Soundchoices: Paul Elwood

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.

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.

Distractions and Composing

Today wasn't terribly productive. I had a few distracting things in my mind. But, after a run, things flowed a little better. I had a professor once who was an avid runner. "Running doesn't solve your problems," he said, "but it helps one to deal with them."

I DID productively rewrite the opening of the composition I'm writing as a soprano solo without accompanent. Melodic writing INITIALLY comes easy for me. But then I always need to revisereviserevise. That I was able to accomplish today when I fought the compulsion to read more of Kurt Vonnegut's insightful and entertaining letters.

Though, sometimes, I think that part of the creative process IS distraction. Allowing distraction that is; staring out the window, doodling (I'm trying to draw cartoonish characters amongst my score sketches), and maybe reading a short passage of something. Perhaps it just releases the mind from concentration that could be called unproductive anyway.

Ebow and banjos

I'm on my way to play in the premiere of a new composition by legendary experimentalist and electronic composer Alvin Lucier. The performance is Thursday night at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire . . . Or is it Vermont?

The composition uses three banjos; Lucier based the instrumentation of the piece on a photograph of a band his father played in during the 1920s. With three banjos. Our banjos are played with ebows - a small, battery powered magnetic device that causes the string to vibrate in a continuous long tone. It's often used by rock guitarists.

The performance is with the Callithumpian Consort of the New England Conservatory.

Graphite on the Paper

Une seule obligation, périodiquement fixe danse une vie, ordonne tout le reste de la vie: tout vient tourner autour de cela. En conservant l’histoire de ce que j’éprouve, je vis double: le passé reviendra à moi . . . L’avenir est toujours là.

"A certain routine, periodically fixed in life, organizes the rest of your life: all comes to turn around that. In writing down the story of all that I experience, I see double: the past returns to me . . . the future is always there."

Eugène Delacroix, Journal, Wednesday, April 7, 1824 (trans. mine)

The painter Delacroix is writing about keeping his journal and, by association his painting routine.   It’s true, the daily routine of composing (keeping a journal, blogging, etc.) maintains a certain regularity that my life needs.  Days when I don’t compose progress as if something huge is missing,  Time goes by, but something essential is left out, sort of like leaving a cell phone at home, only worse.

And, like today, I know that what I was composing wasn’t brilliant or probably something I will keep, but the act of composing, holding the pencil, creating well-defined and bold beams on the staff paper all felt right. 

The act itself, the routine, the daily application is the only key to composition (poetry, painting, reading, blogging, etc.).  And just starting can be the hard part.  Sometimes I’ll start and vow to not leave my chair for exactly one hour.  This morning I did that and the ideas flowed. 

Time will tell if the ideas are any good, but the important thing is leaving graphite on the paper. 

Active Engagement Out There

Active engagement in the world.  It’s often one of the hardest things for me to accomplish. In a hermetic sort of manner, I like quiet time at home.  Perhaps it’s a reaction to thirty years of playing in bars, mostly on banjo, and, come to think of it, thirty years of playing percussion in a variety of symphony orchestras.  Perhaps the idea of staying home, sipping something and reading is the balance that an element in my psyche is seeking. 

And yet, and yet, I almost never regret active engagement out there.   Playing gigs (and the paycheck that produces) and sitting in with musicians are often inspiring and energizing to my musical creation.  And showing up is one of the main keys of success.  There is an interesting paragraph in George Lewis’s large tome: “A Power Stronger Than Itself,” describing how the 25-year-old saxophonist Chico Freeman  stopped off for what was to have been a visit of a few days in New York in 1976.

For three days I stayed  . . . to see what New York was like.  Henry [Threadgill] was playing at the Tin Palace with Jeanne Lee. For some reason he had to go back to Chicago, so he asked me to take his place that weekend. So my three days turned into a week. At the end of the week I said, I’ll go back, but at the Tin Palace, they had such a good turnout for Jeanne Lee that they asked her back for the next weekend. She liked me, and so she asked me to do the gig again. So now that week’s turning into another week.

You may see where this is going: Freeman kept getting gigs as the sphere of his acquaintances kept expanding and he ended up getting an apartment instead of returning home, ultimately playing regularly with drummer Elvin Jones at the Village Vanguard. 

Show up
Stay awake
Tell the Truth
Don’t worry about the end results.

So, I’m off to Denver tonight to sit in with the astounding drummer Jeff Sipe, who I knew in North Carolina. He has had the variegated career of playing with the likes of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, Colonel Bruce Hampton, Susan Tedeschi, Colorado jam band Leftover Salmon (my first memory of him), Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, and recently recording with guitarist John McLaughlin (!).

The hermetic life will just have to wait.