Dear subscribers,
This note is to let you know I’m still out here on break from the blog while invested in some large writing and music ambitions. I’ve missed last year’s fun but intense rhythm of posting a new essay every Tuesday and Friday, and look forward to resuming a comparable pace when time and energy allow. NOTE: If you’ve been a paying supporter, your subscription is still paused and I’ll give you fair warning before resuming.
Regarding those current large ambitions, there are two in particular that have me more or less captive: the in-progress memoir I’m calling HOW TO SURVIVE A MOTHER; and a six-month intensive program to learn how to compose & produce music for film, TV, and video soundtracks.
This latter opportunity is a gift I gave myself: formal composition training for the first time in my life. I’ve been winging it as a primarily self-taught composer/arranger/producer for 15 years now, and it has worked out reasonably well, but I’m anxious to level-up my skills to major music-industry standards. This is for artistic reasons alone, even if my efforts never attain major music-industry status. It’s simply lovely now to have a structure of classes and homework assignments, a handful of fantastic and generous working Hollywood professionals as teachers, and more than a dozen colleagues/new musical friends from around the world all learning together via Zoom. This coming late winter/early spring, I’ll develop the tracks for my first professional “sizzle reel” of soundtrack music and will share bits and pieces here for curious listeners.
As for the memoir….well, if you’ve been reading me a while, you won’t be surprised by either the title or its intentional double-entendre. Here is the brutal but beautiful truth: my mother’s death this past April was possibly the best thing that has ever happened to me, second only to the fact that she gave birth to me in the first place. If that sounds churlish, I don’t mean it to be. It’s a plain if paradoxical reality and I feel nothing but gratitude to be able to say so. Don’t worry: the book will eventually explain it all in detail.
In any case, after long years of of hard, complex, and often imperfect work to recover from the traumatic specifics of my family-of-origin, and especially after that last phase of direct involvement with Maxwellin’s end-of-life care, my mourning was notably brief and effective. Since mid-summer I’ve emerged with a sense of freedom and deep joy unlike anything I’ve known before. The difficult material of the book is now just material, just a story I’m able to tell without falling backward into the high drama it depicts. Once I’m through the thick of this wonderful music program, I’ll return my attentions to the book—and then, if all goes as planned, I will serialize the first several chapters here, possibly as a multimedia presentation, words+images+video+music.
Several years ago, an acquaintance offered me three free life-coaching sessions in exchange for a good testimonial if I liked his methods. It’s funny, I don’t remember anything that we talked about during those three hours, but I vividly recall the one question he asked me prior to our first session: If money were no object, how would you choose to spend your days?
I really liked how he phrased that question, as a matter of envisioning one’s actual hour-to-hour daily activities rather than one’s big, dreamy goals and ambitions. I answered him without hesitation.Oh, that’s easy, I’d write books in the daytime and play music at night.
As it happens, I’m slowly but surely approaching that ideal lifestyle, alongside some of its other important features: general physical and mental health; absolutely great friendships; a strong and happy bond between me and my child; even (to my surprise) a loving and mutually supportive new romantic relationship with an old friend who knows me better than anyone, occasionally even myself. While it’s possible to say I’ve paid a lot of hard dues to achieve this current happy state, I will never discount the role of damn good luck, nor will I take anything for granted.
Every day we are reminded that the world is full of hard and dark things. At the moment I have retreated considerably from what’s called “the news” even though it strikes me as the same old terrible, violent, unjust, unending shit: the history of human folly predictably repeating itself. Meanwhile, closer to home, I seem to be attending memorial services of friends and acquaintances at a quickening pace. It is terrible and it sucks and it is inevitable.
I hope 2023 has brought you some small personal triumphs and satisfactions at the very least, some small lovely things to celebrate this holiday season. 2024 promises to be a weird and possibly violent election year in this shockingly fragile democracy. Let’s bank some good memories and experiences, if possible, to keep us grounded a year from now.
Be good, y’all.
Sandhya