The last couple weeks have been one really long roller coaster - a couple good days, a couple bad days, lather, rinse, repeat. While we're currently in the middle of a batch of good days that's lasted since Thursday, there are good and bad moments within each day, too. This has all made for some very confused composing - while I'll be the first to admit I'm at my best when I'm emotional, I also tend to get distracted. It's easiest for me to start with a blank score and go where the music leads me - if I try to continue work on a project I've already started, it's really easy to get sidetracked and completely change the colors at work in the piece. I had to scrap entire passages of music last week because my pieces were just sounding bipolar. Seriously - 24 bars of serene, nighttime music, 12 bars of agitated, 20 bars of so happy it's almost hyper... I'm saving the bits and pieces, but it got so bad it was almost comical.
Socially, things are good between my friends and I, and although guys continue to be really confusing, right now I'm not going to complain because I have some of the most awesome people by my side. Academically, things are fine, if a bit hectic (and finally starting to be stressful). Musically, aside from the mood-swing composing, life's good.
When I've been able to hold my mood down as I'm composing, I've gotten some pretty golden stuff. (Okay, maybe not golden, but at least bronze.) Pieces of mine have just exploded into works of art, and I think I finished one today. [By finished, I mean there's a beginning, middle and end, not that it's ready for anyone to play.] That particular piece is something I started on a whim and kept writing because I knew I had something. It's not super long or super complicated, and it's only been part of my life for a couple months, but I'm already as attached to it as I am to Tour de Force or Seven for Brendan or anything else I've written through to the end. I never look forward to finishing a piece and calling it really done - while everything I write stays with me forever, it stops being part of my daily life, my daily routine. I conducted Tour the other day and realized how much I missed it. There's almost (but not quite) a mourning process that happens when you send a piece out into the world. It's halfway between a funeral and sending your kid off to her first day of kindergarten.
Does that make sense? It might not, but if it does, at least I make sense to one of us.
Love you all,
Megan
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