Dear listeners. I’d like to introduce to you my latest project which I’m calling Plant Songs. It will be much like the Weekly Composition Project that I did from May 2012 to May 2013, but with a couple caveats.
Essentially, I’ll be composing and recording one short composition each week and sharing the process on this blog and on YouTube.
The original Weekly Composition Project was done at a simpler time in my life, and I successfully uploaded every week for an entire year; fifty-two pieces.
My life is less simple now. I am a father now, I work a little more now, and I’m a homesteader. The homesteading lifestyle boils down to spending time providing some of the basic needs for myself and my family, rather than spending money to meet those needs. In the last 9 years I’ve gotten really into growing fruits, vegetables, and medicinal plants. I keep chickens, build some furniture, bake bread, preserve the harvest in many ways, keep several active fermentations going, and do the regular homeowner upkeep tasks. I’ve followed my passion for this kind of stuff and really learned a lot over the last decade. I love it. I’ve developed a deeper connection with the basics of being a human being on planet Earth. I believe that many of the world’s problems are solved in the garden.
The last project I completed was called 24 Standards which happened from 2016 to 2019. Because I was getting deep into the homesteading at that time, I decided that rather than publish on a schedule, I'd just commit to completing 24 arrangments however long it took. I thought maybe I’d average posting every two weeks or so and the project would last around one year. Well, it ended up taking three years to complete.
For Plant Songs I considered a similar format, committing to a certian number of compositions and publishing whenever I got them done. However I ultimately decided that the weekly publishing requirement was a key piece of getting the writing flow happening. Without that I thought perhaps this project would also drag on too long.
The challenge is that many things in parenting and the homesteading arts are pressing. If you’re trying to grow your year’s supply of tomatoes, you can’t put off picking them and preserving them when they’re ripe. If you do, you miss the opportunity, and the time and energy you spent all year growing them is wasted.
With my daughter in school now, I think I'll be able to pull off a piece each week while keeping up with everything else. This time around, I’m giving myself a vacation during the week of Thanksgiving, and the two weeks around the holidays. If time seems available during those weeks, I may choose to publish, but I’m not requiring it of myself. And rather than commit to a year, I’m committing to publishing through the end of March 2025. When April comes around, there’s so much to be done in the garden. I’ll give myself permission to stop then if I want. Who knows, perhaps the flow will be so nice at that point that I’ll be able to continue. Time will tell.
I’m hoping you’ll join me on this journey. Plant Songs will be another look at my process of composing. I have other project ideas in mind also, but composing has been calling out to me. I wrote somewhere around two hundred fifty pieces from 2002 to 2015. Since 2015 I think I’ve written four. I’ve changed since 2015. I’m feeling much more open than I did years ago. I’ve had a lot of time away from it. It’s time to get some new music out of me.
If you’re interested in following along, I suggest you subscribe to get email notifications of posts in special subscription field at the very top of this page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. I avoid social media these days, so I’m not sure how consistent I'll be in sharing on those platforms, and I’ll only occaissionally send an email to my list about the project. I don’t care about algorythms or making money from this project. I care about making art. It’s helpful for me to think that at least a few people are listening. Thanks for being here with me at the end of this long introduction. May the music and the rain flow abundantly!
