Week 2

Oh (July 10, 2007)

Nostalgia is a strange thing. A longing for the past that distorts our sense of the present. It selectively remembers the past, making those moments seem shinier than they were, and dulling the present moments by comparison.

Let’s get back to basics, return to the good ole days, make America great again.

I’m in the midst of several simultaneous transitions in my life. These make the future unclear, harder to predict. Uncertainty makes the present trickier to deal with as well. So, my mind turns to the past.

I am well aware of nostalgia’s temptation. I do not yearn for the past, merely wish to examine bits of it while I wait for the future to shine more clearly.

I do not take for granted that these moments of transition and reflection coincide with the ten-year mark for 60×365. This was a landmark project in my creative life. I learned many things about myself, about music, and about the realities of composing as a lifestyle choice.

The second week of the podcast seems so unremarkable to me now. I was finding my way, working through the process of the constraints and obligations that a daily creative project imposes. There were two compositions  that focused on the concept of one minute as a length of time. It’s shorter than some sounds and music, and longer than others.

I made a collage that compressed the first movement of Mahler’s second symphony into a minute. I’m sure that I thought it was quite cleverly done. I don’t have any memory of making it, and I don’t think I’ve listened to it again before this week.

The inversion of this idea is Oh, which stretched the sound of single word to a full minute. I remember making this piece. I remember thinking that I would make many iterations of this piece throughout the year, stretching all kinds of very short sounds. This is the only time I did it.

The “oh” that I used was part of a longer string of words: “Oh, my god….”

Oh my god. Surprise, shock, anger, pleasure, happiness, fear, resignation; all in three little words. Alternate phrases: Oh my. My god. Oh god.

I’ve listened to this one several times since making it, fascinated by how dramatic the sound is when stretched so much. There’s a whole world living inside of this moment. There are worlds waiting inside of every present moment. The trick is to experience them in the present tense.

Thoreau encourages us to live in the present: We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring.

The present tense is the antidote to nostalgia.

~~~~~

I am also sending out the text to these posts each week as an email through my newsletter platform. If you wish to receive it that way, please signup here.