For me, just like for many other homeowners, summer is a time for doing renovations, particularly outside. This summer, I’m working on a substantial section of the house wall, changing out both the siding as well as the inner structure where it has suffered from the elements.
Fortunately, I have good friends to help me so I won’t have to do it all by myself. And where my own knowledge and experience ends – which doesn’t take long, in this case – I am blessed to have more experienced friends who can help me work out a plan, make sure I buy everything I need, that I don’t get the wrong types of nails or screws, things like that.
Now, I am a reasonably clever person, if I may say so myself, but when you haven’t done something like this before it is hard to visualise it. As for my friends, they find it equally hard to understand how I can compose a piece of music and write down the score, but to me that’s just like a second language.
This is actually something I have thought about often over the years, whenever someone speaks enthusiastically about how they could never do what I do, how making music is such an amazing, almost magical concept to them. Truly, though, watching anyone who is really skilled at their craft is similarly amazing to me. This might seem like a stupid example, but I had a similar experience when a plumber installed a new toilet at my house. She was so deft and clearly very experienced that I felt a kind of wonder and admiration, watching her work.
Also, whenever I have worked with the carpenter whom I bought this house from back in 2019, all of his hard-earned experience and skill from decades of work and a sharp, inquisitive mind is truly inspiring. I have learned a lot from him and still do, whenever he has the time to help me out.
Music composition is solitary work. Most of the time, I don’t mind that, but working with others – like Tora, my librettist with whom I made the short story opera The Loving Mother – can also be very rewarding.
Speaking of which, I am actually working on some new music this summer, as well, for the brilliant Trio Nastela: a piano trio, but with oboe and bassoon instead of violin and violoncello. We are trying to fund a larger project that would involve me and another composer writing music for them, but they wanted me to write something for them in the meantime as well. I am quite satisfied with the ideas I’ve got for the piece and look forward to showing off more info about it here on the blog in the future.
This week, though, I will focus on painting window casing and wall cladding, and mowing the lawn. (My brain will continue to compose regardless, whether I want to or not!)
