Some days, I don’t want to be a writer. I’d rather read or knit or sometimes, even clean the bathroom. Writing is hard work, and sometimes, I just don’t wanna. I don’t wanna be disciplined. I don’t wanna struggle over how to word this paragraph or handle the denouement or best present this character so you really get him.
So there it is.
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The other night, I had this dream. I was playing in an orchestra, and we were debuting a new work. The composer orchestrated the piece on Fisher Price and homemade instruments–a toy saxophone, dried spaghetti in plastic canisters, kazoos made of cardboard tubes and wax paper. He appropriated toys with buttons that made sounds not in a random Cage-esque manner but in a way that exactly incorporated the pitches in the development of the theme. The composer had been inspired by Dr. Seuss, and indeed some of the instruments resembled a Whoville concert. The percussion section alone required a dozen musicians.
Yet this piece, with its joy and freedom, was complex. To hear the piece without witnessing the instruments would be to never know the orchestration, so well did the composer manipulate the sounds. He employed fugue and counterpoint, intricate chords and harmonies, development techniques that would shame Mozart. He showed us that it’s not about the Stradivarius or the Steinway but about the joy of music itself.
And I remember why I love writing, why the stories and characters and themes linger when I should be sleeping, why I fight at the blank screen or steal a second to type that sentence before I lose it. It may be a tale that I tell to Keegan, employing Fisher Price instruments to weave complex themes, or it may be a short story on chess, tea, and estranged siblings. Yes, it’s hard work, working these out-of-tune recorders and whistles, unwieldy kazoos, and plastic snare drums so that they make beautiful music, but it’s joyful all the same.
