rain, no snow

ceiling at the met museum
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

All week it has rained. The weather report promised snow last night, but sadly for me, none materialized. I love snow. Cold weather is more worthwhile with snow blowing around. Yesterday was a blur of activity, and I felt like I was getting a cold. But today, so far--although it is still early--I feel fine. Mabel and Tuna were lying with their heads an inch apart, good friends. I hated to disturb them, but I had to get to the shower.

As I was walking to go teach my class (modernism in music) I was thinking about how my work (composing, painting) relates to my education and my teaching. And I realized this: my creativity is my greatest strength. I am not truly analytical. I am reactive. As a student, particularly in graduate school, I was forced by my program to finely tune my analytical capacities (such is the place of music in the intensely academic/intellectual environment of UChicago). I did it well. But once free of that, my reactive brain took over. Not instantaneously; I was far too indoctrinated to make a clean break. But as a composer, I slowly realized that it was time to forget all the theory, the dissection, the necessity to have a rationale for every note I write. And I became more free as an artist, and, I hope, better. I can harness the analytical when I need to, such as when I get "stuck" in a piece and need to find a way to continue. But I find that letting go, embracing the irrational, gives me greater freedom. Interestingly, the music that emerges is never irrational. But that is what music is: it is orderly, it is another world of meaning, with logic and reason of its own. Like this photo.