Jul 23 2010
Mint Conditioner and Musical Kryptonite
Above are a few pages of sketches and notes from the making of Mint Conditioner for double bass and electronics – signed, sealed and delivered (several weeks ago) to exceedingly awesome bassist Logan Coale. True to the title, this piece starts out a tangled ball of knots, and by the end rinses out smooth and silky!
About three-quarters of the way through the work I learned of the illness and impending death of a family member. That news and the events surrounding it stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t bring myself to write a single dot. Apparently grief is my musical Kryptonite.
I know this is probably the case for many people – death and the grief that goes with it is paralyzing for anyone. Although I wasn’t able to write music, and I had very little interest in listening to music, I found that playing the piano – simply noodling about on the keyboard – was very centering. Perhaps the act of playing music freely, without any expectation, censoring or the need to “produce” something, is housed in a different department of the brain?
A good friend asked if I turn to music when life gets rough, and evidently the answer continues to be yes. But when things become really complicated, the musical experience turns in a slightly different direction.
What helps you find your way through challenging life changes and events?
5 responses so far
I think I have a similar reaction to grief as you do, Alex. The last time I went through it, though, I wasn’t really composing but, rather, was in the middle of putting together a program with Great Noise Ensemble, which forced me to plow through and compartmentalize my feelings while in rehearsal. I do find, like you, that the piano is very therapeautic. Or maybe it’s not so much the piano (it just happens to be my instrument) as having it available for musing without the presence of an audience or a group of fellow musicians. The vehicle for private grief is the key there, I think.
I am sorry for your loss, though. Hang in there.
Lovely and moving.
I would say yes; cf., e.g., this article.
In those moments I’ve always found myself turning to music, not listening but playing. And the playing is kind of like you describe; there isn’t any clearly defined ‘piece’ or idea, just a need to make some sound, *any* sound… In the spring of 2005 I was working on a solo piano piece. I was about two-and-a-half minutes in when my mom got the diagnosis of cancer. I stopped there, and for the next two months couldn’t write a note, couldn’t even really process music in my mind. I would sit at the keyboard, but couldn’t find a way to do more than listen blindly to some single chord. It was only after the funeral that a moment suddenly struck, where the piece I had been working on became *her* piece, and the formless playing took on a shape and flow. The recording is here:
http://www.niwo.com/steve/music/xlayton_xpurple_ball_purple_balloonx.mp3
You can hear that up to 2:35 my mom was alive and everything was like it always was; from 2:36 on it’s two months later and my mom is gone, but she is now in every note and thought to the piece’s end.
(The title — My mom’s favorite color was purple. The day of the funeral, at my sister’s house a purple ball appeared on her front yard, that nobody had ever seen before; that afternoon after the service we released purple balloons into the air, and I watched them rise and drift out of sight over the low hills she’d lived on so long.)
Thank you all for your thoughts and links! @Steve, I can definitely hear the balloons in your piece, thank you for sharing your story…
I find myself responding in exactly the opposite manner that you mentioned in your post. Extremely emotional periods for me, whether from joy or sorrow, tend to kick my creative juices into high gear. I think it really depends on the type of person and how they deal with stress.
From my limited understandings of human psychology, people have different ways of handling stress. Some people deal with it straight on and some people try to ignore it by doing other activities. Perhaps the issue you dealing with isn’t so much of a compositional one, but rather, an issue of human psychology. I’ve heard meditation and mindfulness practice can help in these regards.
And, yes, I believe Steve is right in that there is something very powerful and healing about PLAYING music. I’m a terrible pianist but I find that sitting at a piano and banging through the opening of the slow movement from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata is awfully reassuring and clears my mind.
To each their own and best of luck to you and my deepest sympathies.