A musing on AUDIENCE and why it matters

After Peter & the Starcatcher opened a couple of weekends ago we had Sunday night free, so I invited the Lichtenbergians to join me fireside for drinks and chat.  It was also, for me, a time of reflection about What To Do Next.

I know I have to get serious about developing some kind of speaking/workshop career, but what is more basic is deciding on my next artistic move. I have no ideas for another book (other than perhaps Lichtenbergianism for Kids), and after this weekend's premiere of GETTING THROUGH GETTING OVER, I have no compelling reason to compose, either.

But I realized, sitting by the fire and walking the labyrinth, is that what I really want to do is compose.  I don't enjoy composing — I have no real training and it's hard for me.  But nothing else gives me as much satisfaction when I'm done, so here we are.

Here's the big stumbling block for me, though: AUDIENCE.  A couple of years ago I gave up composing unless I was specifically asked to write something for someone who planned to perform it.  My hard drive is littered with music that has never been performed and likely never will be, and at the time I didn't see the point in working so hard to add to that litter.

So the question I'm grappling with now is, "Who is my AUDIENCE?"  Of our three Lichtenbergian options  — those people out there, those people right here, and yourself — it seems pretty likely that I am my own and only audience for my music.  That's not what a composer wants to hear, of course. It's not a comfort to be told, as I was by a fellow Lichtenbergian, that perhaps my music was destined to be like the works of Van Gogh or Dickinson, finding its audience after I'm gone.

I've always joked that my memorial service will be a concert of all my music that you people wouldn't perform while I was alive.  Maybe I should just keep churning out that music so that you all have to sit through a three-day extravaganza.  That'll teach you.

Stay tuned.