Soundchoices: Paul Elwood

The first stroke of paint . . .

James Brooks, at seventy-seven a dean of the [abstract expressionist art] movement, described in conversation with me the ideal set of mind for a painter who wishes to link his or her hands to the unconscious, as [Jackson] Pollock did: ‘I must lay on the first stoke of paint. After that, I insist that the canvas do at least half the work.

 Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death

I sometimes think this process is quite true, though it takes a great deal of practice to arrive at this method—and technique.  Years must be spent, I believe, on technique, before allowing the technique to flourish on its own, before intuition can safely take over in an uninhibited manner. 

Starting is always the hard part and, for me, ideas don’t always come fast.  But sometimes after having made the first stroke of sound, the ideas do flow.

Focus and lack of it

I finished the third draft for a new composition this afternoon on computer - a revision of my second pencil draft. It's sometimes surprising how much things change from one draft to another and I'm now anticipating a fourth, hopefully better draft.

And I had to put other projects on hold to make progress on this one. Focus has ways been difficult for me, but when I near the completion of a project focus becomes a little easier. As I grow older I'm learning to accept drifts in focus, something that has taken about 40 years of composing to arrive at and something that I'm beginning to accept perhaps as part of the creative process.

Communication vs. expression

Communication is one of the most fundamental and sometimes difficult things to accomplish.  I had a misunderstanding with a hotel clerk in Strasbourg about payment on the two, expensive, breakfasts that I had, thinking they were included with the room price.  I really was at fault for failing to clarify the terms when I checked in, but I was still angry - mostly at myself for expressing my anger unjustly.

But that's just it - if I myself had been more careful with communication then words wouldn't have been spoken and I wouldn't have been angry, then regretful of the anger for the rest of the day.

"They" often say that music is the "universal language." We attribute some of the classic temperaments to music: anger, joy, sadness, etc., but it really is just sound in a variety of organized configurations.  A wonderful composer I know told me before the premiere of one of her new works that she found the composition rather "aggressive."  I had a contrary impression: it was a quiet piece, yes with a lot of homophonic dissonance, but it was also quite beautiful.  "Aggressive" as an adjective to describe the composition wouldn't have occurred to me.  Sometimes I think our creative intentions or impressions have a different interpretation from the viewer.  Perhaps music isn't necessarily communication but it does function well as expression.

Eighth Grade Biology

Sometimes I wonder what the point of, say, studying biology in the eighth grade was.  I don't have a strong interest in the subject.  But our teacher had taught the course for many, many years and had it down pat.  He didn't seem stale in his teaching, and he spoke sitting down without any notes whatsoever.  He carried a great deal of authority, sporting the same military haircut he'd had in WWII.  

We all enjoyed his class quite a bit and he had good stories to add to the lectures that helped us to remember the content.  I remember those stories better than I remember the terms he lectured on.  I thought of this yesterday looking at towering corn plants from the train window outside of Frankfurt, Germany, on the way to the airport.  I remembered that it was hazardous to run through rows of corn because there were supporting roots that stuck out of the ground to hold up the plants and one can trip on those - a story told by the eighth-grade biology teacher.  I don't, however, remember what those roots (if they are roots) are called.

Why is this important to know, I asked myself?  It isn't, unless I start working in a corn field.  But what's important was the processing of information, learning to learn, to think, to mull over information in an interesting cognitive manner, even if the subject is ultimately of little use to one. And then this skill can be used to learn things that are truly of personal interest.   

Plodding Toward Strasbourg

A road map isn't always needed. This morning I knew I had to get from Heidelberg to Strasbourg without knowing exactly how. I started by catching the bus outside the hotel and then asked which transfer I needed to make for the train station. After I found the station, all that was left was catching the right trains at the right time.

Starting and finishing a work of art, novel, composition, etc can be the same. The important thing is to start and not be frozen by the question of when or how, but deciding NOW. The timetables, road maps, and process can evolve as the journey through the work progresses. But, the work will progress. It's not always easy. Yesterday, both my flights toward Germany were delayed, the shuttle driver was late, and the hotel room on arriving at 9 pm wasn't cleaned or made up. So what? Things go wrong.

Trips aren't always straight lines and neither is our creative process. It's sometimes hard work, it's sometimes boring (read "proofreading"), and sometimes hampered by unforeseen life complications. But ultimately, daily work, steady plodding, can lead us to completion. Or Strasbourg.

Talent, connections, intelligence?

I used to think that one must extraordinarily endowed with good fortune (of family, money, and circumstance), hyper-intelligence, and talent to succeed. The fact is, yes, each plays a role in the creative life, but perhaps by different definitions.

Good fortune may not be a family with money or famous parents that might give us a leg up in the world. Good fortune might come with the drive and will to succeed. Hyper-intelligence may be just the ability to work and work on something with patience and willingness to revise until it's better. And talent. I don't really know what that is, but I think it's connected to the desire and will to work to produce something. The talent itself may just grow with the effort.

Lost Time

I didn't work today.  Too many life distractions, which I often don't think are valid excuses for not composing.   If I'm going to do anything at all worthwhile, then daily practice is a necessity and a lifelong vocation.  

Jean-Paul Sartre writes about a writer who, on his deathbed, regrets that he couldn't finish his last novel.  Sartre derides this notion in that the guy soon won't be in a place where he will care.  In Sartre's universe that is the netherworld of nothing.  But even in a Paradiso à la Dante that writer wouldn't care.  The reality of, um, that reality, would overwhelm the Earthly desire in the vast arena of Saints overseen by the Virgin Mary. 

Around 3 pm today I aroused myself from torpor - I didn't compose, didn't practice, but did make an agreement with myself that I wouldn't regret the lost time.  Nothing can be done about that anyway, lost in the netherworld of the past.

Boredom

In an interview that the composer/saxophonist John Zorn gave to Terry Gross on NPR on the occasion of his 60th birthday, she asked him about vacations - does he take them?  wouldn't he like a week at the beach?  He said something to the effect that a vacation at the beach would drive him crazy.  I understand.  There's a pall of boredom that settles like mist over the water or humidity over the land. 

I'm at the beach.  Yes, we go swimming in the Mediterranean once a day (when the waves aren't slamming hapless swimmers around), and I'm reading a lot - but I'm also composing.   Beach culture isn't stimulating on a surface level, but perhaps it's the boredom that makes room for the ideas.  Today, I finished the second pencil draft of a composition for soprano and percussion with text by the marvelous poet Albert Goldbarth.  I asked him to write a text that might use imagery from Kansas. Even though I haven't lived there for 25 years, the roots of the space, sky, and land is very much with me.  It's one reason I actually like the sea - it's an expanse not unlike the prairie.  Open, flat-ish, and covered by a bowl of blue sky (to rip off imagery from Laura Ingalls Wilder, also a prairie-bred person).  Interestingly, Goldbarth makes use of the wind in his poem, and as I set this text the wind was blowing furiously from Northern Africa for 4 days running. 

Once, when passing through Kansas a few years back I met a tough, widowed woman farmer, aged 77, who disdainfully said something to the effect that no grown man should admit that he's bored.  Fortunately I wasn't the topic of the conversation. 

But.

Boredom is a fact of life.  The beach is boring, but maybe boredom serves a purpose, freeing the brain from intensive thoughts and ideas and frees up space for idle dreams and perhaps revelations. Perhaps boredom is an occasional blessing. 

As Kurt Vonnegut writes the transcript of a commencement address published in "Palm Sunday:"

As for boredom: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a German philosopher, . . . had this to say: 'Against boredom, even the gods contend in vain.' We are supposed to be bored. It is part of life. Learn to put up with it, or you will not be what I have declared the members of this graduating class to be: mature women and men.

I might learn something

Contemplating a work of art is a social activity. Either you have a good time or you don't. you don't have to say why afterwards. You don't have to say anything.

Kurt Vonnegut, Letters, October 11, 1995

Really, when it comes to music, all one has to do is listen, hopefully with attention and engagement. But, moreover, with an open mind and ear. I'm writing this as I sit in a bar in Spain.  The music is some sorta techno and doesn't particularly appeal to me.  But, I've noticed in some of the newer dance music that there are interesting production techniques at play.  And in some newer recordings (talking pop music here) that there are producers and engineers who seem to be masters of spatialization and creating the illusion of cavernous depth or enclosed space digitially.  I sometimes think I should listen to these folks a little more carefully, even if I don't care for the aesthetics. I might learn something.