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.
A non-creative day (Day 14/365)
A goodbye (Day 13/265)
Today we take Grayson to Guilford College.
This is ripping my heart out. I haven’t even allowed myself to think about what we’re doing, even though his stuff is all packed and waiting to be loaded in the van.
He’s asleep in his room. This is it, the last time he wakes up in his room. From now on, he’s a visitor; it will always be a question of when he’s leaving again.
What am I going to do? This child is my best friend, the one with whom I share the most in common, the one with whom I laugh the most. What will I do without him?
Of course it has never occurred to me to try to “keep” him. Only very foolish parents try to do that, those who have deluded themselves into believing that their children understand and reciprocate the deep attachment we have for them. And they are deluded.
So when we get to Guilford, I’m not sure how useful all the sessions on “letting go” are going to be. I know what that’s about. I just can’t stop it from hurting.
Dissatisfaction (Day 12/365)
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:
(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.
A slow day (Day 11/365)
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)
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)
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.
Further work on the 341 poem (Day 8/365)
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, almost gone before
I’ve read it: Georgia’s High Tech Corridor.
The stolen theme (Day 7/365)
You may recall my mentioning that I’m borrowing a theme for the 4th movement of the symphony. Years ago I wrote a sonatina for piano four hands which had a rambunctious first theme, a gentler second theme, and for some reason a tremendously lyrical central section. That’s the theme I’m stealing:
(You can click on it to hear it.)
Theme evaluation (Day 6/365)
Here’s a quick report on my music notebook jottings: I’m better than I thought.
You may recall that one of my weaknesses as a musician is my inability to imagine a tune then write it down without resorting to a keyboard somewhere. Part of my plan is to take a music notebook with me on my evening walks and force myself to invent themes and write them down in the notebook.
After a week of this, I finally sat down to see if they sounded like what I thought they did when I wrote them.