Book Review

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston

This book was great. It's set in the early part of the 20th century and moves between Georgia and Florida. The main character, Janie Crawford, is one of the best heroines I've ever encountered. She refuses to simply and unquestioningly accept what the people around her think she should be. She finds out for herself who she is and how she wants her life to be. She finds both joy and sorrow, but she also finds out how to be truly alive and truly herself. Nothing ever tramples her under. And Hurston's writing is beautiful yet direct and natural.

Virgil Thompson and Lou Harrison Were Right

In a little notebook Lou Harrison put together on composing, he mentions that Virgil Thompson had a good method for dealing with creative blockage: write one short piece a day. Eventually a larger idea will come along. I now know from experience that this works.
In the fall, I decided to write a series of brief piano pieces, things I could complete in a few days (Thompson and Harrison say one day, I know, but with a full-time job and applications to complete, I had to give myself more leeway). My foremost reason for doing so was a sense of creative fatigue. I had been working almost exclusively on large pieces for the last three or four years, and I was feeling like I had run out of steam. So I wrote smaller, simpler things that wouldn't require quite so much of me.
And lo and behold, a large idea has finally come along. Or rather it grew out of the most recent brief piano piece, a little waltz. I'm going to write a piano sonata, complete with the usual four movements and the use of sonata-allegro form (although I will probably modify the structure somewhat, since it is no longer the era of Mozart and Beethoven). I've never done this before. It's quite a challenge, but it's all taking shape in my mind surprising quickly and well.