Notes Unfolding
Notes Unfolding
#38 - Ellipse
3
0:00
-1:55

#38 - Ellipse

I’m not talking about fish
3

If I listen back to all of my music it’s inevitable that I’ll feel more pride about certain recordings than others.

But if I say that I’m sharing something today and that it’s “not my favorite,” I don’t want it to sound like I’m being self-deprecating or fishing for compliments. I actually think there are some cool things happening with respect to this piece of music. For example I like how the time signature, tone, and melody combine to produce a playful effect, and maybe some anxiety that also stems from the timing.

It just happens to not be my absolute favorite thing to listen back to in its current form. And I think it’s pretty cool that I can share things that I’m most excited about here but also just…other things that come up. It’s all part of the process. I think this publication has actually helped my confidence to the point that I can feel good about sharing all kinds of music here no matter how I’m feeling about it at the moment. It’s also helped me achieve a deeper understanding that self-love and self-confidence can exist in the same space as healthy self-critique.

For about five seconds I considered allowing more time between these posts and not sharing an idea until I feel a strong sense of satisfaction that it’s somehow “complete.” Then I imagined the pressure this would create, and the fact that it would lead to an unproductive sense of perfectionism and inhibit my enjoyment of the process.

Plus, spending longer stretches of time on fewer compositions just isn’t the creative stage I’m in at the moment. Instead I’m having lots of ideas and enjoying bringing them to a certain point as best I can before they escape. It’s like, “look at all those fish! I’ll figure out what to do with them later but for now I just need to get as many as I can into the boat.” Maybe that’s not very environmentally conscious or caring as far as the fish are concerned but mind you, I’m not really talking about fish.

I’m talking about horses. Right now I’m just grabbing for the reins of a bunch of horses and leading them to the first stable I can find. Later on, I’ll make time to groom them but for now I just need a stable, a few bags of oats, a room for the night, a dirty glass of rye and the suspicious looks over shoulders from six grumbling, gun-toting cowboys in the midst of a poker game in the corner.

Someone else on Substack called

touched on this in a recent post — not guns and fishing stuff but the idea of having so many ideas that sometimes it can be hard to harness any for fear of losing the next one.

I guess right now I’m trying to work that out myself — trying to balance giving each idea a certain degree of attention and focus but up to a certain point so that I can also explore many others.

Anyway, back to fish and horses: I might feel better about some recordings than others at the moment I share them here, but once I season and cook the horses and groom the fish it’s hard to know which ones will become my favorites. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. They’re all part of the process and I’m going to rein and reel in what I will.


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