Lack of Emotional Space, and the First 2 Sketches
In April of 2023, my goal is to have seven compositions written and arranged for an octet (8 person) ensemble. Working backwards from that, I should have seven themes or ideas to sketch music from. To find these themes, I continued to analyze and connect thoughts on the “Things that jump out at me” mind map. I began to see connections between different thoughts, knowing that I was trying to amalgamate the feelings and experiences of 14 different people. As I searched for meaning behind the connections I was making, I started to realize the themes. After I came up with all seven themes, I made lists underneath each, of feelings and experiences that first led me to identify each theme. After looking at the big picture I moved some of the feelings/experiences around between different themes, searching for a place where they made the most sense. You will notice that the themes are not super well defined or neat, some are adjectives or verbs and others are nouns. I didn’t think it was important to try to have something consistent here, so I just left the themes the way they were. Currently the seven themes I am working on are: Powerless (emotionally), Resourceless, Dreams, Anxiety, Cherish, Death, Information.
After looking at this list, I wondered to myself why neither sadness nor pain became a theme. Maybe I had made a mistake, maybe I should rethink. Or maybe I was not in the right head space. As I thought, I remembered moments in each interview, and tried to ask, was there sadness and pain? Many people cried, which society associates with sadness and pain, but it wasn’t quite that. It felt as if these people had been through so much that they didn’t allow themselves to feel sadness or pain. There was no emotional space. They were at the ends of their emotional availability and these very basic feelings were shut out from their bodies. Realizing this was scary but eye opening.
I took the time to listen to some Ukrainian Folk music last week and take notes. On one particular album many of the songs were a capella (only voices, no instruments) and each song had the same arrangement. One person would sing a call, and a choir would sing the response, The call was usually the beginning of a lyrical phrase and the response was the end of the lyrical phrase. This is a common arrangement style seen in many types of folk music from different areas of the world. Many of the songs had weird numbers of beats, meaning not the structure of a pop song at all. Pop (and many other genres) usually have 4 beats in a bar, which means you can clap on 2 and 4 (or 1 and 3, but don’t be surprised if musicians don’t like you) and have a good time, and it’ll make sense with the song. But some of this folk music hopped around between phrases of 3 and 2 beats, or had a section of 3 and then a section of 2 (or 4, however you are counting). Basically, for comparison, this meter change (different numbers of beats) is a characteristic of progressive rock and some modern jazz. Coincidentally, this is something that Sam (the film maker) and I talked about last week! He is also a musician and plays guitar. It seems like there are plenty of interesting musical techniques I will be able to use that directly come from Ukrainian traditional music.
After waiting for so long, and avoiding writing any music, yesterday I finally began sketching. My goal is to get 4 sketches done this week, so I am trying a very focused and systematic approach. I have decided to avoid all distractions and electronics during my allotted writing time; everything is on “do not disturb” and out of the room. I tune and set-up the guitar, in case there is something I hear that I would like to try and sit at the piano. I bring a blank manuscript book (music paper), blank paper, pencil, voice recorder and camera (which stays on the side and I ignore it). I set a timer for 2h, pick one of the themes and begin brainstorming. Yesterday I was able to write a sketch for the theme “Powerless” and today for the theme “Dreams”. Into both of these sketches, I have incorporated Ukrainian music elements. In the first I used the harmonic minor scale, which is a sound commonly found in Ukrainian traditional music and in the second I adapted an existing melody of the “Hopak”– a Ukrainian dance.
Thank you for joining me in this project.
This project is made possible with the support of Canada Council for the Arts.