I'm still uninspired...

…and I’ll get to that lesson in a moment.

I have hammered away at the Little Waltz ABORTIVE ATTEMPT, adding maybe four more measures of dreck but getting nowhere close to hearing what I want. I started tinkering with eighth-note patterns to expand on that bass “drumming” bit, and it shows promise.

However, it doesn’t sound fresh at all. It sounds like I’m expecting a lady with castanets to show up to dance it — not a bad thing in itself, necessarily, but not the sound I wanted this waltz to have. (You will remember that there will be ten of these things, eventually, and I’d like the suite to have some semblance of order and balance as you go from No. 1 to No. 10.)

So no, there’s nothing really to share. If it suddenly gets better, I’ll share the crappy stuff too, but there’s no point in hammering it home that I don’t actually know what I’m doing until I’ve done it.

There is, however, a lesson embedded in the title to this post: “I’m still uninspired…”

In the book, p. 80 to be exact, I make the comment, “Most of us these days think of artists as tortured souls who simply can’t even until they are inspired, and then they pour out their art in one rushing torrent of beauty and perfection. This is ridiculous. As in, I will ridicule this concept every time I come across it. Art really doesn’t work that way; not even John Keats would tell you that, and he was as tortured as they come.”

So our poor artist is uninspired. Quelle horreur! Whatever is he to do?

He could go for a walk. That’s what Beethoven did (and countless others have done), and if nothing else it may get his cranky doctor off his back about exercising.

He could switch to another project — TASK AVOIDANCE is after all the bedrock Precept of Lichtenbergianism.

He could just wait until inspiration struck.

He could take his uninspired state as a sign that what he really really needed to was just to go back in and start blarting out notes [that’s a technical term] until something starts to form a recognizable shape. It’s kind of like the word puzzle Gisnep, where you have to decipher a famous quote by using the letters dumped into each column:

Is that three-letter word THE or AND? Is there a spot for that ING ending you spotted? Once you’ve sussed who the source is, can you fill in the circled letters? And little by little, words jump out at you, syntax begins to gel…

…and before you know it you’ve solved the puzzle.

The point is that you don’t get solutions from inspiration, and even if your brain gets excited about an idea, remember that it’s 97% likely to be a shinyperfect, and you still have to hammer away at it until it takes shape.

It’s the difference between this…

The “atlas” slave, unfinished sculpture by michelangelo

…and this.

David, by michelangelo

Here endeth the lesson. I’ve got some hammering (or walking) to do. Go thou and do likewise.