"I will grow old and grow apart from all that is dear to me."
Immediately, the phrase had a melody to me. I raced home, flew into the basement, and recorded myself singing some ideas and plunking chords at the piano. It's an a cappella Southern gospel hymn. It has to be.
I will grow old. I will grow old. It's true. This is as young as I'll ever be and I'll not loop back this way again. But all of this awareness of my transience sure doesn't seem to be helping me get this music-making done any faster. Or, at least, not in any helpful way. I just feel anxious.
As of June 1, I am on summer break. Spring projects finished, reports delivered. High fives exchanged. I wanted this. I constructed my whole season in order that it would be interesting and satisfying and then come to a distinct and recognizable END. And for the first time in my entire life, if someone asks me "What are you doing today/this week/this month/this summer" my answer is "Writing music."
That's it. I am composing. I am songwriting.
And now that I am here I have a big fat question to ask anyone who might capably give me an answer: "HOW THE EFF DOES A PERSON GO ABOUT DOING THAT?"
I have never had a composition lesson. In college I took an educational arranging course as part of my music ed degree for which I did a wind symphony arrangement of an Indigo Girls song. (That was a Terrible Idea.) Otherwise, songs have always kind of written themselves at me accidentally. I don't understand where the ideas come from or why they come to me. Many of them are unfinished songs because I get ideas I really like but I lose my way because there are no rules for what to do first, second, and third. There is no doing it right. There are no rules for what to do when you don't know what you want to do next. Or when you want to do something but you don't know how to do it.
I am floundering.
But I have spent a great deal of time around composers over the past few years. And so I take some comfort in having witnessed "Today's Most Important Composers" go through similar aimless flopping and self-doubt when beginning a new piece. I once asked John Adams how a new piece was coming along and he said it was like "feeling your way around in the dark." I saw it with Steve Reich. The frustration when starting a new piece, not knowing where he wanted to go with it. But in both of those cases, I know that they sat down in their studios every day, tried things, trashed them, until one day came a CLICK
At Ojai a few years ago, Steven Mackey said that he finds most composition students don't need a teacher, they need a therapist. In which case I need to look into some kind of amazing musical health insurance.
For now, I will self-medicate with a list of admonitions (rules?) I've gathered from those I've observed:
1. Show up at the studio regardless of how inspired you feel.
2. Don't "listen up" for far away ideas, just "write down" the ones that are already there.
3. Follow the thread. Doesn't matter where it goes, or whether you don't think it's going anywhere, or whether you end up tossing it all in the end. You can't skip steps.
4. Play around with whatever seems musically fun/attractive, even if that means doing something "unproductive" like singing along with Bonnie Raitt for 6 days in a row without writing a single new note.
5. See #3. You can't skip steps. You may end up throwing away the first week of work but you can't write the second week's work until you've written and thrown away the first. (Suck! I want to skip steps! I want to skip steps!!)
6. Study, copy, steal. Listen to and note (study) things that other composers/songwriters have done that you really like. Practice doing those things with your own music.
To those capable and more experienced composers/songwriters who may be reading this, I turn the question to you: HOW IN THE WORLD DOES A PERSON GO ABOUT COMPOSING?
Any words of wisdom for a very late beginner will be much appreciated.
