Make your own schedule

I arrived in Sweden just shy of 4 weeks ago. The first week was, more or less, a wash. I was a little ill when I arrived, probably some bad food while traveling. Then it took me a while to get used to the time change.

But things are finally rolling. I've got all the access stuff now, spent some time in the studio at KMH, and a little time at EMS. Have to make a call today to setup a time for my first interview. And I've been doing all sorts of writing, composing, and listening.

One of the hardest things in this situation is to come up with your own schedule. I've been released into the wild, provided a stipend, and told "do your project however you'd like." There's no school, no specific job, not even the standard freelancer setup, which creates its own (sort of) routine of applying for jobs and living off Ramen, with spurts of extreme activity.

No, I'm just sitting here, now, with no set agenda for the day, just need to call someone back. And the only reason I have to do that is because we arranged this last week, when I called at an arbitrary time.

So, what HAVE I been doing then? How do I get anything done? For those that know me, you probably know I like some semblance of structure and regularity, with enough variances to make life "interesting." When left to my own devices (like over the summer with nothing pressing, just "waiting till I left") I'll play read, play video games, watch videos, TV, or the occasional movie, and use as little energy as possible. When faced with a few months, that can be alright...especially after incredibly hectic schedules before Freelancers and teachers, you know what I'm talking about. Work 9 months at a grueling pace, you need that month or two off to just recharge.

When faced with a year, and a nebulous project and far off deadlines, I had to change my "normal living." It was time to make a schedule.

People have asked me what I do day to day. So, here it is, in all its "glory."

Morning- Read, write, and listen. I often start with blogs and news; mostly music and arts related, with the occasional political bit. I'll write a blog post, or work on the libretto to my opera, or write music...sometimes I flit between them, working for an hour or two on one activity then switching. Other times, one activity encompasses my entire morning/early afternoon. I also do my food shopping in the morning, to avoid crowds.

Afternoon- Lunch, catch up on life stuff, make phone calls/contacts, and switch activities. This is when I usually do laundry, clean up my room, or if I have an errand in the city, head out.  Most of my contacts for my project expressed more availability in the mid-afternoons, so that's when I focus on that stuff. On days when I don't need to do any of that, I switch activities. If I spent the morning reading arts news and blogs, I'll switch to writing music. Or if I wrote on my libretto all morning in silence, I'll pull up my ever increasing list of pieces to study, and listen away, jotting notes. Whatever it is, I try to keep a solid focus on working till at least 5 or 6 every day. Blog posts also usually go live in the afternoon--I usually write them in the morning, save them, and come back and read them before posting.

Evening- No working. Seriously. I'll allow things into early evening--I worked until about 7pm yesterday--but I try to just cut it off. I usually practice my Swedish in the evening using Rosetta Stone. I'll pull out a more leisurely reading material, or something light that "could" be research, but probably not. Right now I'm devouring various folk and fairy tales from around the world, as well as reading Formalize Music by Xennakis and The Soundscape by R. Murray Shafer. The last two aren't really about my "research" and I enjoy them too much to be considered "work." I'll also watch videos/TV, or play video games. If I've been active all day, I'm usually dead by 11pm.

Also, sometimes, I do get sudden spurts to work in the evenings. If they come, I don't fight them, unless it's right after dinner. My mind really does need regular breaks. Most of the work I do when I "power through" something is utter rubbish and I just have to redo it in the morning.

That being said, I have had all sorts of little projects to go with my big project. It's hard to see a goal that's either checked once a year (dissertation) or twice a year (Fulbright). But I've got a commission I need to finish ASAP, just finished mastering a forthcoming jazz album, and, of course, job searching and apps. Yes, jobs are already being posted for next fall.

So, my schedule isn't that formally structured. It's not "MWF from 7-9 read arts news and blogs. 9-10 blog. 11-1 compose. 1 lunch..." and so on. I leave it somewhat loose. But I do force myself to work, listen, and study in the mornings, switch it up in the afternoons, then relax in the evening.

And, if something gets off, like this morning and working, then things get shoved around. I'll work this afternoon for longer. But today was an odd exception--woke up at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep. The level of groggy at 5am after 5 hours of sleep was...insurmountable. I actually laid in bed TRYING to sleep until almost 8. Seriously. I'd lay for 20 minutes, grab my phone and read a blog, try to go back to sleep for 30 minutes, read a political article...ugh.

Also, a few people I've been talking to asked what I've been "studying" during my study time. So, below, in all it's glory, is a list of all the pieces/albums I've been studying, as well as some articles and books. The reading list, btw, doesn't include all the blogs, news, etc that I read. Just the more "academic." And there's a bunch missing, because I'm waiting to reveal my first interview to the entire public...though I'm guessing a fair number of you have heard already.

So, what have I learned? I definitely need this structure, as do many people. But the situation just doesn't warrant complete formal structure. I can't "force" myself to write when I really don't want to...I just get distracted, write half a page, watch a youtube video, read what I wrote and realize it sucks, blah blah blah. But, if I get myself working on something, reading and listening being easier than composing or writing, I can usually get my mind into doing the more creative aspects. When in this situation, it really does behoove you to get into some sort of routine, even if it's flexible and modular (MODULARITY FTW!)

Alan Hovhaness	Symphony 60	Naxos	Orchestral
Aaron Jay Kernis	Symphony of Waves	Naxos	Orchestral
Poul Ruders	Gong	Naxos	Orchestral
Poul Ruders	Zenith	Naxos	Orchestral
Allen Shaw	Piano Sonata 1	DRAM	Piano
Anders Nilsson	Horst	Naxos	Chamber
Anders Nilsson	Ariel	Naxos	String, Oboe, Elec
William Bolcom	Symphony 4	DRAM	Orhcestral
Donald Erb	Rainbow Snake	DRAM	Trombone, Perc
Allan Schindler	Eternal Winter	DRAM	Trombone, Elec
Michael Davis	Mission Red (BAD BAD BAD!!!!)	DRAM	Trombone, Elec
Vinko Globokar	Engel der Gerschichte (The Angel of History): I. Zerfall	Naxos	Orchestral
Donad Erb	and then toward the end	DRAM	Trombone, Elec
Nick Omiccioli	Push/pull	Soundcloud	Chamber
Per Norgard	Symphony 7	Naxos	Orchestral
Per Norgard	Symphony 3	Naxos	Orchestral
Luigi Nono	Lontananza nostalgica utopica future	Naxos	Violin, Elec
Shulamit Ran	Hyperbole	DRAM	Piano
Alvin Lucier	Panorama	DRAM	Trombone, Piano
Alvin Lucier	Wind Shadows	DRAM	Trombone, Oscillator
Donald H. White	Sonata for Trombone and Piano	DRAM	Trombone, Piano
Walter Ross	Concerto for Trombone	DRAM	Trombone, Orchestra
Robert Erickson	Auroras	DRAM	Orchestral
Ellen Taafe Zwilich	Symphony No. 1	DRAM	Orchestral
Anders Nordentoft	On This Planet	Naxos Video	Opera
Joan Tower	Tres Lent	DRAM	Cello, Piano
Ellen Taafe Zwilich	Symphony No. 2	Naxos	Orchestral
Joan Tower	DNA	Naxos	Percussion
Gunther Schuller	Fantasia (or Fantasy)	DRAM	Cello
Opeth	Heritage (full album)	Owned	Metal
Sergei Prokofiev	Symphony 3	Naxos	Orchestral
John Adams	On the Transmigration of Soulds	Naxos	Choral
James Tenney	Spectrum 1	Naxos	Chamber
Lejaren Hiller	String Quartet No. 6	DRAM	String Quartet
Lejaren Hiller	Computer Cantata	DRAM	Chamber, Voice, Electronics
Lejaren Hiller	Portfolio for Diverse Performers	DRAM	Chamber, Voice, Electronics
Iannis Xenakis	Tracees	Naxos	Orchestral
Iannis Xenakis	Noomena	Naxos	Orchestral
Krux	Krux II	Youtube	Doom Metal
Children of Bodom	Something Wild (full album)	Youtube	Doom Metal
George Walker	Foil for Orchestra	DRAM	Orchestral
George Walker	Variations for Orchestra	DRAM	Orchestral
Jim Mobberley	Arena	DRAM	Orchestral
In Flames	Various	Youtube	Metal
Candalmass	Various	Youtube	Metal
Entombed	Left Hand Path	Owned	Metal

Tony Kushner	Angels in America Pt. 2: Perestroika	Owned	Play
David Ryan and Helmutt Lachenmann	Composer in Interview: Helmutt Lachenmann	JStor	Article, Interview
R. Murray Schafer	The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World	Owned	Book
Iannis Xenakis	Formalized Music	EMS	Book
Fred Lerdahl	Interview on composerconversations.com	Composerconversations.com	Podcast

A winding creative journey.

I've always written...

When I was young, ten or eleven, I used to write stories. They always had grand proportions. Everything was the start of a trilogy. I was young, so these grand plans always fell apart after ten or fifteen handwritten pages, wide-ruled, of course.

I also used to write songs. Arbitrary little ditties, using the keyboard my parents got me. I'd record a line, play it back and play another line on top. And sing some nonsensical lyrics. Can't remember many, but at least one was about being a hobbit. These were recorded on cassette and rarely played.

When I hit middle school and high school, I kept writing those long stories. Grand plans. Outlines started popping out. I read voraciously, learning from fantasy authors, and the occasional sci-fi author. Dialogue was clunky. Oh so clunky. Descriptions were interesting, but I had no concept of how to have characters interact. It always felt so...fake.

My musical writing was much the same way. I had progressed to occasionally writing things down. I did some arrangements and reharmonizations. Most of the work was...subpar. But I had a strong grasp of theory, so most things were coherent.

Poetry...oh poetry. I had no grasp of the rhythm of poetry. I could tell you about dactyls and alexandrine verse. The knowledge was there, but the feeling was all wrong. It was mixed with music. Long and short, stressed and unstressed...I could pat my leg in rhythm, count stresses based on an arbitrary tempo. When I wrote, my brain worked the same way. The verses wouldn't work without specific setting. They were all "free" even when I tried to write a sonate in iambic pentameter. This all popped up in high school, presumably because I liked the cavalier poets and Shakespeare.

I had one arrangement played in high school, "American Pie" by John McLean. Somewhere, I have a recording of it. No idea about orchestration. Only basic ideas of arranging. It was atrocious. But I was learning. Hearing it played, I knew it was bad.

College hits. Writing became an regular effort, but not creatively. Research, research, research. Learn MLA, Turabian, in-text, footnote, endnote, grammar grammar grammar. I nearly failed my first paper in college. The idea of writing a novel left. Short-stories never manifested. Poetry was a 2am distraction, often in the summer when I wasn't writing papers. Paper topics were often lame, unoriginal, too often biographies or just descriptions. Wasn't until my senior year I tried to get interesting, inventive. Comparisons of orchestrational methods, Biblicism and mysticism in the Quartet for the End of Time. But it was still rehashing ideas--there were volumes published on it. I wasn't saying anything original.

The music I wrote in undergrad was better. The first that was really something was theory driven. There was counterpoint, mostly canonic. It followed a set progression, moving steadily through the work. ABA form, same texture throughout. It was definitely coherent, the theme and general idea interesting enough. It's been performed three times now. Later, I worked with Carlos Carrillo. I wrote a trombone and piano piece that was more free. Roughly sonata form, more adventurous in all ways. Not a bad piece, for a young student. An early string quartet movement I still toute as being the greatest work in the literature because "You can start and stop at any point and it'll work!" A single piece for mixed chamber ensemble that I'd still like to hear played at some point. And a piece for trombone and string orchestra that I toured. The orchestra director felt bad--he programmed a Haydn symphony as the big piece; no trombone part. So, Carlos and I convinced Geno to let me write something short. It's not a bad piece, I was trying hard...and learning, always learning.

I headed off for a masters (eventually). My writing got better, but not after being ripped apart and put back together. Academic, always academic. But I hated the style of prose, so I said screw it, took my own tone. The teachers found it refreshing in one sense, but it needed tightened. The pendulum swung again, too far...academic-ese starting creeping in again. Still, always struggling with how little I knew of writing. The poetry was mostly gone now...hard to read Bukowski and think "yeah, my poetry is alright." I quit because I sucked, and I had no time to possibly get better...especially by fumbling in the dark. Research was all I knew of writing.

Music...I wrote a great deal. And I got better. Much better. It's amazing what guidance can do. The questions, the realizations. Sometimes theory and system driven, other times "intuitive." There were notated and improvisational pieces. A text piece made a scene. An "interactive" piece involving a video, arbitrarily triggered sound files, and poetry by Jack Kerouac got a good review. And an opera. Oh, the opera...

I didn't write the words of the opera. Well, not expressly. I worked on the libretto. Painstakingly. It was passed between myself and the original writer, Eileen Wiedbrauk. It was forced into a shape, turning thoughts into dialogue, descriptions into scenery, words into action. I learned a lot...and didn't think I destroyed the original which had captured my imagination so well.

Doctorate. Oh Doctorate. My academic prose was called "too academic." But when shown to others they said "No, it's very easy to read and colloquial." I was confused. Editing...editing was my bane. I realized it always had been. It was like having my ideas slain before me, their blood spilling across the page with every mark. But I had to learn, and with help, it got better. A paper was picked up for a conference...I presented and then published my first academic paper. It's been presented two more times now. And it hurts every time because I still see problems staring me in the face, taunting me.

I churned pieces out, was getting some performances. People thought some of the music was neat, started getting repeat performances. It seemed insane to me, having pieces picked up for festivals. I had to travel a bit. And I got better, more fluid. Orchestration became the primary focus, timbres swirling...themes, development, form, anyone could do that. But the whole, the entire sound, was all me. Old and new structures intermingled--isorhythm with nested time domains, scales with spectralism, traditional notation with graphic scores. Everything mingled.

Playwriting. I wanted to do another opera. Or a few operas. Dramatic works. Bigger, better, more coherent. I took the class not to become a writer, but to become a better composer. If I could finally start to understand how it was put together. We talked about many things--conflict, stakes, offstage urgency, dialogue creating action, strong and clear ideas, subtext, onstage discoveries. I wrote...But more than anything, I edited. I edited as I wrote. My writing got better, forced into a workshop as a non-writer, around people finishing degrees or entering in with more experience. One play has gone through eight edits. It's almsot right...It's been performed, and I'm editing it again. Something I've never done with a paper...and something I've never done with music.

An opera. I wrote the words this time. The music was somewhat formulaic, somewhat intuitive. There was subtext, not just in the words, but in the music. No quotation, but allusions, recognizable styles and ideas. The story had conflict, and so did the music...at times it was edgy, at other times as stereotypical as it could be. You could hear Schubert lied, Mozart and Verdi, jazz, even a bit of Ferneyhough, though only the smallest portion. And where was I? In every sound, altering it, letting through only what I wanted to come through...

It's been quite a journey, but I'm finding my creative home. Dialogue wasn't really the issue, it was the strength. The medium was the issue--I knew what the characters wanted to say, but I couldn't have them say it the way I wanted in strict prose. But in a play, I can. It's about the characters, a scene, nested themes, plots, and actions. Meaning everywhere, sometimes where you least expect it. A language I can speak.

My music follows the same course. I'm finally finding that language, the mix of everything, where I fit in.

And I still dream big...big projects, big ideas. But now, maybe, after years of preparation, I may finally be ready.

The full length opera is coming to the world soon. But there's still much work to be done

When did i start blogging about theater...

About the time I get sent blogs like this.

over at Bitter Gertrude a little post has gone viral: A Common Problem I See In Plays by Women Playwrights. It's Not What You Think.

And it really wasn't what I was expecting to read. Reactive female characters, women who were central characters but...not. And the parallel between reality. It's true. And in thinking through my catalogue of TV and Movie characters (which is far more exhaustive than Plays), I can see the trend throughout, notice immediately why certain female characters grabbed my attention. It's a great post, and one worth reading.

But, for me, it was the last little bit that got me.

"(PS to the men out there writing strong, compelling, active roles for women: Thank you. The women actors of the world also thank you. Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have the right to write stories for women because you don’t have “authenticity.” Jesus Timberlake Christ, do they really want there to be FEWER roles for women?)"

Once upon a time I did a little post talking about how I was somewhat timid to write female roles. The main recap is that I felt like I couldn't capture the essence of a strong female character. And, now I see at least one problem in some of the dialogue I've written for women. In attempting to make it seem "real," I've more or less created female characters that were amalgamations of women I know. They're never one particular person, a little bit from Friend A, a little from Friend B, etc. But, in doing so, I was watering down each person's attitude.

And making them more reactive than they should be.

So, I've still got quite a bit of work to do. I'm, at best, a novice writer in so many ways. But at least now I've been told, in writing, to get over the "authenticity" bit. Back to sketching a strong, less reactive, more central character for this opera