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In my thirties, I started listening seriously to modern classical music, to the point that I was able to distinguish between John Adams and John Luther Adams\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the latter composer I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be talking about now, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recently had occasion to read his memoir, Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n As you might guess, a good portion of the book is about moving to Alaska as a young man, setting himself up in a cabin in the woods, and working on his music in isolation. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would roll out of bed in the morning, crawl down the ladder from the sleeping loft, and find myself standing in the middle of my work,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he writes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I loved it. And I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine living any other way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Yet he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first to admit that this creative and personal freedom came with a cost: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For most of my thirties I really believed that I could have it all and do it all,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he admits several chapters earlier\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut, even though he was getting some substantial creative projects done, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as productive as I wanted to be. My music was suffering. My health was suffering. My relationship was suffering. Inevitably, something had to give.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t advise any young artist to do what I did,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he adds\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. yet, paradoxically, he also tells us, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As difficult as that period was in some respects, it endures in my memory as a kind of dreamtime. This didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come cheaply, for me or for people I love. It nearly cost me the love of my life. But those years in the woods were essential for me, as an artist and as a man\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 And the visions of music and of the world that emerged in that cabin have sustained me ever since.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve nurtured similar fantasies of being able to largely withdraw from the ordinary world and dedicate myself to my craft; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure many of you have as well. I suppose, in a way, I actually did get to live out that dream for a while, when I turned thirty; I had just left a dotcom job, so I had a small financial cushion that took me from Seattle to New York and made it possible to look for my next job without much immediate pressure, so I spent a lot of time reading novels and interviewing novelists and publishing the interviews here at Beatrice<\/em>. Mind you, I also spent a lot of time doing much less productive things with my life, and then I got a job which, it turned out, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a particularly great fit for me, and a few months after that job ended, the pressure got to be a bit more immediate.<\/p>\n After that, I spent years wavering back and forth between freelancing and staff positions, focusing for the most part on situations that spoke to my creative passions in some way. So at least, during those periods when I was doing little of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153my own work,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I would be writing about books and about the publishing industry, or trying to market books for one publisher, or acquiring and editing books for another publisher. Sometimes that was satisfying; sometimes it was frustrating. But I had obligations, to myself and my marriage, and though, like Adams, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always great at fulfilling those obligations, I tried to find a meaningful balance between my economic reality and my creative vision, rather than simply grab the first flimsy rope that came my way.<\/p>\n I do feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m better positioned now, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m profoundly grateful for that. I have a financially, emotionally, and even spiritually rewarding day job, and when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not doing that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m able to approach this newsletter without having been drained of all my creative energy and passion. Instead of scrambling to find time to write, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m able to imagine a creative future for myself\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto approach my writing with intention and thus with confidence. That confidence didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come because I scored a book deal, although that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another development for which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m grateful, but because I have a pretty good idea what I want to be doing, and I can keep myself moving in the general direction of that goal. (That said, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still plenty of room for surprises\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m relaxed enough to take my time with the story facets that catch me off guard, making myself the sort of person who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s able to consider, and contemplate, and learn from those \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sudden\u00e2\u20ac\u009d developments.)<\/p>\n Towards the end of his memoir, Adams quotes e.e. cummings: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am a man. I am an artist. I am a failure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I need to learn more about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nonlectures\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cummings gave at Harvard from which those lines come, but in the meantime, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got Adams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 gloss to turn over in my mind:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In some way, we are all failures. Yet, for me, the object of art and life is not success. It seems to me that the best any of us can do is try to conduct our lives so that, on balance, we give more than we take\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom the earth, and from our fellow human beings.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My life has been taking me in the direction of that concept for some time now, well before I picked up Silences So Deep<\/em>, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spent a lot of time figuring out the implications of choosing to live up to it. I know that I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always lived up to it in my life, especially in those decades before I actually took it seriously. One of the reasons I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pursuing the path I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been pursuing in the three years since I launched this newsletter is that I recognize all the times I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d fallen short in my life up to that point. I found myself in the midst of a metanoia<\/em>, a Greek word that many English translations of the New Testament render as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153repentance,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but which would probably be better described as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a change of heart\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a new way of thinking.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Metanoia is not a one-and-done deal; rather, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a recognition that the way you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been living isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t working out so great, and you need to commit to a better way moving forward.<\/p>\n I still make mistakes, but I get closer to getting things right, too. And, in doing so, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to take these lines from Silences So Deep<\/em> to heart:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Art is my own best chance for redemption. I intend to follow it as faithfully as I can until I draw my last breath.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <\/em>mean abandoning everything else completely, at least not as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to see it. It does<\/em> mean seeing everything else in perspective, finding ways to achieve a more comprehensively fulfilling life. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still learning what that might look like for me\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand it may bear little if any resemblance to the way it will look for you. We all have to find our own way, undertake our own retreats and returns. But we can still learn from each other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stories\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and, perhaps, we may be able to share what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned with someone else.<\/p>\n photo of john luther adams by louisa dedalus, from wikimedia commons<\/font><\/p>\n This post was first published in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a newsletter I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been writing since 2018. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to subscribe and get every new installment delivered to your email (free!), you can do that here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my thirties, I started listening seriously to modern classical music, to the point that I was able to distinguish between John Adams and John Luther Adams\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the latter composer I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be talking about now, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recently had occasion to read his memoir, Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska. As you might guess, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1128],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4604"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4609,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions\/4609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}