One Day Wonder #286

For 2 horns, 2 trombones and tuba.

You know, if everything is going really well (and it has been), I’m just girding myself for the next run of rottenness. Maybe it’s my dour Ukrainian heritage. Bad stuff has been happening over there for centuries. Maybe it’s just my own personal experience or insecurity. I don’t know. But as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I could feel this coming on. By and large, the last few weeks have been tremendous. I’m writing things nowadays that would have been impossible for me to conjure just a month or two ago. It’s a really great feeling after you’ve finished a piece that you get an idea for about three more pieces. Not only that, but you know how everything’s going to work. All that needs to be done is to chase down a few notes and you’re done. That wasn’t the case today. I was running around all day. Usually, I’m able to figure out what I’m going to write at a quieter, more lucid moment. Something will just pop into my head; I’ll mull it over, build on it and pursue it when I get home. This didn’t happen. For the whole day, I couldn’t figure out what to do. Based on a lunchtime conversation, I decided to try to write some antiphonal (also known as “call and response”) stuff for mid-low brass. Usually that’s enough to get some music in my head, but it didn’t work. I had no idea what to do and no music playing in my head. I started the piece anyway and tried to work my way through this conundrum. That was only a partial success. I only got down 20 bars before I gave up for the day. Yeah, I’ve written 285 pieces before this one, and this is the first one I abandoned due to lack of ideas. I was close to panic. Was I finally out of ideas? That’s a real scary question, especially if you’re aspiring to make writing music into a profession as I am. If the well runs dry, then what? Never mind that my output has been very good for the last few weeks. Sure, I could have handled #281 better, but straightened it all out with #282. Overall, things have been great. But I really fretted about being blocked, because I don’t get blocked. I sit down and I write a piece nearly every day. Heck, I even wrote pieces on Christmas and New Year’s Day. I slept poorly that night. Usually ideas come to me in my sleep when I’m that agitated, but no. I got nothing from that bad night of sleep. So I worked through those 20 bars, turned them into a palindrome, added something else and then ended it. There’s no indication of what a struggle it was to write, and it’s probably better that way. I’m glad it’s done, though I’m not particularly happy with the results. The main reason is that this piece could have come from anywhere in the project. It doesn’t exhibit anything unique. It is a B-side at best. And it took two days to write! I’m hoping that I won’t have more days like these last two again.

Other than the silence going on in my brain, I actually managed to have an otherwise fine time in those awful two days. In fact, I managed to distract myself from my troubles quite often. Among the highlights, were getting in on a press preview for the Seattle Art Museum’s Roman art exhibit (it’s really impressive), seeing the lunar eclipse from the roof of my building in Belltown and playing some very decent poker. No, I didn’t win, but I was hitting straights for once. That’s always an encouraging sign of turning luck. And perhaps there is a certain degree of luck to creativity.