Changes

Except for writing in this blog, I haven't written anything for a month or so -- and this is a first in my professional life. For the past forty years (a bit more), I've written something on one project or other on over 90% of the days before me. I have four writing projects in progress presently -- and each has been ignored the past month. A first. A change of rhythm, surely. Maybe a change of life.

What I've been doing with my time instead is studying music and practicing piano. As I've written here before, I strive to write music drama, or chamber opera, whatever one might call it -- serious drama in which music is integral. I don't have my musical skills quite there yet but I make progress every day.

But what about writing? What about two novels and two scripts left in mid-draft? I still like their concepts but at the same time, I'm not sure I have energy, or passion, to finish them. Well, I take that back, I'll finish the screenplay because my agent waits for it. I think the others will depend on how I respond when I pick them up again. And clearly I'm in no hurry to do that.

All this is fine. A glance at the size of my literary archive suggests I've written quite enough ha ha. But I actually have material from my life, like being a Russian linguist in the Cold War, about which I've written little. One of the novels in progress is about this experience.

I think I sense being on a short leash. I don't have all the time in the world, and the real passion I have now is for music drama, for finding some form to combine composition and dramatic narrative without engaging a lot of instruments and without being "a musical." Something in the tradition of Brecht/Weill with smaller musical ensembles. I want to experiment, to fiddle with all this. But, as I said, my musical skills need to be greater than they are at the moment. But I'm working on it.

I used to think of my mantra as "I write, therefore I am." But I haven't been writing -- again, unless this blog counts -- but I'm still here. I've been practicing. And practicing. And practicing.