Moving on...

Last night it was once again my pleasure to Zoom in with Professor Gary Gute’s class on the creative process at the University of Northern Iowa. As usual, the students’ questions were penetrating, and a couple were actually unanswerable (like “Have you ever STOLEN FROM THE BEST and found it was the wrong source to steal from?,” which honestly I couldn’t remember having done).

One I was able to answer was “What project did you most regret ABANDONING?” Easy: the attempt to ramp up the world premiere production of William Blake’s Inn, which ironically was to have been weekend after next. (It’s still on my calendar; I cherish my scars.)

Another involved my creative flow, and I was quite chuffed at being able to answer that one as well. After we got A Young Person’s Guide to Lichtenbergianism out the door, I underwent my usual “turning of the tide,” i.e., with one major project finished, my brain usually kicks back and takes a vacation before getting back to work, and this time I had the added distraction of the election and its consequences, etc.

I’ve written about this orchestral piece I want to write based on a favorite fictional character, but regular readers know I’ve been stymied by the self-euthanasia of Finale and my inability to grok either of the two programs I’ve been trying to learn, not to mention the copyright issues involved. I recently decided to shelve it and work on simpler pieces with paper and pencil, just like the good old days.

I was whining about this to my cello teacher last week, that part of the problem is that after 50 years of writing music with most of it unperformed, I have hit that wall. Unless I’m writing it for someone to perform, I just don’t have it in me to hammer my way through major pieces. I am not, after all, Charles Ives (who was actually a Yale-trained composer).

So she challenged me to write something for her and my former cello teacher to play. ::sigh::

At least it’s not nothing. If I can ignore the real world for a month, I might have something. I promise to share each agonizing step of the way.

Then yesterday, at Backstreet Arts writers group, I began reading the webpages I had pulled up about Beethoven’s working habits. Suddenly I found myself opening a Scrivener document and storing those pages which seemed most useful to STEAL FROM THE BEST for The Beethoven Blueprint, which I’ve halfway decided should be my next book.

True to that blueprint, I’ve started a WASTE BOOK for the project.

Scribble scribble scribble. After all, it’s the Beethoven Blueprint.

More as it develops.