Day 140 - Write a Song

Date: May 26th, 2010

Ever since Ryan and I went to see Don Giovanni, I've marveled at the amount of contemplation and calculation that must've gone into writing that opera.  Mozart didn't just have to write music and words, but also a play and, in some senses, choreography.  Granting the director has his actors do what he pleases, Mozart still must've had a sense of where they would stand and how they would interact.  The idea of putting all that together just seemed so, insurmountable to me.

In retrospect, that was probably, at least in part, because I don't usually do anything with music.  Knowing that one part of a huge endeavor is outside of my expertise has tended to make the whole project seem more impressive.  I decided to test that theory by trying to write a song.  A few years back I went to visit my friend Sean in Evanston for his 21st birthday.  On the way out to Illinois, I stopped at a Native American outpost along Route 12 and bought a Navajo flute.


After I decided to write a song for my flute, I hit my first snag.  Oh right, I remembered, I can't read sheet music.  I didn't want to create something so simple that I wouldn't need to write it down to remember it, but I didn't even know what note was what on the flute.  Music is a foreign language to me and while I felt like I could create a melody in a day, I definitely can't learn a whole language in one.

After a little while, I devised a solution.  With my love of document creation (that's a real thing, shut up) and ability to match pictures to action, I created modified sheet music for the song.

My masterpiece.

Each of the holes on the sheet matches up to one of the holes on the flute.  I have no idea what notes I was playing or if my flute was even in key.  What I do know is that I created a coherent melody that calmed me down and told a story.  I realized it was easier, given the existence of musical talent, to create an opera than I realized.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying I could do it.  What I am saying is that I underestimated the power of music to elicit feelings in the person playing it.  As I played the notes I felt melancholy and listless.  I felt airy and light.  I felt connected to the world around me and the air I breathed to play the notes.  I played the song a couple times through after I finished writing it and as I played I started to imagine the sad story that went along with it.

I could so easily picture a lonely young woman, wondering about the world and finding joy in things she never expected.  I never said it was a good story or a new story.  I just said it was a story.  More importantly, what I realized is that the thing that ties is all together is the music.  An opera is not equal parts music and story, thrown together on even footing.  It is all music, that just happens to tell a story.  The music itself is so much more powerful than I realized.  It was also nice to learn how to create an emotion in myself.  Now I just need to work on the joyful part... cause that melancholy part was a lot easier to play.