Cras melior est
/
I try to write a post for this blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. (I am not as bold as Austin Kleon, who challenges himself to blog every day.) As you may have noticed, I failed to do yesterday’s post.
It was for a very good reason: I had nothing to write about. Lichtenbergianism for Kids is still in transcription phase from WASTE BOOKS. The art project SIT/THINK is waiting for my electronics specialist to do his thing. Alchemy, the fall burn, is only in its nascent phase. (I just opened the applications for hosting public squares today; actual placement doesn’t open for another month.) It’s been too rainy to work in the labyrinth.
I could write about the dry spell, but writing about not having anything to write about is cheesy, and besides I’ve already done that. And others have done it better.
When I still had nothing to write about this morning, it was time for desperate measures. I opened the ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS file of Ten Little Waltzes, reviewed the eighteen ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS—when did I write eighteen waltz fragments??—and forced myself to pick one that seemed amenable to being worked on.
The reason I know I have eighteen fragments is that to keep my place as I scrolled to and fro, I inserted rehearsal letters at the start of each one. Once I got past [M], I began to freak out a bit. When I ended up at [R], I was a little impressed with myself. Surely one of these pieces of crap was worth working on?
More than a couple are worth a revisit, actually, so I picked segment [N], opened a new file, copy/pasted [N] into it, and then spent about an hour trying to extend it into a minute’s worth of music. (There was also some time devoted to thinking about which—if any—of the fragments would be a good opener to the suite.)
I didn’t get very far. I got one more phrase out of it, and it doesn’t work. But at least I nudged it a little through SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION. Who knows, this could even be the start of getting it all done.
