composer's notebook
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Thursday, September 25, 2008
(Yes, I still use one)
The other day while preparing to write out a fair copy of something from The Opera I found myself sans pencil and so randomly selected (ie. stole) the first one I saw from Better Half's bucket of writing instruments on her desk. Soon after: Oh man, this pencil is fanTAStic ... it's so smooth and it looks so sharp and clear and dark on the page, what IS this? Of course, by accident (seriously) I didn't grab just any old schlubby #2, but one of her crazy-nice sketching pencils. So, of course, now I'm hooked. I'm never going back to anything resembling a mechanical ever again. O! Faber-Castell 9000 Graphite in 7B hardness-grade, you have stolen my heart. Sigh.
JB knows what I'm talking about. Last year when I waxed nostalgic about the loss of Aztec manuscript paper, he deemed Eagle's old Electronic Scorer pencils "the greatest pencil ever created in the history of the Universe". Possible. But R.I.P, because the E.S. is gone forever, living on only as jpegs on the internets. So it's off to Pearl Paint, because in the interest of Marital Harmony I kind of have to return that Castell 9000 I stole. But also I have some serious procrastination to accomplish, and there is a world of Stupidly-Expensive Pencils out there, just waiting for my determination of exactly which one is the Perfect Stupidly-Expensive Pencil for me.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Oblivion
I have been waiting on writing something about David Foster Wallace, who basically broke my heart when he took his own life last week. It's not only that I don't know what I can add to our processing of the tragedy (I don't), but also that I've actually been hoping someone could articulate the loss better than I. That quest was almost hopeless, as everything I read in the days following left me kind of dull and angry and sad that all we seem to be able to muster collectively are rushed declarations of his genius, or self-serving pronouncements of having actually read (or heard of) Infinite Jest.
But then I read A.O. Scott's piece in Sunday's Times, and that one hit a lot closer. A little ping in my heart came with the realization that at least one other soul (besides Better Half) felt a similar sort of helplessness over the whole thing. Scott also finally capsulizes what I could not: that Wallace is, with all of the depressing detail, the voice in your head.
Monday, September 01, 2008
No Horn Helmets
My summer project (besides daily playground-sprinkler-time with The Toddler) was to make the hypothetical Opera into something a little less hypothetical. For well over a year now my (brilliant) writing partner and I have consulted lawyers, brainstormed structures, and generally schemed our takeover of The Opera House. Then, while Gary wrote up a rough draft of the libretto, I tried to get a handle on the general sound of the piece. But after (lots of) pages of sketches I still wasn't convinced of committing to my harmonic language, and more than that - I felt that I hadn't really begun, that I was just pushing papers around, and didn't actually know how to begin.
During this I was often reminded of writing the string quartet. Similarly, it was my idea (mostly), and I was over-the-moon excited to do it, but when it came to composing the thing I found myself terrified--simply overwhelmed with the Bigness of writing for String Quartet. I mean, after Mr. Beethoven did it so well, and all.
This is a similar deal, only multiply the terror (and size of the problem) several times over. I mean, it's an opera, for goodness sake. I understand people take that kind of thing kind of seriously. OK, I take that kind of thing seriously, and I'll admit to exploiting every opportunity to scoff at the occasional unworthy schlub who thinks s/he has the goods to do what Mozart and Britten and [insert your own favorite here] did (without being brilliant at it right away). So who the heck do I think I am?
But then Gary came back from two weeks in Yaddo with a terrific new draft, and it turns out that you just kind of start. One line at a time. And now and I find myself almost happy (that's good - that's progress) with my sketch of our lead's opening aria, and I might even have a plan for the rest of the scene...
Away we go.
But I love opera too much to say that I'm not still terrified.