One lesson of existence is that a group of idiots working together will achieve more than one genius of any ability.
An exhausting day yesterday doing various things, including a unusual day trip and household jobs. In the intermediate time I've been transcribing, scoring, the Fall in Green music. It's less important to exactly notate recorded works, like Jabberwocky or Harr Kasperle or Lost at the Fair, but I still need to notate the details of these for playing live (they have to be at close to the recordings, ideally the same but better). For live works that aren't recorded, I can, could, and have, make up things in a more haphazard way, so that no two performances are the same. In practice, I stick to the same key, same mood, same instrumentation, but over many performances these tend to be 'sanded down' to an equal smoothness and so they become very similar each time. There are many new pieces in our new show, Wonderland, and a few ones that have not been recorded, but most have been performed live at least once, so I need to note down what I played more exactly than before... all of this work, for this tiny few minutes for a small crowd. The notation is for my memory, but it should theoretically allow others to play it, so this is an important part of the art too; in some ways this is far more important as this notation will outlast me and any memory of us, but this also adds to my burden, as I need to do it reasonably well and thoroughly, more than I would need for a mere mnemonic.
This takes time and is frustrating due to that. It feels like I'm tied in knots of old-ground, a tedious transcribing job anyone could do, rather than working on important future works that only I can. In painting, design of the first batch of small works is complete, so I'm starting to draw out a few larger ones, like the Shakespeare one. Perhaps then, I'll move to even larger ones... I have a few ideas this morning.
