The Minneapolis rapper and producer Brother Ali once wrote in his classic 2003 track “Forest Whitaker” that “Whatever comes up, comes out. We don’t put our hands over our mouths.” Well, ok. Admirable. I pound my clenched fist into my chest over my heart three times in a righteous show of solidarity. Brother, I only wonder if you actually do this, or do you self-edit and carefully consider what’s useful and what isn’t.
Today, I’m thinking about how challenging it has been to incorporate joy and beauty into my music when we are all surrounded by what is going on outside. W.A. Mozart famously created some of his most joyful music during his most troubled times. I, on the other hand, sit down and try to approach projects with joy and a state of play and find myself scratching out potential lyrics like Spinning Plates.
Spinning Plates actually started as a choral piece inspired by Charles and Ray Eames and their love of the circus. It quickly turned hard-left into a criticism of the SCOTUS nomination hearings. In the end, this will likely get filed away into the Scrapbook of Future Considerations and Reconstructions. I present it here mainly to illustrate the difficulties one composer is having trying to make sense of the world around him, and how some composers are laser-focused while others have difficulty going any other way than the way the wind blows.
Joy and a state of play both seem very far away…
Spinning Plates
Why am I watching this distraction this
manipulation media circus extravaganza
of trained elephants
whipped into submission
too tortured to
exude a shattered shell of self-respect
beneath the collapsing walls
of our once upon a time big tent
All about the peanuts now
they can’t even muster enough dignity
to swat away the flies
feasting on their festering decay
—October 14, 2020