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7 January 2002 Wow, another Happy New Year on this page. Seems like it wasn't so long ago that I was trying to get my first gig... Found an interesting mind-trick to play on myself. If I sit down at the piano and tell myself "I'm just going to write a thirty-second snippet," I end up writing songs...complete with lyrics and choruses, and which run a good deal longer than thirty seconds. Journeys beginning with a single step -- I think that's what I've sometimes forgotten when I try to write. I get too caught up in the anxiety of writing The Whole Thing, and find I can't even begin. With this thirty-second thing I also start out with the assumption that I'm writing throwaway material, like the pictures-with-words trick for lyric writing, and I guess there's something very liberating about that. Solo jamming, basically. So far I've written a little watercolor sketch of a song called Feather Moon, and something with the working title "An Agnostic's Christmas Carol." Wonder what else will turn up before the words "thirty seconds" don't fool my right brain anymore...
And I've decided to learn how to arrange for strings. Drought was originally intended for a string quartet plus piano (what is that, a piano quintet?), and Feather Moon has a cello in it. Maybe starting on those will be my evening's work tonight. - VT
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