2024-07-21: i need quiet

i just finished work on some stuff, was at the post office a few days ago, mailing it off to a couple dozen people. my music has been languishing because i've been heads down in my notation program, actually writing it instead of playing. a very new and weird and intoxicating feeling. and i tell myself this is fine, that as long as i'm working on something, i'm fine. this might've been true at first, but it's turned out to be a bit of a lie. i'm starting to feel that crushing feeling in my chest again: i need to practice, i need to run, i need to write, three things i've worked at a bit the last few months, but which have largely been put on hold while i notate strings and brass and winds.

god. mid-july already. maybe even late? right around the cutoff point, anyway. i've been thinking a bit about how good it'd be to make myself a retreat: rent a cabin at one of the nearby lakes, bring a few groceries and start some coffee and spend a few days finishing up the composition. then get back into writing. other poets seem to go on these regularly (albeit more official ones in banff and st. petes), but i tell myself that i'm the block, i'm the problem. no kids, malachite, so what're you talking about? finish up and switch.

but i've never been a particularly fast worker. i'm slow. i'm a plodder. even in my teens, writing my awful little poems, i'd edit and edit, line by line, paying attention to the syllables and how they sounded and played off each other. those poems weren't good but i think they were as good as i could make them at the time. some people figure things out when they're young, and i've always envied them. that was never me. whatever talent i had, it was only ever enough to keep going, to figure things out by doing over an increasing scale of years. tenacity's not as helpful as talent, but at least it keeps you going when the enthusiasm starts to flag.

it hasn't gotten any better. i'm still slow, this time crawling my way through what's now dozens of musical compositions, learning as i go. i'm proud of these. my partner is astonished. "other composers would kill for your pace." i let that term bounce off me. i don't feel like i can call myself that yet, despite everything i've been able to create so far, which i've been sharing with a few people in the discord, collecting feedback, iterating. & i'm almost done. one last piece, the one that i started and stopped as i worked on the others. here we go, malachite, the exit you wanted. no way out now but through. close this editor and finish.

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