What's stopping you?
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fred’s party, 2015
I was casting about for a topic for today’s blog post, and it occurred to me that I could shamelessly self-promote my music for A Christmas Carol. However, when I double-checked to see what else I had written about the show, I discovered that I’ve been shamelessly self-promoting this work like clockwork, every two years. (here, here, and here)
And so — even though I’d be on schedule if I wrote about it again — I will take a different tack: Instead of promoting the show itself, I want to showcase one piece in order to Prove A Point.
This is the overture. Give it a listen. (It’s only two minutes long.)
You hear the “Christmas Waltz,” “20 Questions,” “A Reason for Laughter,” and finally, “People Like Us.” I was sometimes asked why half the overture is such an obviously creepy bit, and my answer was always, “Well, it’s a ghost story, isn’t it? It’s not happy until the end, is it?”
To my Point: This is a great little overture. It has catchy melodies, inventive orchestration, deft transitions, and a boffo ending. If you were not a devoted reader of this blog and the book, you might very well assume that someone with a solid music education, maybe even conservatory training, composed it.
And of course that is nowhere close to the truth. I’ve been a musician all my life, but I’ve never had a single music theory or composition class. I compose just because I want to, not because I’ve been trained to.
That’s my point: JUST DO IT. “But what if it sucks?” Sure, it might. I have in my time witnessed some spectacular bits of what the Lichtenbergian Society calls Corroborative Evidence, creative works the creators of which would have been well advised either to keep working before releasing them to an AUDIENCE or to keep it to themselves altogether.
But who cares? The person who self-publishes their bad poetry has written poetry. The guy with the guitar singing a crappy song he wrote has written a song. The women who carefully sip their wine and copy the art instructor’s formulaic painting instructions have painted a painting.
As I say in the book, “If you are like me — and like most of the people I’ve worked with over the past decades — the only thing stopping you from accomplishing your work is the fear that it’s not going to be perfect. Lichtenbergianism shows you that it’s not going to be perfect, and that’s okay.” (p. 122)
Go: MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT!
If your theatre would like to look at the show, let me know. I’ll send you a pdf of the script, and the scores are over at my other blog. Frankly, I wouldn’t even charge royalties.
