Category: 341 poem

Posts about a poem I’m writing as part of the 365 project

Doodling, 1/29/09

Posted on by Dale

Many things to do tonight, starting with this post.

In support of our explorations over at Lacuna Group, Wednesday nights if you’d like to join us, and you really really should, I dragged out the 341 poem, which, if you recall, was the first thing that emerged during the 365 project.

It’s actually not bad stuff, and so I made a decision last night to work seriously on it for a while. I may not keep everyone updated as I did back in the day, but if something good happens you’ll be the first to know. You can read all the posts about the poem as it stands now here.

The first thing I have to do, of course, because I want this to be a thing I can work on diligently, is to give it its own Moleskine notebook. I’ve pulled out a small one from my music drawers and am in the process, as I work on other things during the evening, of painting a cover on it.

This is not exactly the waste book approach, but this is not exactly a waste book process. I can focus my “poem energies” in this one place. Or so goes my theory.

In other news, I have listened to John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons and John’s Book of Alleged Dances in the van for a couple of days now and can report on its status. (This is from the stack of CDs on my desk that I’m trying to whittle down.)

Gnarly Buttons is a little mini-concerto for clarinet and is very appealing in many ways. It has some back story to it, but I didn’t read that until I had already made my decision about the piece.

It’s rhythmically complex, almost excessively so, and scored for an extremely oddball assortment: English horn, bassoon, 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass, banjo/mandolin/guitar, and two sampler/pianos who play all kinds of weird sounds, including at one point a moo. (That’s right, a moo.) However, the orchestration is deft and never uninteresting.

There is even actual emotion in several places. On the whole, I think Gnarly Buttons is a keeper.

I’m still unsure of John’s Book of Alleged Dances, a set of 11 short bits for string quartet and prepared tape. It’s not uninteresting, but after I’ve listened to it I’ve already forgotten it. I’m thinking I will not be adding it to iTunes like Gnarly Buttons.

Next up: Tenebrae, by Don Carlo Gesualdo, actual Renaissance prince of Venosa. Gesualdo felt no compunction to follow anyone’s rules, societal or compositional, and his music is usually described as “lurid.” It is good to be the king.

Day 365

Posted on by Dale

Well, here we are. The end of the experiment. Was I able to be creative every single day for an entire year?

Short answer: of course not, if by creative we mean “producing something new.” Many was the day I had no time, nor the energy, nor the ideas even to commit failure to paper. I knew that going in, needless to say.

At one point in the year I know I expressed envy of those on the web who were doing similar kinds of projects, producing a drawing or watercolor or small oil or photograph every day. I don’t know that I would have overcome my reasons for not producing every day if I had been producing a concrete thing rather than music (my focus for the most part), but it seemed to me at the time that they had an advantage over me. (So why didn’t I just whip out a watercolor those days?)

Would I able to claim that I was creative every day if we don’t mean “producing something new”? Perhaps. As I read Out of Our Minds and skimmed back through some other books like Fearless Creating and Twyla Tharp’s Creative Habit, I was reminded of what I already knew going in, that creativity is not production. It is a process that must include plenty of incubation as well as consumption of material. However, I think I claimed those days.

Mostly what I have found is that I do best when I’m a) on a schedule; and b) on a deadline. If I set aside Sunday mornings and then two evenings a week to compose, then I actually do compose, or at least fail at it. And the days in between, I am thinking about the stuff I’m working on.

The schedule also means I have the time to get in the groove. It takes me about twenty minutes to warm up, so to speak, and to get ideas flowing out of my head. At least that’s the case with composing. Writing, I can do on the fly (witness my dog-walking lyrics) if I’ve set myself a framework. I can spew some music while walking, but it’s all guesswork, since I have not yet achieved my goal of being able to transcribe what’s in my head.

Having learned all of this, I think I’m able now to set up the conditions under which I will be most productive. I may be able to, in the future, modify those conditions, but for now, I know what works for me.

So what did I accomplish this year?

First and foremost, of course, was the completion of William Blake’s Inn. A project that has occupied me off and on for twenty-five years, I was on the last leg of the journey when I started this project: finishing Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way. It took me over a month to do that.

Next it was orchestrating the entire work. (I think I may have started orchestrating some of the pieces in order to distract from Milky Way.) This project is not quite finished, of course. I have not yet officially orchestrated The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives and Blake Tells the Tiger the Tale of the Tailor. They’re quasi-scored using various instrumental sounds in the piano score, but I don’t have actual orchestral scores for them yet. Unless someone in Newnan, GA, steps up to organize the production, my widget says we have 447 days until opening night, those two items will remain on the back burner.

At the same time, I started the “Highway 341” poem. I used that as a fallback item on days when I didn’t/couldn’t compose, but I haven’t worked on it since shortly before finishing Milky Way. I guess at that point the Inn took over. Well, it’s still a pretty good start, and I can return to it in the coming year. I would have to go back and do some deep thinking, of course, because I’ve gotten it to a point where I would actually have to start writing about the feelings that inspired it to begin with. And those were never very clear.

I also began, last August, noodling around on my symphony. Needless to say, I haven’t given that any thought since September either, but that is going to be my major project this fall and winter: Stephen Czarkowski has asked for it for next summer’s orchestra. Not exactly a commission, but hey, a request is as good as, right?

Also accomplished this year: Lacuna’s workshopping of the William Blake pieces. Very nice, lots of fun, and very very creative. I like working this way. I don’t like working without a permanent home: my van looked like one of those crazy people with all their prized possessions stacked inside. For months. But the give and take of the workshop sessions was invigorating. If the world premiere gets a green light, then I truly look forward to developing the entire scenario in this way.

I learned how to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) on websites, and that has been a very good thing.

I adumbrated and fleshed out the 100 Book Club at school. By the end of the year, we were up and running, but not at full speed. I’m looking forward to figuring out how to ramp that up this year. If it works, I will truly have something amazing to share with the educational community: a reading program that challenges our best readers to read thoughtfully and deeply and then to write about their experience.

I wrote The Invocation, which still stands up as valid. In a similar vein, we established the phase successive approximation as our mantra.

I began work on songs for A Day in the Moonlight, sketching out three so far. Once I get school started and am able to establish a schedule for myself, I could finish that by Christmas. Warning: I’m not orchestrating this baby. I’m just providing vocal/piano scores.

I rediscovered my Stars on Snow album of new age music and began to play with some of those files in Logic Express, Apple’s sound sequencer, which I began to learn how to use this summer.

I got inspired and wrote “Dance for double bass duo and marimba” which not only was greeted warmly by everyone concerned but which was premiered at the final GHP concert. I have a recording, but they were playing from the back of Whitehead Auditorium. I’m going to play around with it in Logic and see if I can beef it up a bit.

As a sidelight of “Dance” and the readthrough of Milky Way, I found myself suddenly in demand as a composer. Other than the Symphony, I have two requests for pieces. One of them is a serious request and I’ll work on it this fall. This is a very strange place for me to be in. I’m still sorting through that.

And I made a mug.

Something else got accomplished this year: a very small community of very smart readers helped me out. I’ve been checking out the posts, it’s taking me a very long time to write this, and I come across posts like this one. The post itself is very good, I think, but it’s the comments that blow me away: literate, thoughtful, witty. I like writing for you guys.

Next? I will finish the songs for Day in the Moonlight, and I will write my Symphony No. 1 in G major. That’s enough to be going on with. Of course, if a project coordinator materializes for William Blake’s Inn, then I’ll be back at work on that.

Will I keep blogging? I’m sure I will, although I may not blog every day. We’ll see. Don’t expect anything for a few days, anyway. My study is still unclean from GHP.

Checking back, I noticed that I started this project on August 1. Shouldn’t I have finished on July 31? How did I lose four days? Oh well. I knew that was bound to happen as well.

Day 364

Posted on by Dale

One day to go, but before we get serious, a response to yesterday’s post on copyright and the flux of the Commons, from Jeffrey R. (for “Raline,” we think) Bishop: listen to this. Some of us have way too much time on our hands. As I said yesterday, I’m thrilled that the planet is mashing up William Blake’s Inn. However, if he starts getting rich off of it, I’m going to sue his ass off for an unauthorized derivative work.

Tonight, Kevin McInturff called to chat about a couple of things, but one thing he asked me in particular: do I think that having blogged about my 365 days of creativity has made me more creative?

Yes, I do, actually. It made me more conscious of wasting time, and even though there were plenty of days tagged “not” (39 to be precise, 11% of the year), usually those were days when real life simply left me no time to do any work. The days I actually goofed off were pretty few.

Though my audience was small, you guys were an audience. I was highly aware that you read what I wrote and followed my ups and downs, and that made me determined at least to write every day, whether I had accomplished anything or not. Kevin suggests that those days were often more interesting than the ones where I gloated about my triumphs.

Will I continue doing this? Let’s see tomorrow.

More 341 (Day 37/365)

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I guess Sunday’s editorial inspired me. There’s more:

So what possessed
the Georgia Legislature to suggest

this thing? A hoped-for triumph over time,
this place, this culture, or some other kind
of booster shit? I rather think the latter,
but even this cannot explain the sadder,
nagging feeling creeping up as we
zoom through the landscape. Inescapably,

we’re free in ways that go beyond the fact
that we are on vacation, overpacked
for condos, beaches, meals in brasseries,
regenerative sex. It’s more than these
that sets us on a road that’s so much more
than this deserted High Tech Corridor.

Others doing work (Day 36/365)

Posted on by Dale

You would think that I would have accomplished something on today, the 10% marker, but I didn’t really. I took a stab at adding another line or two to the poem:

What? The image, the idea won’t
clear itself, resolve: these orchards don’t
have anything to do with how we live
in any area but this. I give
my head a little shake. So what possessed
the Georgia Legislature to suggest

this thing? A hoped-for triumph over time,
this place, this culture, or some other kind
of booster shit? I rather think the latter.

But I think that hardly counts. (The next line will probably end with matter, of course.)

In the meantime, I explored some sites that have the same impulse as I, only a little more focused and a lot more successful:

Some are more successful than others, of course. Some are quite nice.

Hwy 341 (Day 34/365)

Posted on by Dale

Those of you who read the Atlanta Journal Constitution might have been amused or intrigued by the big editorial in this morning’s paper on the plight of schools in south-eastern Georgia: “Georgia Strands Its Rural Schools,” by Maureen Downey.

Her hook? “The four-lane highway leading into Hawkinsville in rural Pulaski County boasts an ambitious epithet: ‘Georgia’s High-Tech Corridor.’ But nothing along that stretch of U.S. 341 hints at a budding bastion of technology, unless you count the motorboat on blocks in somebody’s yard.”

We laughed. Apparently Ms. Downey missed the “boiled peanuts” sign.

More poetry (Day 19/365)

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I went back and worked on that missing line in the second stanza:

A trip, vacation time, a deep design
to get away from life. The car is flying
down the state. I’m on 341,
avoiding interstates. We’re free, begun
already, driving green and vacant roads
to gain the ocean, waves, the beach, the coast.

Shooting out of Perry onto shaded
road, pecan orchards on either side,
I see the square, staked sign appear,
a proclamation unexpected here.
It’s almost past me, gone before
I’ve read it: Georgia’s High Tech Corridor.

What? The image, the idea won’t
clear itself, resolve: these orchards don’t
have anything to do with how we live
in any area but this. I give
my head a little shake. So what possessed
the Georgia Legislature to suggest
this thing?

More poetry (Day 17/365)

Posted on by Dale

More work on the 341 poem:

A trip, vacation time, a deep desire
to get away from life. The car is flying
down the state. I’m on 341,
avoiding interstates. We’re free, begun
already, driving green and vacant roads
to gain the ocean, waves, the beach, the coast.

Shooting out of Perry onto shaded
road, pecan orchards on either side,
I see the square, staked sign appear.
– / -/ -/ -/ – here|clear|near
It’s almost past me, gone before
I’ve read it: Georgia’s High Tech Corridor.

What? The image, the idea won’t
clear itself, resolve: these orchards don’t
have anything to do with how we live
in any area but this. I give
my head a little shake. So what possessed
the Georgia Legislature to suggest
this thing?

Further work on the 341 poem (Day 8/365)

Posted on by Dale

A trip, vacation time, a deep desire
to get away from life. The car is flying
down the state. I’m on 341,
avoiding interstates. We’re free, begun
already, driving green and vacant roads
to gain the ocean, waves, the beach, the coast.

Shooting out of Perry onto shaded
road, pecan orchards on either side,
I see the square, staked sign appear.
– / -/ -/ -/ – here|clear|near
It’s almost past me, almost gone before
I’ve read it: Georgia’s High Tech Corridor.

Starting a poem (Day 4/365)

Posted on by Dale

As I wrote my “high tech corridor” piece, even as I was driving through Georgia’s High Tech Corridor (which got that way via House Resolution 1327 in 2001), I mused whether this impression could be expressed in a poem.

Clearly, since I wrote an essay, nothing suggested itself to me naturally, so I’m going to try this the hard way. WARNING: long and pointless post ahead.

Continue reading “Starting a poem (Day 4/365)” →