Thoughts

I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit over the past few months, I know. And then last week I went and posted my new year goals list here which feels a little like I’ve sullied the purity of this space, but if I’m honest, pretty much nobody reads this blog and while it’s been useful – and continues to be from time to time – I’m not managing to keep up the daily posts.

Mind you, my creative activity has increased vastly since the time when I set up One Creative Thing. So much so that I no longer have the time or energy to blog about all that creative activity, so I guess that’s a good thing!

What I’m leading towards is that I’m thinking that I might change the focus of this blog a bit. Not quite sure where it’ll go – it’ll still be about regular creative activity, but I’ve been wanting to post about general creativity topics for a while now, and frankly it was getting a bit dull just writing endless lists of what I’d been doing – posting my soul on caitlinrowley.com on a regular basis has shown me that it’s more interesting for other people to read about the thoughts that go into a creative activity rather than just knowing about the activity itself. Otherwise, it should just be a blog of lists, bare-bones. Maybe it could be a bit of both. I’m not sure yet.

Today I’m recovering from the first cold of 2012. This one’s hit me hard & I’ve been in bed for a week now. Not a great start to the year, but I’ve done some thinking in that time, and especially following on from doing the 2012 list, I’m thinking of consolidating my sideline blogs. There’s this one, plus Minimania, which was my Vox blog and now languishes at Typepad, plus a couple of neglected Tumblogs too, and it occurred to me that if I broaden the scope of this blog, then maybe I can consolidate the ex-Vox content (which currently is really only updated with the annual goals lists, birthday & Christmas lists for relatives in far-flung places and the occasional personal post) with what’s here and ditch the nasty TypePad experience altogether. Maybe this space can build more on the work in progress posts on caitlinrowley.com, giving a day-to-day account of what I feel is right (or not) with the work as I’m doing it. Given that I’m going to be starting a Masters degree later this year, and that I want to start doing more active listening, more scheduled composition sessions, that could be a good thing.

Will it still be One Creative Thing? I’m not sure. Guess I’ll have to see where these thoughts take me.

(Oh, and today Djeli and I attempted to make “Princesses” – chocolate meringues – out of my new-for-Christmas French baking book. They were a bit of a disaster, but I think I know where we went wrong, so I’ll be having another go soon. Also designed and ordered proper business cards for Raspberry Blue. And read a lot)

Tagged with: baking, blogging, cooking, creativity, dayjob, design, ideas, organisation, reading, self-promotion, thinking, tools | Add a comment

2012: the year of attainable goals?

Well, that’s what I’m hoping. I’m quite pleased with this year’s list. I think that pretty much everything on it actually is attainable over the course of the year, unlike last year’s which was much too ambitious. A lot of what’s on it is stuff that is already in progress, about to be in progress or has a firmish deadline at least, so much of it doesn’t have to be started from scratch but is more about tying up loose ends left over from 2011.

September looms large this year – I am determined to be healthier and more organised before I start my Masters to give me the best possible chance to do well at it – this involves getting a healthy balance between freelance work, composition and rest time really working so I can clear old projects, bring in some money but keep my mental & physical health intact. I am most emphatically planning to not injure myself in any way more serious than perhaps a papercut.

2012 is, most significantly, all about new beginnings and new directions. There’s a lot of change going to be happening – going back to uni, (hopefully) buying our first house & moving out of London, developing my freelance business to be (again, hopefully) able to at least cover my basic expenses.

So without further ado, here is The 2012 List.

Music

• 3 performances in 2012 – one more than I set myself for 2011, getting ambitious here
• Complete all piece requests from 2011 before start of uni term in September – alto flute piece for Carla Rees (due spring), flute piece for Nicole Camacho, recorder quartet for Pink Noise, Pieces of Eight arrangement for Shana Norton
• New score downloads implemented for caitlinrowley.com
• Blog at least once a month on caitlinrowley.com January – check, February – check
• Work out how, and apply for funding with Pink Noise to (hopefully) achieve first paid commission.
• Keep up flute practice
• Start a Masters degree!
• Finish Carrion Comfort for LCCO deadline YESSSSSSS!
• Write at least 1 piece for a call for scores & send it in
• Take 2 pieces along to LCF WiP/WiT sessions for feedback
• Schedule in (and DO) one listening session a week. Take notes to make sure I’m getting the most out of it
• Get back to counterpoint/harmony study – schedule as part of weekly plan. NEED to make some progress on this before September.
• Put at least 2 pieces up on SoundCloud in MIDI versions
• Finish laying out 2×4 & send to Christopher D. Lewis

Home & Travel

• Move out of London
• Set up my own study before the summer
• Try at least 5 recipes from “I Know How to Cook”: 6-Jan-2012: Coq au vin. Have also done the Venison-roast lamb but I can’t remember the date.
• Try at least 3 recipes from new French baking cookbook: 6-Jan-2012: Galette des rois, incl. crème frangipane; 8-Jan-2012: Princesses (chocolate meringues) – not actually a success, but definitely tried. Will try again. 15-Jan-2012: Chaussons au pommes – YUM!
• Travel: EuroDisney, Spain, Australia, weekend trip somewhere?
• Work on creating a good, reliable multigrain loaf, in case of (suspected) bakery dearth in Gravesend: 13-Jan-2012: An excellent start – not fully multigrain because I was just using up leftover flour, but it worked really well. 19-Jan-2012: Tried the same recipe, this time with all wholemeal flour. Worked very well, in spite of forgetting about it a couple of times, leading to overly long rising times. Feeling quite confident about getting this recipe working well.

Health

• Limit sugar & dairy intake.
• Keep up with vitamin supplements to help keep food & energy on track.
• Get back to the morning squirrel-walks once calf is better
• Semi-regular massages to keep stress and tension headaches under control – no more waiting till the pain’s so bad I can’t function
• Work my way up to being able to do a 4-mile walk without pain
• Develop regular schedule so can have relaxation time in the evenings and proper weekends and reduce stress of neglecting one or the other. Key components: Freelance work, composing, listening, training, writing
• Weight: *sigh* Shall we say 76kg by the start of the uni term? Surely that’s doable? *gives self a stern look and a threat to not injure any more parts*

Business

• Schedule training to keep my skills current & keep me employable by others – do some every week. Key areas: JavaScript, design, marketing
• Design business cards & get them made 8-Jan-2012: Order sent! And I just scraped in to get a 15% discount from MOO too!
• Write beginner social media guide to sell on raspberryblue.com
• Start blogging on Raspberry Blue (not going to make this any set schedule – minimum 3 posts in the year though)
• Schedule talk at LCF Open House on some webby topic – social media as a tool for composition perhaps? Or maybe something on how to use the web to promote your composition?

Other stuff

• New laptop. This year for sure. D to get old one.
• Knit something that isn’t a scarf Send both parents’ birthday and Christmas presents ON TIME
• Call parents once a month: January – done.

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Who’s a little failure then?

Well, that would be me. I have completely and utterly failed at Creative Pact 2011. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it – I really, really did, but the insanity was looming large, and then we went to Spain, and then there was a bit more insanity. I’m back to normal now and working on Carrion Comfort again, but it came too late, alas, to salvage my Creative Pact credibility.

However, progress has been made and I am well into the second half of the piece now. I’m encountering some issues though of not being entirely sure where I’m going. I can feel the length of the piece. I can feel how I want it to match up with the intensity map of the poem I painted some time ago:

So I can feel the bones of it, as it were, but I just can’t seem to push it forward. It feels like trying to speak without having language and being reduced to waving my hands in the air because the concept I want to express is completely abstract and I can’t even use simple gestures to explain it.

I suspect that part of the problem may be the scope of this piece. I’m just not used to dealing with something of this size. I’m not talking about duration – it’s still only a couple of minutes long – but about the complexity, textural depth, and the sheer number of tonal colours and elements I’m handling. I keep making attempts at working in piano score to try to keep away from all these bits which are confusing me, but I can’t seem to get it right.

(and just then, looking at the map, I had an idea of how it could end. With a bit of luck this might guide me through in the next few days).

So it’s lurking a little at the moment, but I keep coming back to it. I’m definitely doing better work when I’m at the V&A members’ room – must be being out of the house, I think – fresh atmosphere, the purposefulness of going to a specific place to work, plus the added incentive that I don’t take my power cord, so once the laptop battery dies, that’s it for the day…

As I’ve been working on this one piece for so long now too, I’m beginning to feel quite strongly that I need to work out how to actively work on two pieces at once. I can manage to compose one while planning another, but having notes on the go for two separate projects isn’t really something I’ve managed to do yet. Must practice, I guess.

Looking forward to making some progress tomorrow.

Oh! PS. I put in my application to study for an MMus at Trinity Laban yesterday! Trying not to get too excited – first there’s putting in my scores and support material, then there’s finding out if they even want me to audition. It’s got a way to go before it’s a done deal, but I’m just really glad I’ve done it. Yay me.

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Fun with non-standard notation

Contrary to my expectations I’m really enjoying this non-standard notation composition challenge – it’s fascinating to see what everyone (principally standard-notation users who are a bit freaked by the letting go aspect of the challenge) is coming up with – the sounds they’re using, which elements they’re letting go and which they’re retaining control of. It’s really inspiring me to be a bit more daring. I think I’ve done pretty well with the start of the piece but I think I want to let go a little more at the end, to really push myself to see how far I can stretch out of my comfort zone. And there’s not much time in which to do it – scores have to be finished for rehearsal tomorrow, for performance tomorrow night!

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First day at the CoMA Workshop

And wow! What a day it’s been. No sleep, on the go since 5.30am, but I managed to catch my train, which seemed like a bit of a miracle and got to Durham well in time. We’ve had an improvisatory composition lesson, workshops on some of the orchestral and chamber pieces and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow – all so awesome! And e composer ensemble includes a flugelhorn and a mandolin! VERY excited!

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De-stressing triumphant!

Well, I don’t know what else it can possibly be. I’ve been SO productive since yesterday’s relaxation session with my physiotherapist. In spite of nasty cold, sore throat, no voice, generally feeling crappy and done in, and in spite of computer being tediously slow, I’ve just been powering through my to-do list and generally Getting Things Done.

• Quintet is now at 2’30″ or thereabouts and has decided to “head for home”, which means working out how to reuse the slow intro and other opening material and is basically (or should be) an easy run down to the end now. Obviously there’s a lot of tweaking still to be done, niceties of notation to sort out and so on, but it’s looking like it’ll be at least 3’30″ when it’s done, and possibly the 4′ I wanted it to be (it has to be under 5′ – the trick is to keep it shortish so as to maximise rehearsal time, but have it long enough to do something interesting).
• Wrote a blog post which will appear on caitlinrowley.com later this week. It’s the first time I’ve tried scheduling future publishing, but it’s something I want to get into the habit of – if I’m to have regular visitors on my site, then I need to be posting (interesting) content regularly. Not sure I’ve quite got the “interesting” down, but I think my online writing is quietly improving.
• Started the rather tedious layout process for a set of songs I wrote about 14 years ago, Remembrances of Half-Forgotten Dead People. They were laid out when I first wrote them, but a. the originals weren’t PDFed and have been lost apart from one hard copy in Australia which my mother scanned for me and b. the layout is seriously dated. very word-processory because that was all I had at the time. So it needs to be updated a bit, notes revised and so on so I can print, bind and send it off to the singer who’s considering performing them in March.
• Set up a new notebook on Evernote to hold bits and pieces for a CD of my piano music which I’m hoping to get off the ground with a friend of mine in Australia. The first step is to get him scores, so I’ve been trawling round to (again) see what’s in a fit state to be played. Finished tweaking Egg the Tenth for this, so I guess that’s ready to go onto caitlinrowley.com too. There’s still quite a bit of work to be done to some of them – lacking dynamics and so on – but it’s not a mammoth task. I just need to keep plugging away at it.
• Cleaned about 700 emails out of my inbox. Because they were depressing me and making me worried. There’s still too much stuff in there – mostly notes I sent myself on my last day of work, which is a bit horrible – but 200-odd is MUCH better than 900-odd.
• Caught up a tiny bit with some of the reading and thinking for the Creative Pathfinder course I signed up for. It’s pretty good content – but there’s just so much of it!!! I’m working through Week 3 at the moment… but my inbox is up to Week 14…

It’s just as well the quintet’s making nice progress again, though – had an email today from the Masterclass organisers with the schedule for the course and notes about what to bring: so far it’s looking like I either need to change the way I write in a hurry or invest in a tiny printer to take with me – no printers available. Otherwise I can see myself spending evenings when I should be at t’ pub frantically copying out parts by hand for the composer’s ensemble – seems we have to write a piece for the ensemble during the few days we have there. Oh, and there aren’t many pianos, so we’re encouraged to bring a little keyboard if we need one. iPad Pianist Pro app FTW! Might try to devote some time to ideas-generation before I go to see if I can get a head-start on what to write for the ensemble… Because I don’t have enough to do!

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A spark!

This morning I was starting to feel like I was plunging into a bit of a black hole with this piece – I don’t have terribly long in which to write it and I just couldn’t feel my way. Coupled with the house feeling like it was overfilled with people and that I didn’t have any space in my own head and things were looking pretty bleak. So I packed up my sketchbook and copy of Rothko’s book The Artist’s Reality and took myself off to the Tate. En route I picked up a restorative bar of Green & Black’s white chocolate and a copy of Jamie magazine (cooking magazines always make me feel better) and cranked up the John Adams on my iPod and the resuscitation of my soul was nearly complete before I even got to St Paul’s.

As I walked down to the Tate Modern – through St Paul’s churchyard and over the Millennium Bridge – I thought about the slim collection of ideas I’d been half-heartedly kicking about for the past few days. I noticed some of the detail in the stonework on St Paul’s – decorative curls like leaves wrapping around something – and suddenly it all started to fall into place – from the thickets of the Cy Twombly Dionesian paintings I saw at the Tate on Sunday through ideas of enclosure, safety and security to claustrophobia and oppression, it all started to come together at last. Of course, it’s still got a long way to go and I haven’t even got notes on paper yet, but at last I have a direction to go in!

Tagged with: art, artist date, composition, creativity, ideas, listening, mentalhealth, music, walking | 2 comments

Trying to stretch myself

I’m beginning to feel like I’m entering a phase where I’m really going to have to stretch myself – take some risks, try different approaches, spend a bit of time doing things that go wildly wrong in order to find something that works a little bit better, so I’ve been setting challenges, such as the Creative Pact (which I’m loving) but also feeling I may need regular prodding to try different things, so I’ve signed up for the free 6-month creative coaching email course, Creative Pathfinder. I haven’t read any reviews of it (seems to be new) but it sounds like it may spark off ideas and just get me thinking about my work, where I’m trying to get to and how on earth I can actually make it to that destination.

So I had the first installment this evening, which asked the question ‘What’s your ambition for yourself?’ – the aim is to work out whether your ambition is to be rich, respected by your peers, loved by the general public, etc. – all the many and varied aspects of fame. I still have trouble with this question, as I have had with it in various books over the past few years. It used to be pretty clear-cut, but not so much any more. I still have ambition, but it’s been battered a bit by pressure from various sources and I’m a little confused really about what I want to achieve with my work. I’ve done a lot of thinking and soul-searching of late anyway with my latest piece and various discussions over that, and I think that’s raised some useful thoughts, but I need to process a bit more I think before I quite come up with an answer. For now, the simple answer is that composing is something I need to do. I need to do it regularly and I need to do it well and be proud of the work I produce, otherwise I tend towards the insane. But that’s just a starting point. Hoping this week I can gradually think through what my ambition looks like now so I can make friends with it again.

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Finished Art & Fear

For the second time. That’s one powerful book. It totally captures the wonder and massive insecurities of being an artist. I think this should be required reading for anyone who lives with an artist and isn’t one themselves. And even if they are, then I’d probably recommend it. I’m hoping to do a proper book review of it soon, but first need to sort out this house business first – putting in a lease application in the morning, then signing the lease probably on Thursday. Moving in about a month, it seems, so regular posting should hopefully resume after that.

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Finished reading ‘The Creative Habit’

Wow! What a book. That’s just totally shaken me up. And I just totally devoured it. I did kind of feel that I should be taking an Artist’s Way approach to it and only doing one chapter a week, to really let it sink in, but I couldn’t let it alone – I couldn’t wait to see what she’d say next, so I made myself keep at least to just one chapter a day so the ideas didn’t get too muddled. I’ll write a review of it sometime soon and post it here.

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