Longing to Do Something... Anything

Just this week, we signed the papers to lease our house in Houston.  It's an immense load off of my mind, since it had become frustrating to pay a mortgage on a house we weren't living in.  The place had been on the lease market for just a few weeks, but it was on the sale market since January.  So for the past few months, we have just been waiting, and even though we had a real estate agent, she really didn't give us many suggestions to get the house to sell. Sometimes, I wished for some assignment or recommendation for action, even if it ultimately only served to keep me busy doing something.  Sitting around and waiting with nothing to do felt a bit helpless.

I'm sure there are a lot of people in the same position right now, the housing market being what it is.  Since I'm the kind of person who likes to stay busy, I wanted to know what I could do to improve the chances of the house selling.  What color should I paint the walls?  Should we replace the windows?  What kind of flowers should we plant out front?  Do we need to pressure wash the brick?  Will replacing the carpet make a difference?  Should we stage the house in a particular way?  It ultimately wouldn't have mattered what I was doing exactly, I just wanted to feel like I was doing something to contribute to the house selling.  Maybe one new task every month or something.  Enough for me to have a clear sense of action, plus a little breathing room in between to evaluate if it made a difference.

If it doesn't already exist, it seems to me that there is a great career opportunity for a specialist who crunches the numbers and determines what malleable features are consistent among a high percentage of homes that are bought in a particular geographic area.  The color of the walls, the texture of the carpet, the size of the oven, the type of flowers by the front door.  Sure, a lot of those things can be changed by a new owner, but I know from personal experience that if I decide I can live with something until I have a little extra time and money to fix it, it could be a long time before I have a little extra money and time.  There's a big advantage to having something meet my specifications right out of the gate.

Now, I'm not suggesting that any of the little cosmetic changes I could have made would really have had any impact on whether the house sold or not.  I'm simply saying that a big part of me wanted to have something to do.  I wanted to feel like I was moving toward the goal of selling the house, and sitting back and doing nothing didn't feel like movement at all.  Our real estate agent was trying to save us unnecessary hassle and expense, weighing how much of an impact various factors would have based on a wealth of experience.  I'm grateful for the honest and conscientious feedback about how little control I had in the situation, even though I didn't like it.

Even though I don't consider myself to be a control freak, it still bugs me when I am in a position of just waiting with nothing to do.  Sometimes, though, there really isn't anything meaningful to be done.  Our busyness simply serves the same purpose as blowing on a hot spoonful of food: It doesn't really change the temperature of the food, but it gives us something to do for a moment or two while the food cools off naturally.  If we didn't take that moment of ineffectual activity, we might burn our tongues a lot more often.  I think the trick for me is to honestly recognize the actual value (or lack of value) of my activity and weigh whether that time and effort could be more enjoyably spent doing something else.  I suppose there really is no harm in spending my waiting time in fruitless activity, provided I'm clear that I'm really just keeping myself entertained.

The Price of Cognitive Dissonance

I am reading Robert Burton's On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, and like many authors who write on similar topics, he discusses cognitive dissonance: the unsettling phenomenon of adhering to two conflicting beliefs at the same time.  In a strange bit of synchronicity, I received some practical advice from another composer this week about pricing music composed for advertising.  He has done quite a bit more negotiating than I in this arena, and he has worked out a system which makes a great deal of sense.  There was one bit that he said that completely floored me, however: "Basically, just figure out the rock-bottom dollar amount you need from the project and start the negotiations at ten times that."

Cognitive dissonance sets in for me because I am confident that he knows what he's talking about, and yet I have concerns about pricing myself out of a project.  The underlying belief is that my time or my abilities aren't worth that much to other people.  It isn't that I think my time or talent isn't valuable -- although I'll freely admit that my mind can slip back to that paraphrasing rather easily.  When I dig down into it, it's the belief that other people don't see the value of what I have to offer, and therefore I can't possibly start off negotiations by asking for ten times what I absolutely need to make.  Three times that figure, maybe.  Any more than that just flies in the face of what I think about other people's ability or willingness to value... well, me.

I know that negotiations for a commercial project are different from collaboration with a music non-profit or a specific chamber ensemble, but in the more "artistic" arenas, I am even more likely to sell myself short because of my beliefs about non-profits and musicians and money.  The key part of my fellow composer's advice, though, is to start negotiations at ten times what I absolutely must make to undertake the project.  That also implies a willingness to come down as far as what I determine to be rock-bottom.  If I start at rock-bottom, I have no room to negotiate, and I won't be giving anyone a chance to see greater value in what I have to offer.

If I never challenge my beliefs about what value other people are capable or willing to see, they are not likely to change. But having a concrete dollar figure as a starting point for negotiation gives me a framework to experiment with my beliefs, which is in my opinion, a healthy way to confront cognitive dissonance.  If I believe two conflicting ideas, I could just choose one arbitrarily.  I could just live with the mental discomfort.  I could develop other beliefs to make sense out of the dissonance.  Confronting the competing beliefs head-on has the potential to lead to a stronger conviction in one direction or the other, and the best way I know to confront the beliefs is to test them where it's possible to do so.  Spiritual beliefs are somewhat immune to testing, but beliefs about negotiating a price for a project (and many other beliefs about myself and other people) are quite easily tested.

So, basing my numbers on a formula that has been tried and tested by a reliable source, I can determine the absolute minimum amount of money I need to receive in order to make a project worthwhile, and I can resolve not to allow negotiations to dip below that absolute minimum amount.  Multiplying that figure by ten gives me the starting point for my end of the negotiations, combined with the time-frame I believe I'll need to complete the work.  From there, the experiment will play out, hopefully over a series of projects, and I'll have a set of clear empirical data against which I can measure my beliefs about what my work is worth.  I can formulate hypotheses ahead of time, but the strong beliefs I have are hypotheses in and of themselves.  Ten times what I absolutely must make still seems exorbitant, and yet a part of me knows that it's an appropriate place to start.  The most challenging part may be to set aside the cognitive dissonance for awhile and allow my beliefs to be effectively tested.  The reward is a sense of personal value based on actual experience rather than whatever I invent inside my own head.  In other words, the high stakes are worth the challenge. 

The Sacredness of It All

I had the opportunity to view the movie Howl, referring to Allen Ginsberg's poem of the same name.  The film is really three themes woven into one tapestry: the story of the obscenity trial focused on the publication of the poem, biographical information about Ginsberg (taken mostly from an interview with the poet) which serves to elucidate much of the personal references in the poem, and the poem itself, set to animation inspired by Illuminated Poems, a collaboration between Ginsberg and Eric Drooker.  It had been some time since I had read or heard the poem Howl, but what struck me once again was the final section of the poem, which the author actually called Footnote to Howl. 

One word dominates Footnote, and that word is 'Holy'.  Perhaps Ginsberg was being a bit absurd or provocative in the specific things he dubbed 'holy', but the overall theme that comes across to me is that everything is sacred and nothing is excluded from having innate worth.  It is a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.  Certainly, different things have different value, and different people will value some things more than other things.  Beyond personal preference, though, beyond opinions and market analysis, I feel a sense of grounded calmness when it sinks in that everything in nature, and every person, and everything that every person creates, has an intrinsic quality of holiness.


My bachelor's degree was specifically focused on "sacred music".  As a pianist, I spent a great deal of time practicing, just like any other classically trained musician, but I also spent concentrated time studying "the use of music in sacred settings" and "music intended for worship, specifically in a Christian tradition."  It is remarkable that it was never driven home to me how sacred all music is.  That it is music is enough.  I suppose more accurately, that it is is enough for it to be sacred on some level.



On my senior piano recital, I programmed a piece by John Cage called Water Music.  There was some piano playing involved, but it also included the sounds of water being poured into containers of varying sizes, and a radio -- sometimes on an actual station, sometimes sitting on the static between stations.  At one moment, the only sound was that of the radio, which was playing some kind of instrumental electronic dance tune as we all sat and listened within the context of this unique performance of Cage's piece.  Then, a voice in the midst of the electronic sounds came across the radio and into our focused listening in that recital hall.  It said, "Do it ... Do it doggie style."

And then the piece continued with me dealing cards into the piano or whatever part of the piece came next, but that moment was profound.  There was laughter and perhaps embarrassment, our high brow artistic expectations challenged by something that bordered on vulgar, which was perhaps perfectly in line with what Cage would have relished.  Yet holy.  On some level, sacred.  I didn't necessarily think so at the time.  Nor did one of my professors, who thought that it made something of a mockery of the college recital environment.  My perspective has evolved since that time.

Over the past year, I have spent innumerable hours pondering what music I should be writing.  What will get played?  What will excite a performer?  What will fit what a film producer or advertiser is looking for?  What will compel people to listen?  As if the approval of a certain number of listeners was actually the goal.  One of the most inspiring aspects of our upcoming relocation is that it gives my mind a bit of a reset.  I really want to write music that is inspiring to me, music that expresses something compelling to me, music that is personally satisfying.  In the act of creating, I am engaging in divine work in a very human way.  And whatever I create will be worth my creating.  On some level, sacred.  Intrinsically holy.  Like you and me.

A Terrifying Acknowledgment

When I was teaching college courses a couple of years ago, students would occasionally ask how long they were required to wait if I wasn't around at the start of class. The policy (anecdotal at least) was that students should wait 15 minutes for a professor with a Master's degree and the entire class time for a doctor. Since I had earned my terminal degree, I advised them to wait for me unless I had officially canceled class. This policy seemed unfair to some of them, perhaps even like a sort of forced respect, but it never really came into play. I was almost always early to classes I was teaching.

In fact, I am almost always early to everything. I suppose I have thought of it as polite or even respectful not to make people wait for me. I certainly waited for a few professors in graduate school, but only on a rare instance did it seem to be an inordinate amount of time. With regard to my own classes, I considered it a matter of respect to the students to start on time. I wanted to cover a lot of material, and I wanted to take advantage of every moment I had to convey that material. But I wondered recently if my sense of self-worth hasn't at some point crept in to the practice of being early, or at the very least, on time. Was I really worth waiting for? Do I arrive early because I believe I may not be worth the wait in other people's eyes?

Saturday, I accompanied about 50 young musicians in a solo and ensemble contest. In the morning, I played for students from one school's band program, and in the afternoon, I was with students from a different school's orchestra program. Plans had been made in advance to ensure I would have about an hour to get lunch in between, and I had the schedules in hand a few days ahead of time. I rehearsed with each of the students twice over the previous two weeks, so we were well-prepared on that front as well.

The judges took a little more than the allotted time with each student, which is par for the course at these events. Many of the pieces selected by the students (or their teachers) were longer than the actual time slot, and the judges typically want to give some valuable verbal feedback to students in the moment. What I didn't expect was that we would be almost an hour behind schedule by lunch time. I had ten minutes to scarf something down and get to another part of the building where the orchestra students were being judged.

Except that the orchestra students weren't in another part of the building. They were at another facility entirely, about 15 minutes away. I learned this at precisely 1:00, when I was supposed to be accompanying the first student of the afternoon. A director offered to make a phone call to the other school as I rushed out to the car and spent 20 minutes in heavy traffic mentally deriding myself. I had simply assumed that both groups of students would be in the same place. I may have heard differently at some point, but I didn't have anything written down. Now, I was holding up an entire afternoon that had been carefully scheduled because of that assumption.

I arrived at the site where the orchestra students (and parents and judges) were waiting and parked as close as I could to the front door. As I rushed up to the door, I saw a sign that directed contest participants around to the side of the building. My mind was going crazy with criticism and my heart was pounding. All of the personnel for the contest and the families of every student I was accompanying were being inconvenienced by my error. By the time I found where I was supposed to be, I was easily half an hour late. I exchanged a few words of explanation with the orchestra teacher, and I went in with the first soloist of the afternoon. And that was it. They waited for me, and once I arrived, things got back in motion.

While I don't want to become less intentional about when I arrive or how I prepare for events, the whole experience has given me an opportunity to acknowledge the value that others place on my presence. I want to be more conscientious about the details for future events, especially if there is limited time between commitments. But I also want to appreciate the respect I receive from others. When it comes down to it, I waited on my professors because I valued what they had to say. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't have shown up to class in the first place. What I have to contribute has value, too. And I'm more likely to bring myself fully forward when I recognize that.

Complexity and Value

Every year, a panel of individuals updates and revises a list of music for American middle and high school solo and ensemble competitions. There are actually several different organizations that oversee these contests, but the process is the same. Their selections comprise a long list of pieces considered to be "standard repertoire" and of appropriate brevity to fit in the contest schedule, which means that sometimes only one movement of a longer work winds up on the list. And each piece is rated by its complexity on a five-point scale.

There is a distinct difference between a "Grade 1" piece and a "Grade 5" piece, but judges in these contests are really judging how well a student plays whatever piece they have selected. Musicians that want to progress to a state-level competition usually have to play a piece of a certain complexity from memory, and they have to play it well. But a student can receive high marks for performing a piece that is appropriate for their level of experience, even if it isn't one of the most difficult pieces on the list. As an accompanist, I am playing for some talented students who have worked hard and play challenging pieces very, very well. I have also been rehearsing well-prepared "easy" pieces that are more musically compelling and enjoyable than some thrown together "difficult" pieces, and I have realized something about how I hold my own music.

Certainly, there are many pieces that are off the chart for what a high school musician is expected to be able to play well. In fact, there aren't very many serial or avant-garde pieces on the contest lists I've seen, and with good reason. Most high-schoolers don't have the experience with their instrument or with music theory to play such pieces convincingly. Or even musically. And yet I have been accompanying some beautiful, fun, and exciting pieces of music. Somewhere along the line, I got it into my head that "more difficult" equates with "better," and that belief had some deep roots.

Perhaps it comes from a desire to be taken seriously as a composer, or even a healthy appreciation for overcoming a challenge, but the thought that difficulty and worthiness run in proportion with one another has been something of a prison that I trapped my creative energies inside. Virtuosity has its place, but so does simplicity. I often criticize my musical ideas as unimpressive, when the sound would otherwise be ideal for what I want to express. Judging the value of my creative expression by how difficult it will be for a performer to reproduce... well, even writing it out in those terms seems silly.

Some of the most profound and compelling ideas have been simple ideas. In fact, I find immense humor in Rube Goldberg contrivances that accomplish the most mundane tasks in the most complicated ways possible. Many of the musical innovations of the 20th Century were not necessarily born out of interest in accessibility or beauty, but rather to form an intellectual argument about the future of art music. It was an aesthetic choice toward the complex, with a clear understanding that such music was not being written for the masses. Whether I enjoyed or criticized individual pieces, learning about and becoming intimately familiar with so much of that "intellectual" music likely had an impact on my beliefs about musical value.

That doesn't have to determine what I do from here on, however. I honestly want to compose music that expresses something beyond how hard a performer had to work. Whether the ideal sounds for what I am creating in a particular piece are "easy" or "complicated" is actually low on my list of conscious musical priorities. So, I am ready to stop limiting the possibilities of what I can create based on its complexity and start allowing for the full breadth of my ideas to take shape, no matter how simple they may seem.