Monday, January 16, 2012

Sweet Stress!

What a month! Alright, alright I can hear you all now hollering in the background, "This is far beyond once a week postings!". Please forgive me - I've been quite remiss in all of my various ways and means of social networking but my excuse is impeccable.

I've been cataloguing my work.

All the bits and pieces of partially done work, all the motets, chants, poems, tone poems, big pieces, small pieces, songs, operas, musicals, ideas - everything. Envelopes with lyrics on them, scraps of napkins with notes dotting like crumbs, notebooks of ideas, computer files full of work that I did not even remember I had. Tapes... endless cassette tapes... and CD's marked with sharpy cryptic notes "2nd attempt" and "underneath yet again".

It's all in one place now and scanned, backedup, copied and safe. I had no idea there was so much flotsam and jetsam accumulated through the years. I'm adrift in a sea of words and music, rowing frantically and scooping up my work bit by bit as more rains slowly from the sky. I've always had a vague idea that some ideas were laying fallow but it turns out that entire landscapes have been slowly greying under the weight of my disregard.

And though you'd think the process of gathering everything from my first poem to my most recent melody would inspire me to dig in and start moving some of the pieces towards the "record this next" pile, a rather odd thing is occuring. I'm buffeted by new ideas, new concepts, new sound combinations and am yet again looking around for voices and people to start projects with.

There is one piece that has unfolded itself finally after years of effort to finish it. I started a prayer about 18 years ago by writing a confessional - solo female mezzo- and over the years have added an invitational (8 voice) and an absolution (trio). I saw one of the pieces that I had written during my father's long illness and realized it was what I needed to start the entire prayer going. The essence of the prayer, the shape of the whole piece is clear now after so long staring at it. So my gathering and organizing has had a creative result after all.

I've discovered the shape of a prayer.

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