Musings Over Music

I have always counted writing to be one of the purest and simplest means of expression available to us. We imagine; we ruminate; we articulate beyond the confines of ourselves. This is, in essence, the breadth of the path a writer walks.

Yet, pure and simple does not quite translate to easy–in my own experience, at any rate. There are moments, as rare as they are glorious, where inspiration strikes and quality work overflows onto the page. If only the stars could align and keep like that; I would have a hundred books published and decorating the shelves!

Though this cannot be and, if you know me at all by now, reader, surely you know why. A fleeting and brilliant splinter of insight remains brilliant precisely because it is fleeting. How can art be art if it is not hard-fought, and how can we keep the fight from becoming so hard that we never move past a blank page?

Whether starting a fresh passage and finding myself daunted by the blank white or returning to one which weighs upon the mind and frustrates without end, I often chart my course by the north star that is music. Melodies and the momentum beneath them prove invaluable in reorienting me. There is something of the infinite to be perceived in a great song, something of the grand order which lies above and beyond us all.

I try to make the most of that freeing moment, of that liberation when half-recognized constraints become lifted and chased away upon a tide of sound and emotion. A wonderfully-bound string of notes, or the particular tremors and trials of an artist’s voice, help to uncover what is missing from my own work and align me with what must be said next. Sometimes I even scramble to exploit it, and with mixed results; I will take a single song which happened to capture my inspiration and play it repeatedly, unceasingly, as I once more hunt that glimmer of the eternal.

And now, reader, I return to the blank beast with music in my ears.

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