Words being hard

Just a quick note before the actual post: I've had a very busy summer, so I may take one week/two weeks/the entire month of August off from blogging. I'll definitely be back by September.

I haven't written about music here, because if I did I would probably get very off topic very quickly, but I wanted to share a few thoughts as the more hectic part of my summer comes to a close.

I am a cellist; that is at the core of my identity as a musician and as a person. Even when I don't have my cello with me, I see the world in terms of navigating as a musician with a large, bulky instrument, in terms of practicing an art form that we are constantly told is dying, in terms of all that I have learned, both cello-specific and general, from all of my music instructors.

Performance is at the core of how I experience music through my cello-shaped lens. I perform to share, to converse, to give. I perform as one-third of a dialogue between composer, performer, audience. Rarely, I'm two-thirds.

I don't consider myself a performer. I don't use that word to describe myself, because I find it limiting. "Performer," to me, only describes what the audience sees, and perhaps the rehearsal process of that piece as well. But what "performer" is missing is the hours spent just being cello, until you know the fingerboard like you know your own face, not with your eyes but with your fingertips. What "performer" is missing is the years it takes for how the bow feels under your fingers to become second nature, and the years it takes to let go of all the tension you bring to the instrument every time you pick it up. What "performer" is missing is the specificity of saying, yes, I am an artist, yes, I am a musician, and this is my voice. I have chosen the cello. I choose it every day of my life.

I also compose. I do this not in a school environment, usually under no pressure except what I bring to the project, because to me composing is a release. I am a cellist, and that stresses me out enough. If I were a composer at that level, I would have cracked years ago.

I don't consider myself a composer. I'm struggling to find words to say this. To me, "composer" is a word that implies a level of seriousness about composing that I don't have and don't want to have. I'm not unserious about composing (is that a word? it is now), but it's not something that I have to do as much as I have to breathe. The cello is that.

I compose because I have something to say and I either can't say it in words or think it would be better said in music. I don't write more than I have to, which means my works are short. I write what I know, most of the time, so much of my work lies in at least partially tonal landscapes. I compose for instruments I have had easy access to and that I know well; the instruments I have written the most for are cello and trumpet. I write if and when I am inspired, as much as I can, and I finish works as soon as I am able, but sometimes I leave works unfinished. I don't publish my music.

Sometimes I also leave blog posts unfinished.