But how?

I’ve written about this issue very eloquently before, but I’m going to try to see if I have anything new to say about my lack of musical training. Bear with me.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I didn’t do my regular Wednesday post last week, nor my once-again-regular Fun Friday Resources post. Apologies to all three of you!

You might think that after having actually composed “Waltz for Corbett” I would be on a roll, back in the saddle, overflowing with inspiration and at least determination to knock out a couple more 90-second waltzes for the pianoforte. You might very well think that.

I didn’t, of course. I stalled out, and apparently that stall-out was complete. My brain just kind of shut down, and one of the contributing factors was one of those dreams you have when you’re half-awake, just before waking up, the kind where you know you’re dreaming and have some input/control over the content.

In this dream, I was kvelling over my lack of musical output, and I turned my brain to imagining the kind of music I thought I was capable of inventing. Unbidden, the image came of a firespinner dancing with either sparkle poi or staff, showering sparks everywhere, like this guy:

The bit I'm talking about starts at 2:20, but watch the whole thing; he's good.

The music came unbidden as well: an uprush of orchestral sound, bursting into a gazillion points of scintillating light, inexplicably growing in intensity and falling all about us in an ecstatic burst of beauty.

I could hear it — I was pretty sure I could remember at least the gist of it — but then…

Even before I woke up, I knew that I just don’t have the technical skill to make it real. I know a shinyperfect when I see one — I invented the term, after all — and this gorgeous music was just such a chimera, a siren, even, luring me onto the rocks.

Could I just hammer the thing out, blarting out some ABORTIVE ATTEMPT that sucks at the Lyles Scale of Compositional Agony level of 7, and then chipping and scraping and clawing it bit by bit into something resembling the magic that my brain tried to hand me last week? Maybe.

But to what purpose? This is an honest question. Not all of us are Emily Dickinson, content to leave our work undiscovered. We want an AUDIENCE to experience our work, at least, if not embrace it. And the chances of any orchestral work I ripped from my flesh bit by bit being performed by an appropriate ensemble is so close to be zero as to be statistical static.

Would it be different if I had actual music theory/orchestration/etc training? I think it would. I think I would have leapt from my bed, scribbled a few notes to make sure I could reconstruct what I had heard in my head, and then take my coffee and English muffins upstairs to the study where I would simply knock it out, some kind of Festive Overture.

Same with my Symphony in G, Seven Dreams of Falling, the still-secret suite/symphony thing, not to mention SUN TRUE FIRE or, now, Ten Little Waltzes — if there were an ensemble waiting to perform it, I’d do whatever it took to get it written.

But there’s not, so any shinyperfect that tries to infect my brain is quite out of luck.

I hope your mileage varies. Back to scraping 90-second waltzes for the pianoforte out of my brain…