Patience

At the end of last year, I worked intently on a new orchestral piece but then Christmas and New Year, predictably, broke my stride. Music composition is like long-distance running and frequent refueling is required anyway. A couple of weeks later and I am still engaged in a creative activity but one that promised to deliver more immediate rewards—painting. I was going to spend just a couple of days on a new portrait but then I was sucked into a vortex of organizing color swatches, calculating the ratios of carbon black to titanium white in gray, and testing various approaches to shading and layering. There are no immediate rewards for me, not in music and not in painting anymore. As I have grown in both disciplines, my expectations have changed and I have become more critical and more demanding of myself. Quality over quantity. Patience over restlessness. Learning and experimenting over merely producing.

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