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.

Teaching & Writing

A last minute teaching assignment took me once again to the hub of animation in the U.S. Naturally, though, I was too wiped after teaching teachers about bringing music into their classrooms to stand up and that eliminated the possibility of going into town.

I don’t know what it is about teaching all weekend with nary a break that makes it hard to stand up, think, or decide on dinner. Nevertheless, I wandered into Barnes and Noble on Saturday night in some strip mall somewhere near Potter Springs. I think that’s where I was. It’s all a blur, as it always is. I’ll be back again at the beginning of next month.

My return brought me headfirst into the Maine winter and the snow right now is delightful. Arresting, really. And I’m couped up in my studio, happily making music for the upcoming Portland Stage production of “Iron Kisses”. So I’ve been taking stabs at composing gossamer and wispy music of grief and melancholy. Good thing those are flavors I love to live in. Director Risa Brainin has been a joy to work with, and the three-thousand miles between us haven’t stop us from getting inside each other’s thinking and moving towards a rich collaboration. Samples later…