Once more, dear friends, unto the breach...

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It has been a little over 200 days since I last blogged here — thanks for noticing — but I think I am again ready to do whatever this is. (Write? Preach? Annoy? Brag?)

Where have I been? Just laying low, like everyone else. Since the previous post (Jun 22), I’ve traveled to Greece, traveled to Santa Fe and Grand Canyon, had Covid (almost completely asymptomatic — thanks, vaccines!), laid out the theme camp placement map for Alchemy for the last time as Benevolent Placement Overlord™, shepherded March from the Dark Side to its fabulous debut at Alchemy, had minor knee surgery, celebrated the Equinox and the Solstice, had basal cell carcinoma removed from my nose plus reconstructive surgery, celebrated my Lovely First Wife’s retirement, Christmas, and New Years.

A Wilder mann from Alchemy 2023

What have I been doing/creating? Almost nothing. Like many of us, my brain and my spirit simply couldn’t get it in gear to create anything of note (other than, you know, GALAXY/March from the Dark Side/Alchemy).

Of particular concern to me was my composing. I have not written anything since 2018, and for a long while I was thinking that maybe I was done, like Charles Ives when he came down from his study to tell his wife that “the notes are not there any more.” I’ve had Ten Little Waltzes as a Lichtenbergian Proposed Effort for a while, but other than ≈150 measures of ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS [pdf] (rehearsal letters A–S, 19 little pieces of crappy noodling) I’ve been unable to make anything cohere.

Then an odd thing happened: My cello teacher quit. I’ve been playing at cello lessons for four years now and am ambivalent about my progress, so I thought maybe this was a sign just to give up. But the establishment where I took lessons already had another teacher lined up, so I thought, well, I’ll give the new person a try.

After a couple of lessons, Donna stunned me when she claimed that I was “actually very good” at this instrument, which I choose to regard as outrageous flattery since I am nothing of the kind. More importantly, she also praised my compositions after listening to a couple of them and then suggested that a piece for violin and piano would be welcome.

Since part of my musical stasis has been the fact that I couldn’t see the point in torturing myself to create music that would never be played, Donna’s invitation flipped the tiniest little switch inside me, and yesterday I forced myself to follow my own advice: Just create crap.

And so I pulled up Ten Little Waltzes, listened to all of the ABORTIVE STUBS, picked one, and hammered away at finishing it. Since these are all meant to be brief bagatelles, I figured it was an easier way to pick up my pencil than, say, trying to finish Seven Dreams of Falling.

Indeed, I finished it in one sitting plus one additional SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION. (Those who create will understand that the GESTALT of the process happened while I was doing other things, like dining out with my Lovely First Wife.)

So here we are, in 2023, and I’ve written a small waltz, “Waltz G.” (I’m thinking I may just be quirky and keep the rehearsal letters as the title for each waltz, even if I end up putting them in some other order.)

Little Waltz G [pdf]

With great trepidation… I’m back.

Abeyance, or the turning of the tide

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Back in the Before Times, when I was occasionally productive, there would be spells of inertia between projects that I called the turning of the tide, during which my creative energy/attention ebbed and regrouped before coming back up the shore.

This is normal. Most of us are not Anthony Trollope or Pablo Picasso, churning out work after work nonstop our entire lives.* (Of course, they were actually responding to the market for their work; someone was waiting to pay for that next installment of The Last Chronicle of Barset or the latest set of Minotaur lithographs. Hold that thought.)

We joke about TASK AVOIDANCE being the key Precept of Lichtenbergianism, but we all know that to move forward we have to work on something, and that’s where I’m stuck. My mental image for TASK AVOIDANCE is like the Taoist metaphor of water: shapeless, yet all shapes; flowing, seeking exit when blocked; soft and yielding, yet inexorable in its ability reshape its surroundings. When one project is too much to face, or at a point where GESTALT is called for, or for some other reason, my attention simply seeks the next easiest thing like water seeks the lowest point.

Now, however, not one of my rotating list of avoidable projects provides an easy entry. The GALAXY project for the burn? I’m waiting for the engineering team to report back on how we’re going to power 200 rings of EL wire. (Not to mention, the burn itself is not a sure thing.)

The labyrinth refurbishment literally has to wait for warmer weather. The fence art project needs more room for me to measure and cut the fabric panels, and that too requires warmer weather to set up tables outside.

As for Lichtenbergianism for Kids, I grind away getting illustrations finished, but now I’m having thoughts about rewriting it from start to finish because I’m not sure I have hooked the young reader with my scintillating style.

Ugh.

Then I keep coming back to the hard, bare fact that no one is begging me to finish L’ism for Kids. This is not self-pity, just a recognition that I’m lazy in the extreme — if I wanted to finish it badly enough, I would, without an editor/agent/publisher haranguing me.**

Okay, back to work. And I promise not to write another post about not getting the work done, at least for a while.

Return is the movement of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.

All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

— Tao te ching, new English version by Stephen Mitchell

MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT.

* see footnote 18, p. 7

** If any agents/editors/publishers would like to harangue me, I am open to suasion.