Home : Plato's Words : August 2003

August 2003

Some months are filled with music for me; whether listening to music, practicing music, performing music or composing music. This August so far has been filled more with idle holiday activities than any serious musical work. I am on my annual summer holiday to the prairies where there is a terrific heatwave and where the grasshoppers are growing in numbers and in size by the day. They are indiscriminating diners it seems and are eating anything green or growing. On my bike rides down the highway it is quite a feat to avoid colliding with at least one of them. Still I love to be here and even though the drought is hard on the farmers and the heatwave hard on everyone, there is still beauty to be found it seems. Farmers are already harvesting since the fields have already turned golden yellow. People are picking their garden produce and canning their pickles and other vegetables too.

There has been some music... I have been spending time composing and have struggled with the creative process lately. I recognize the wall that I have hit lately, creatively speaking and now I am not quite as frustrated as I used to get when that would occur. I know that there are periods when nothing that I write seems any good but the process is like that sometimes. I continue to sit at the piano daily and try to come up with new ideas for songs. Of course more frustrating as a jazz vocalist would be to feel no creative impulse while performing live. That has rarely happened to me because usually I am in the company of fellow musicians who inspire me with their playing. While singing live the moment is there then gone and even if it wasn't such a great idea musically, it is done and forgotten. In writing music there is the sculpting and shaping in trying to come up with something worthwhile regarding melody, harmony and lyrics for a song. Sometimes that process seems so difficult as it requires such an open and patient approach and in fact the harder you try sometimes, the worse it gets. I have learned to finally step away and go for a bike ride or a run to see if that will loosen some musical idea from my brain. Sometimes that really does seem to work for me.

The prairie sunsets are unbelievably beautiful. The mourning doves are plaintively cooing every morning and even through the day you can hear them. The cattle are trying to find something green to eat in the heat drenched pastures and their amusing looking faces greet me as I cycle past. I always have to laugh at their expressions. They all seem amazed to see a cyclist going past them. Their eyes are all on me. Perhaps that's what it feels like to be in the Tour de France although Lance and the gang have people starring and not prairie cattle. The sunflowers are tall and full. The summer skies are filled with the bluest shade of blue with occasional white cloud puffs. The leaves are rustling in the breeze. The mood is calm. Surely some of this experience will fill me with music again...I must be patient.

Karin