Riding a Hamster Wheel of Self-Deception

On turning 26 years old last week, I suddenly realized that it’s been ten years since I started composing. Although I very much enjoyed Dan Visconti’s recent description of an encounter with his early catalog, I’m afraid to spend much time with the efforts of my musical adolescence; unfortunately, as I get older, “my musical adolescence” seems to stretch longer and longer! Throughout the past ten years I’ve studied and practiced certain techniques of composing on which I now have a relatively solid grip, but it’s also true that my definition of “music,” my understanding of what that cultural exercise can and should accomplish, transformed substantially and continuously over the same period. Because my agenda has changed as much between 1999 and 2009 as my tool set has, my old pieces seem not just inept but downright misguided—not just bad, but wrong, almost.

My apprehension—one I’ve tremulously noted here before—is that my music isn’t evolving so much as it’s mutating. If my critical/aesthetic target keeps moving, how can I be expected to hit it reliably? I feel a bit like I’m in a hamster wheel of self-deception: This year, I tell myself, I’m writing the music I really want to be writing. Those other years were just preparation for this one. How many years do I have to repeat this mantra before it rings sufficiently false? It’s beginning to strain my credulity.

But what’s the alternative? Take a few years off to develop an unassailably coherent musical politics, then get back in the game? Or the reverse—go on philosophical autopilot for a while and write lots of music without thinking about what it means to do so? Neither of those avenues is particularly satisfactory to me. I suppose I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing: trying to drill down on what I think is important in the present. At least I have a few more years to decide what shape the fruits of that exploration will ultimately take.