Blank and Panic

Today was one of those days where the panic just informs every move that I make.

You know the kind: every project that is peeking its ominous head over the not-distant-enough horizon begins to enforce its gravity on the strings of your heart; time sort of melts away from a compartmentalized calendar state to one long gray tunnel of hopeless anticipation; nothing happens because you're too busy trying to organize your attack on all that needs to happen.  Plus, like every other Wednesday this decade, it's cold and raining.

It's the blank pages that get to me, start to wear on my psyche like a slow router, locking me into a ruthless paralysis.  Part of it is because I'll never have done enough groundwork to be comfortable starting.  Surely someone who is going to say anything must have something to say, and how can I can I say what I need to if I'm so aware of how little I know?  It goes against everything I tell any of my students with regard to getting going - as in just get going. Start. Keep starting.  And in spite of myself, I just sit with blank pages waiting for me to spill onto them whatever tripe I've decided is worth spewing out with my name attached.

Then I come Starbucks. Time for some Caramel Apple Spice therapy.  (It's a drink, not a candle.)  Time to combat the gray and the rain and try to dull this panic.  And there, on the counter, is the latest from Ma, Thile, Meyer, and Duncan: The Goat Rodeo Sessions.  Released yesterday.  In my hand today.  And here I thought it was only going to be released in the U.S. Joy, oh joy.

It hit me as I put the cd on and listened as Chris Thile begins the opening "Attaboy" with an impossibly gorgeous picking pattern in some other-worldly time signature.  I'm seldom, if ever, intimidated by the blank pages of my mandolin.  I love to sit down and just spew notes from that thing, whether or not they are purely original or heavily founded on some other tune or riff.  For some reason I can stare an open space in a song and just fly right on into it, drawing on whatever I feel it demands from my particular skill set at that moment.  It's mine to try out and examine and explore, and hey, if it goes poorly, there's always the next time.  Just scrap the page and start again.

But silly me.  The endless potential of an empty break is not that different from the spankin' new word document file.  My mindset is different, and that's probably where it ends.  Sure there are some formal constraints brought to bear on the situation, instituted by either the song, text, or genre, but these are the kinds of constraints that provide a framework and foundation for any kind of coherent creativity.

I need to re-remember that as I'm not bound to the notes I set out playing on the mando, neither am I bound to those first words I toss on the sheet.  Thile, Meyer, and Duncan (Ma doesn't do any composing on Goat Rodeo) started out with nothing, and they certainly scrapped ideas as they developed the album.

The panic in my heart needs to spark my expression on paper as the same energy does when I'm pickin'. So I should quit this and get on to what I need to be doing! Panicking productively.

Stay tuned for this week's Song-of-the-Week.