I was talking with a friend the other day and mentioned several of the projects that I have rolling around in my head that I am thinking about moving forward on.   Some are music related, others are not. All are ambitious.  His response confused me a little until I realized that the way he looks at things are pretty much the way most people look at such things. You see, he was concerned that I would start a project and that it would overwhelm me and then I would have to abandon it and possibly hurt the other people involved in it. I see the validity of his point.

But even more, I see the reason most important projects never get off the ground. Fear. Fear of failure. Fear of lack of funding. Fear of lack of personnel. Fear of lack of adequate space. Fear of lack of knowledge. Fear of looking stupid. Each one is legitimate. Each one is a very real fear. Each and every one can be  the silent killer of many a project before it even has a chance to expose itself, much less attempt to come to fruition.

I think that this may be the very reason that many noble causes never sees the light of day; leadership that backs down in the face of fear instead of facing it head on. I can hear some of you now, those fears are real.  I grant you that. They are real. But they are also tameable.

You see, I don’t have a problem of letting go of a project once it is under way. I’ve always been able to find someone to take the reins so that I can look to new projects. Many people are willing to step up and lead once a project is under way. The real problem is getting past the fear of starting a new project.

I face this in my music as well. When I want to start a new piece of music and see all the empty staves and it is somewhat daunting.   All those doubts and fears are hiding in the background. “Will anyone listen to it?” “Will anyone like it?” “Will I be able to finish it?” I’ve learned to treat it all as noise. It really is just background noise. Noise that if you pay attention to it will stop you in your tracks and keep you from moving forward.

I will grant you that some projects, upon examination and study, should probably be stopped before they get started, but project ideas are like mustard seeds and number of them are going to fall in fertile ground and grow into something beautiful if given the chance.  We should never allow fear to be the deciding factor into whether we sow our ideas or not.

Just think of how much we could all accomplish if we could just treat all those fears as noise. I know that there are going to be some projects that aren’t going to work out; maybe some projects that will run their course and the peter out. But that’s life. I have come to accept that fact that the one thing worse that failure is regret at never having tried.   Maybe I should tack that on my wall.

It used to be that when I came to work every day, my thoughts leaned toward trying to finish things, tie up loose ends and, if I was lucky, I might possibly begin a new project.  There were days I dreaded going into the office knowing what was waiting for me.  These days, each day is a new beginning. Yes, there are things that have to be cleaned up and details that have to be resolved but every single day holds the potential for a new project or the beginning of a new relationship. I’m not sure if that is because I am doing a greater variety of things or if the things I am doing have influenced me and just made me a more positive person. Maybe it’s a little of both.  And just maybe, it has a lot to do with putting my focus on those around me rather than letting life beat me down.

I am retiring from my job at the Tarrant Regional Water District on October 3^rd. That’s just a couple of weeks away. It is not a forced retirement and its certainly not time for me to retire but due to certain events in my life, I have a need to redirect my skills in another direction. I have plenty of opportunities. No, the American workforce is not through with me yet.  I’m considering getting into consulting or sales.  Maybe I will open a branch office in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex for one of the many vendors I know.  Maybe I will get to do some traveling.  It’s a big step for me and I am both excited and filled with trepidation.

But life it like that.  A door closes.  A door opens.  Projects end.  New projects begin.  I have an open mind towards the future and the doors that will open.  I relish the thought of new projects.  You get out of life what you put into it.  I have finished my first symphony and didn’t miss a beat starting a new suite for Chamber Orchestra based on the life of King David.  I have a friend that thinks I should start work on an opera.   I have photos that need editing, photos that need to be taken and photos that need mounting.  I hope to have more time for the arts as I take on these new challenges.  I want to be more involved with my family, my church and my community.

I am so blessed to have this opportunity. I have so many wonderful people in my life and I have the support of friends and family.

In truth, I have every reason in the world to hop out of bed in the morning and get started each and every day.  Who could ask for anything more?

Have you ever had a picture in your head created by the music you are listening to? What about smell?   Have you ever listened to a piece of oriental music and could swear you smell cherry blossoms or incense? What about texture? Do you remember listening to a piece of music that reminded you of someone scraping their fingernails across a chalkboard? Or heard music that made your skin crawl? Have you had a piece of music that made you taste the cotton candy at a carnival or taste the ocean on your tongue?

Music can do all that. It can transport the listener to places that they have never been and are not likely to ever go. Music can trigger the nerve ending of your skin, or your taste buds or bring you visual imagery.   Music is so much more than notes on a page. A good composer can even trick the ears of the listener by playing a theme and then slip into a variation that drops some of the notes in the theme but the listener never knows that they are gone. The listener hears them because they expect to hear them which allow the composer to expand his/her use of those voices and expand on the variation.

Well written music can take the listener to a different time and a different place. It can fill the listeners head with sights, sounds, actions, tastes and yes, feelings. It can even transcend space and time and take the listener into as ethereal space that is beyond what they recognize as reality. Music can bend time and shape space to give new meaning to the familiar. It can take the listener home or to somewhere far away. It can make the unreal a reality. It can take the listener to the depths of sadness or the heights of ecstasy.

Think about music that you are most familiar with (1812 Overture, William Tell Overture, Beethoven’s 5^th symphony, Claire de Lune, Penny Lane, Knights in White Satin, Bolero, Theme from Harry Potter or Star Wars, etc.) The list goes on and on. What makes this music memorable is that it takes the listener to someplace or time other than where they are.   It paints a picture complete with sights, sounds, texture and smells. It allows the listener to escape and embrace.

I want my music to do that. I am constantly working towards accomplishing that.   I want to take the listener places, show them things they have never seen and allow them to experience what they may never experience otherwise. Maybe that is unrealistic, but it is, never-the-less, my dream.

Do you remembering playing a game when you were young where everyone would sit in a circle and the first person would whisper a sentence in the second person’s ear and the second person would repeat it to the third person and so on all around the circle.  When you got to the end, the last person would repeat the phrase out loud and often with hilarious results because the sentence degraded as it moved through the circle.  It’s one of the problems with communication.  If you want your message delivered with complete accuracy, it is best to delivered to the intended ears yourself.

Now think about how you have just finished performing the premiere of a new piece of music that you have been sweating over for months.  This is the very first time the audience has heard a performance of this piece.  You know you aren’t going to please everyone but you really hope the majority of the audience enjoyed the piece.   You also know it is going to be tough when you hear someone say that they just did not enjoy it.  I’m here to tell you that it is alright.  If the audience liked it, if they disliked it, if they have an opinion about it positive or negative, you have managed to communicate with the audience.  You have elicited a reaction.  What you do not want is for the majority of the audience to leave with no opinion on what they just heard because that means that you have failed as a communicator.

This is just like when you give a speech about a topic that is close to your heart.  People may either agree or disagree with what you have said.  That is their right.  The really important thing to remember is that if they have an opinion, at least they heard you.  If they walk away with absolutely no opinion then you most likely failed as a communicator.

When I write a piece of music I am trying to elicit a response from both the musician and the audience.  This is more difficult that direct communication.  If I actually play the music, I can interpret the music through my dynamics, melodies and rhythms to try and reach those that are listening.  If someone else is playing the music that I have written, I am leaving that interpretation in the hands of a third party and yes, things can get lost in translation.  There has to be a certain level of trust between the composer and the musician.  The musician and the composer have to be in sync if the musician is going to accurately purvey the emotional content and meaning behind the piece that the composer intended.  A quality piece of music that has been appropriately played can leave an audience ecstatic or in tears, depending on the interpretation of the music.  It is when the audience leaves with no feeling at all that I have to accept the fact that I have failed to deliver my message as a composer.

To most composers, hearing someone sing or hum a tune that they have written is a huge compliment.  “They heard it.  They liked it.  They liked it enough to learn it.  My message got through!”  I have learned through years of hard knocks that they really don’t have to love it or hate it as long as they listen and actually have an opinion about it, I can be satisfied.  I learn from their opinions.  I learn how to make my music more interesting, more satisfying.  And maybe next time they will be whistling a tune when after hearing what I was trying to tell them.

I seem to do my best work when I am synced up; when I have a schedule and a plan.  I hate it when I get out of sync.  When that happens, I don’t get the things accomplished that I need to.  It’s definitely harder to stay motivated.  Not that I am inflexible, but as I said before, I am stubborn and I really need some regimen in my life that I can count on that allows me to plan and accomplish my goals.

Lots of things can interfere with my sync.  Lately, it’s been some minor surgery and the extended recovery time.  Between the meds, the pain and irritation, the soft diet and the lack of sleep because I can’t seem to sleep for more than a few hours lying down I am just not in sync.  That is not a grasp for sympathy.  I’m just saying that all these things combine make it extremely difficult to focus on any kind of work and even the simplest goal seems beyond the reach of my attention span.  This blog alone is a day late and has been eluding me.  I know that on the other end of this recovery (still a couple of weeks away) I will be better than ever and will have a greater ability to focus and keep things more organized than I did before the surgery.  So there is a positive to all this.

Illness is not the only thing that can break my rhythm.  Computer problems (don’t you hate system updates that cause hardware drivers to fail?), technical problems with phones, unexpected life events, outside forces rearranging your schedule and just the daily interruptions.  They all effect our rhythm.

Now sometimes, that can be a very good thing.  Sometimes we need our rhythm broken so that we aren’t working by rote.  Being creative means embracing the changes around us, but you still have to find the time and discipline to sit down and express that creativity.  This means that you have to at least generally have a common time that you can set aside and say, “This is my creative time” and then adhere to schedule to the best of your ability.

Sometimes when I am on my walk along the river, there are flowers along the bank.  These are very special flowers in that they behave like morning glories but are a lot larger.  Just as the sun comes up, these flowers open up their petals and face the sun.  You can watch them follow the sun.  When they sun gets too hot, they close back up and don’t open again until the next morning.  The window for watching this phenomenon is very short but it happens like clockwork.

That’s what we have to do.  We have to find our place in the sun as creative and figure out how to use that time to make the most of our creativity.  I figure that is God can work out a schedule for these unique and beautiful flowers, then He can do the very same thing for me and show me that time when it is best to embrace the Son.  There are going to be times when that just isn’t going to happen.  Life is not always cooperative.   Sometimes, the storm clouds brew and it’s too dark for those flowers to open up.  But just like those flowers, I look forward to those moments in the Son and it leaves me hopeful and grateful for those moments.  So much so that I can get past the clouds and the gray knowing that tomorrow is another opportunity.