Yesterday morning I was driving to work when I got an idea for an avenue to pursue in
the piece I’m working on. I whipped out my cell phone, tooling down the highway (legal here), and called my office, leaving a message on my voicemail.
“hello Lawrence, this is Lawrence…you know that passage that begins with the bassoon solo?...”
When I got to my office fifteen minutes later, I checked my messages, and found the idea, which I had already forgotten (which gives you some sense of what a haunted house my mind is – I lose ideas in these drafty corridors all the time), and I swiftly scribbled it down on a pad of paper.
Then I emailed myself, describing what I had written down in front of me.
When I got home last night, I checked my email, and there was the idea, fresh as the jangled angles of the morning sunlight. I began threading it into the piece I’ve been working on.
The 12-hour journey that idea took – car to phone to voicemail to notepad to email to score -- I couldn’t have conceived of such a thing twenty years ago. I wonder how archaic it will seem in another twenty years.
