Junking Cues for Iron Kisses

I just got back from the second preview performance of “Iron Kisses” at Portland Stage, and the whole process continues to enthrall me. I'm doing music and sound design for this two person play by James Still, and it incorporates lots of original music and sound as well as dozens of slides projected on a beautiful rear projection screen. Particularly on my mind right now is how much I enjoy the "letting go" aspect of collaborating. I have created lots of cues for this show, over a hundred, actually. And I love each one deeply as I’m making it… then I put it out there for the director to hear and for the actors to use, and sometimes it works. Often, it doesn’t. So no matter how much I love or believe in each one of these little things, I’ve got to be ready to just junk it. Or save it for later. But it feels like junking it. And I get an odd feeling of freedom when the decision is to junk something I’ve worked on and cared for. (Someone once told me that artists need to learn to kill their babies, a terribly inappropriate aphorism for this father of two…) I think some people have a hard time with it; they are ego attached to their music. And I get that way, too, and it’s hard to stop it when it gets going. But when I bring in a cue and Risa, the director doesn’t like it, I get a certain happy feeling.
It’s as though by casting aside something you just made, you affirm your freedom, your unattachment. Or at least you get to practice it.