Can I get something off my chest (in other words, this entry will be good therapy for me, but boring for you)? Even if it's intensely personal and somewhat embarrassing?
All day, I've been crafting a letter in my head to my composition professor, which would explain why I've only composed 3 pieces since I've been in grad school (since January 2004). This was all sparked by two things: and impending composition lesson tomorrow in which I have nothing done (again), and, seeing how much my fellow students are composing in a composition seminar today.
Here's what I've got so far:
Dear Dr. ______,
I'm not sure why I haven't been setting time aside to work on my composition projects, but yet again I have nothing to show you for tomorrow. However, I have a couple theories, which might explain my behavior.
1. I need lots of physical and mental space to feel safe enough to create. As you know I have two large humanities classes to take care of, and every moment of my day is taken up with lesson planning, grading, maintaining the class website, and thinking about how to make my class better, how to make my students care, and what to do with students who turn in late papers and "forget" to do their presentations. In some ways I don't think it's quite fair to throw grad students into teaching when they have their own classes and grades and papers to think about, no teaching assistants to help with grading and photo-copying, and no guidance whatsoever on how to even teach material I don't know well to a large class of 50 non-music major freshmen. Besides this, I have a large orchestration project that's due on Nov. 15, a piano pedagogy project that's due on the 29th, a women's choir piece to write by Dec. 1, plus misc. minor things that still take time, such as working part time while attending school. As you can see, I have no mental space for the creation of musical works. My brain is all used up and I have trouble remembering which key opens my front door, what the copy code is at school, and where I put my chapstick. As far as physical space, I have a nice piano in the dining room, but there is no privacy there. It is just a few feet away from the television. That was the only place to put the piano--it is the only inside wall downstairs.
2. I don't compose as prolifically as my fellow grad students because I don't have the same strong music background as they do. Both of them have been composing and performing for a long time and both have undergraduate degrees in composition. My b.a. is in art education. What classes in my past life have prepared me to write abstract sounds down into a concrete form? The last theory and ear-training classes I had were in 1997. My friends already have craft. I am still at the first step and need to gear up to write something down. It's like I'm trying to write a novel in Russian when I only know three words in the language: cat, pencil, and battery. There's only so many variations on these three words. Also, I know my colleagues have as little time as I do (one of them has 3 kids! The other one has numerous performing and teaching gigs), but they can just sit down and spew out music in a few hours. I'm not to that point yet.
3. Do I really want to write music down? I think one of my problems is motivation. My primary musical interests lie in the education, therapy, and ethnomusicology realms. did I choose the wrong major? Aren't there enough contemporary art music composers out there? How much quasi-tonal "woo-woo, pluck-pluck" postmodernism can the American concert audience take? Should music even be written down anymore, now that we have highly advanced recording equipment? Besides, a score is not music--it is a picture of music. Real music exists in space. The pieces I would write (and spend hours on!) would only exist in space for a few minutes and then get dusty in some drawer or on a shelf in a forgotten section of the library. Does contemporary art music help anyone? Does anyone care?
4. If I really liked composing, wouldn't I just do it and stop whining about it? Some composer said on a blog I read recently: Self-discipline is a natural trait for composers because they want to spend as much time creating as possible. Or something like that--I don't have it quite right, but you get the idea. I'm afraid self-discipline has never been one of my strong suits, even though I enjoy creating in a language I'm familiar with. As a fourth grader it was so easy to sit on my bed and write short stories or make up fashion designs in my sketchbook. I never analyzed what I was doing--I just did it and it didn't seem like work at all. I was just playing. I like the playing around part of composition, but I don't like the more analytical, detailed work that goes into editing and refining. I loose interest by then. I am by nature what Barbara Sher calls a "scanner." So the question is, do I go against my own nature or try to shape it and change my habits?
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and so on.
Blah blah blah, I'm so whiny! But these are questions I struggle with everyday. I want to get out of school and get on with my life.
1 comment:
Hang in there! You can do this, and you are going to look back on this period of your life as the "insane years." Look at what you've accomplished already--I don't know how you are still standing. I say pop a dvd in for your class and work on your stuff... I know you won't do that, but it doesn't sound like you're getting support from your program (in the form of a T.A.--usually grad students ARE the T.A., not the instructor...), so you need to play hardball a bit and tell them that either you get help with your end of the term grading or you will let Netflix do your teaching.
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