me with dread. My stomach churns and my shoulders tense up even as I type this.

“Everything!”

Lichtenbergian Goal #5

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #5: begin work on A Perfect Life, my proposed description of what it’s like to live a life like mine
Longtime readers may remember that last June I bought a huge handmade journal. My stated goal at the time was, and I quote:

I want to write a book called A Perfect Life. I want to document my life in general and in particular. I have a phenomenal life, one that by any standard on this planet is enviable. I am materially comfortable, my environment is great, my family and friends are wonderful, and I am intellectually and creatively alive. That’s what I want to do. Whether I will cast it as a journal, or essay, or fiction, I don’t know.
But I do feel compelled to start telling what it was like to live in this time, in this place.

I still do not know how I want to do this. But I think I need to begin. I have a dread feeling that I just need to fill the book, fill it completely, a patchwork of observations, descriptions, sketches, literal drawings, literally a patchwork on the page. Let the editors sort it out.

It will be my Red Book. Only different. (Not this different, although that would be a fun project as well. Lichtenbergian assignment, maybe?)

Lichtenbergian Goal #4

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #4: write one good short story

I had ideas for three short stories last year and began working on one, but in true Lichtenbergian fashion never got beyond abortive fragments, plus vague outlines for the other two.

I’m not sure why I have this goal. I’ve never been a fiction writer. Sure, I’ve written fiction (Twelfth Night, New Day, anyone?), but it’s not something I feel compelled to do like art and music.

Yes, it was very flattering when Nancy Willard said I should write, but the very thought of struggling with characters and plot and style and language terrifies me in ways that I’m guessing would surprise most people who know me. (This is cool: when you do a Google image search for Nancy Willard, guess what the very first photograph is. Go look.)

So I’m not sure why I think I need to do this. More than likely it’s just my attempt to stake out territory in every single area of the arts. It’s a pissing match, not that anyone’s competing.

Also, as I prepped the labyrinth this past Monday, I found a cigarette butt when I was raking leaves. I’m pretty sure it came from a nephew who led some young relatives on a smores outing in the labyrinth on Thanksgiving evening, but still, it gives one pause when one’s house has been broken into, and before I knew it a narrative had formed in my brain.

Now it’s a challenge: can I take the rather nice idea for a story in my head and actually turn it into an effective piece of writing?

Lichtenbergian Goal #3

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian Goal #3: compose one complete work

I’ll take anything. Really.

By “complete work,” I am talking about something serious, not just an SATB piece, but something that you could apply an opus number to: the symphony; the trio for piano, trombone, and saxophone; the bassoon/string quintet; or something new that I don’t even have any inspiration for yet.

This is one of my stretch goals, although it shouldn’t be. This is how far removed I’ve become from my own compositional process: I have to stretch just to get something written.

As usual, I will be writing without any hope of performance, although the requestor of the trio I think would play it. The symphony? Who? The quintet? The Waltz movement was supposed to be under consideration for this fall, but that didn’t go anywhere, and there’s no evidence that two or three more movements would increase its chances.

However, it doesn’t matter, of course. I shall be happy to get back into the struggle, eventually.

And of course I will have the opportunity this summer to explore the hypothesis that my major stumbling block is the lack of time (as opposed to the lack of talent). Yes, I have some major landscaping to do in the back yard, but on the whole my plan is to make time to compose in a serious way.

It will be an interesting summer. Discipline or death!