Wallitner Weekly 11
Hello everyone!
A lot of productive things happened this past week.
I am finally done with my virtual ensemble work! I of course will still have the occasional project, but summer vacation has begun! This means I will be able to sit on the porch and work on my sunburn and not worry so much about an impending deadline.
I will be relaxing for the next few months and focusing on my theory curriculum as well as my poetry book!
I have a lot planned for next week too!
I have a meeting planned to chat with a few friends. One of which is my friend who writes short stories. We may even end up recording these little chats that we have so that others can be entertained by our existential crises. I have found that some of the best wisdom is shared among friends in conversations like these, especially when certain beverages are involved.
I procrastinate for a good reason.
I have started watching Game of Thrones again. I watched the first five or six seasons and then got too busy to continue. I don’t like to leave a series unfinished, especially one that is complete and streamable. So I picked up in season five and am now well into season six. I know that I have seen these episodes before, but the show is complex and it has been some time since I have seen it. So I need the refresher.
Yesterday I witnessed a scene where a man was telling a story to a queen. The man had once been a cobbler. He made the finest shoes in all the land. He would sometimes spend months working on a single pair of shoes. He then looked at the queen and said “I bet you’ve worn years of a mans life on your back.” He of course was referring to the time that a man would spend making the fine coats and things that the queen would wear.
That idea of “wearing a year on your back" got me thinking about the things that I write. But then I overthought about and realized that it is not quite accurate. See when someone makes something to could take them ten minutes or ten years, but they LEARN from having made it. So even if the next thing they make takes five minutes, they needed to spend those ten years to learn how to do it that way.
I’ll give an example. I wrote a poem that few know the title of called “As the Tree Stands Tall” I wrote that poem for a piece of music that a friend was writing. It took around four hours to write THAT poem. Which then went on to be published and you could buy it and I would make a nickle.
HOWEVER! Earlier that week (Before I was even asked to write the text for this choral work) I had written a different poem under a similar title. My composition professor hated it. It told no story, contained no drama, it was boring in his mind. So I spent that week learning and reading and writing as much as I could so that I could write something interesting for my next lesson. Then I was asked to write the text to this piece of music and it turns into this wonderful tune titled “As the Tree Stands Tall”.
In my mind, it did not take me four hours to write that poem. Though it may have seemed like it. It actually took about a week of constant work, that then came to fruition after those 4 hours at an un-named tavern. And that’s how creating things works in my mind now. If I write a poem, it is the culmination of every experience I have ever had. If I write a piece of music, you’re listening to my entire life up to that moment. And the next day there’s a little more experience, so the music gets a little bit better (hopefully better, not worse).
Since seeing that scene in Game of Thrones I decided that is the reason why it seems like I procrastinate. Im not putting it off to the last moment, I am just assuring that I have the most experience possible before I begin the project. That way it’s the best version it could possibly be.
