The engine fell out of the cab and it took me a while to fix it, and put it back in. Man, you just can't trust machines anymore! Just when everything seems to be running so smoothly...
I've always found that the only thing as difficult as having no options is having too many. I'm at the base of a mountain and there are no paths. The way up the mountain IS the path, but the trails are too many, the choices limitless. I have no idea where any of them might lead.
People have teased me before about my addiction to metaphor. I was thinking about this the other day when I was in the garden. I realized that even in my attempts to understand why I always gravitate towards metaphors, I was starting to create a metaphor. To me, it's unavoidable. Everything is contained within everything. The workings of a garden seem to explain all that I encounter in this life - as do the rise and fall of seasons, the tides, a sea shell, a grove of trees, a human eye.... They're all just different translations of the same story. There is comfort in metaphor, the comfort of interconnectedness. It's just the only way that I know how to make sense of this life. For nature is and always has been my greatest teacher.
(How do things take root? How do things begin and how do they grow? How do they survive? It all starts with a seed, and the seed needs nourishing.)
My music was spread all over the piano, the floor, my bed, my desk. Heaps of fragments, scores of unfinished attempts, and piles of blank manuscript glaring at me. I realized suddenly that I needed it all to be in one book, where I could flip to and fro various pieces, and have all the fragile new fragments inside the cozy covers of a nice thick album of finished and partly-finished work. So this is what it looks like:
It's a comfort to me to be able to flip through the pages of music that, believe it or not, have come from me, from my mind. I can see that somehow, quite inexplicably, I have produced work, much of it that is of some value I think, and the likelihood is that I will continue to do so. It's heartening. In the last few weeks, I've strayed from my routine. I haven't been practicing, and I haven't had regular time for writing. At least 4 days of my week are spent in the city and I have not had the time or the space (or discipline) to fit any music into them. This is not sustainable - I can feel the erosion that has already begun. But this is just a question of logistics and schedule and discipline, and I'll figure it out. The greater concern, of course, is how to continue to move forward artistically as well as professionally.
My mind says - eeerrrblechhhh! -
I love having a project and a challenge. But it's pretty damn hard to decide on what that next challenge is going to be, and to commit to it. And if I don't decide, and commit, then I drift, and my energies trickle out in all directions, and all of my seedlings get just a tiny bit of very diffuse attention, and none of them flourish. So: I'm going to decide in the next couple days what to focus my energies on in the next while. Rather than having a to-do list that's a page long and completely broad and overwhelming, I've going to choose a few specific items, commit them to this blog, and track my progress. I feel relieved even to have decided that much. The first thing that will be on that list, just as a given, is spending time at the piano every day. And writing something down. Even if I can only squeeze in 15 minutes before I run out the door. I've made this commitment to myself a thousand times in this life, and will probably have to make it another thousand times or more. I make a promise, I break it, I make it again, I break it again.... I go away, I come back, I go away, I come back. This is practice. I may never ever be able to achieve anything more, but I remind myself that the point is not to stay forever on the path but to be able to return to it over and over again. ..
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