As I sit in my cabin at Loghaven in Knoxville, Tennessee, I can hear four layers of rain. There are heavy drops falling from the trees; when they land on the galvanized steel roof above me, they make a low, loud clump. There are more and more frequent drops falling on the galvanized steel roof below me. There is a tinkling which comes in waves of about two seconds. And supporting all that is a throbbing sheen.
A freight train down the hill sounds it's horn, which echoes across the woods. Just under the rain, I think I hear a hum from the train engine.
Today is day nine of a fifty-four day residency and I'm about settled in. People have asked what I'm working on while I'm here, and my answer is: “nothing, if you stay in a room with a piano long enough, music will happen.” I'm very grateful for this opportunity.
I came to Loghaven with no specific project to work on. The past ten months have been very full with the Broken Silence premiere, Somatic Experiencing Training, an intense and productive five-week residency in Aubervilliers, and performances in Albi, Pardubice, and New York. When Loghaven invited me, they said, “We want you to spend your time at Loghaven. If you want to work on something, you can, but the time is free.”
The Loghaven team put a lot into designing the situation. Right now, six artists including me each have our own cabins and our own workspaces. My cabin has very good acoustics for the trumpet and a gorgeous Steinway grand piano, recently tuned. Loghaven provides lunch, dinner, and a stipend for breakfasts and snacks. The grounds are located a thirty-minute walk to the commercial section of South Knoxville, and a one-hour walk from downtown and the University of Tennessee campus.
Except for dinner Monday through Friday at 6:30 pm, time is unstructured and I have no deadlines to create anything. This is different from the structured time in On Foot and Creating Music Together projects: a concert each day, a concert each week, a daily schedule, specific amounts of time for rehearsal, dedicated silent sittings, and so on. I've found structured time very supportive and fruitful. Having much less structure, no deadlines, and no obligations is new for me, and brings new challenges.
What to do with the time? How to handle this freedom? This responsibility?
After a week, I've decided not to decide in advance on a specific project, concert, or new work. This does not mean I will not do one, only that I have not committed to one. If a collaboration, concert, or silent walk speaks to me, I will respond as I can. The only real restriction I'm giving myself is walking everywhere I go. This helps me to slow down.
I consider music a spiritual practice. This practice begins with listening—listening to the sounds around us, and to the voice inside. This will be both my aim for the residency, but also the means. To stop and listen. When I don't know what to do, I just stop, and be present to where I am right now; I move my eyes and listen to what I can hear. Today, this meant a lot of time looking out the window and listening to the rain. This is a new situation for me, and I'm very curious how it will turn out.
Because it's easy to forget my aim, I have written it down.
Aim: to be present, listen, and respond.
While I'm curious to learn more about how to live with truly free time, there's a real danger in flushing the time down the toilet of social media or other distractions. So I've also written down some guidelines for myself:
First, stop and come back to where I am.
Begin and end the day making sound on the trumpet and the piano/kalimba/music box.
Honor rest.
When an idea comes up, write it down.
If I don't know what to do, play trumpet.
Take days completely off from email and internet.