Matthew Saunders’ Blog

In aviation, a stall is a dreaded moment: an airplane climbs at too steep an angle, and doesn’t have sufficient thrust to maintain airspeed over the wings, loses lift, and begins to fall out of the sky. This is a problem so basic that even working on Aviation Merit Badge as a Scout (where the national BSA policy was that you wouldn’t actually leave the ground), I found myself in a simulator and put the simulated plane into a simulated stall within seconds of taking to the simulated sky. Stalls happen for a number of reasons, including pilot error, and every pilot needs to know how to correct (and avoid) them.

In writing my symphony, I am in the process of drafting the second movement, and I find myself in a stall. Late September and the first part of October, as detailed in my previous post, saw me composing a first movement in a white heat–consistently getting up early for my 6-7am timeslot, taking advantage of days when more time was available, working through a plan–both for work and for the form of the piece–that I was very happy with. It was my usual productive fall–I’ve seen this before, and I’ve mentioned my season-correlated cyclic energy levels. The months of September and October are important–I am rested from summer break, the days are getting shorter, but they are often sunny. After my blog post on October 20, I deliberately took some time away from the symphony, though. I knew that I was only at the beginning of a long journey, and that it is important to let the project rest and marinate from time to time. After a week, though, it seemed like enough, and I dove into the second movement: my first sketches are dated October 30, and I proudly wrote “Reformation Day” at the top of my outline for the second movement.

For the first part of November, all was going well, although I notice that my work on the sketches doesn’t reflect every day. My musical language in this movement is different, and I made the decision to incorporate some quotations from a piece that I wrote for my father’s aunt, Nancy Turner Sturdivant, who passed away this month (I wasn’t close to her, but I admired her, and she was very special to my father; there should be a blog post on her). I have also been working with string glissandi and some use of the kind of controlled aleatory. Not a piece that goes easily into Sibelius, and not a piece that, frankly, matches well with the first movement I was so excited about. About a week ago, in a fit of procrastination, I went back to the first movement and listened again, and now I’m worried that, in order for what I’m doing in the second movement to make sense, the first movement will require some major revisions.

Self-care is a word that gets thrown around a lot by composers, and I’ve been trying to make sure that I give myself time and space to do good composing on this project–my dream project of a quarter-century. I pretend that my work and my composing are two different worlds: my job at Lakeland Community College is a very good one, but there is no expectation in it that I be a composer (a conductor, yes, but not a composer). As the semester pushes forward, my job changes: I add an online class during the second 8-weeks of the term, more work is due in the full-term classes, the end-of-semester tasks begin to loom, and the things that were started earlier in the semester have to be wrapped up. Just as I know my seasonal rhythm, after thirteen years on the semester plan, I know this rhythm as well. My job isn’t especially stressful (at least not the way I work), but it requires mental energy that comes from a limited supply, and when things ramp up there (an orchestra concert in November, with another looming on December 9; my post-tenure review due; switching over to my 2nd 8-weeks classes; beginning to think about Spring semester), it starts to impinge on my creative work.

Then there is the reality of family life. Becky is under tremendous stress right now. In October, she accepted a promotion in her job at Ulta Beauty to a full-time management position. I whole-heartedly support this, but it has meant a different schedule, as she is now opening and closing the store at times, and just working more hours. Is October the best time to take on additional responsibilities in a retail environment? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think she is struggling at work in any way, but it is still a source of stress, and she feels that she is pushing herself, just as I am pushing myself in writing this symphony. On top of it, her parents are in the process of downsizing, and it hasn’t been an easy process for anyone, which compounds her stress at work.

So now I find myself taking time away from the piece: days when I find something else to do with my hour; mornings when I hit the snooze bar and lose part of my hour; mornings when my hour isn’t productive because I’m too tired from staying up late to support Becky or just to read a science fiction novel. I am in a stall at the moment.

Like the pilot facing a stall, I have seen these things coming: I knew that Becky’s job would shift some things at home onto me. I knew that the workload at Lakeland would shift as the semester progresses. I knew that my fall energy would fade and that the excitement of beginning this project wouldn’t last. This was completely predictable.

• Just as any pilot is trained to break out a stall, I have an idea of what to do:
• Allow myself the time away, firm in the knowledge that the work will be there when I come back to it, and that there is plenty of time: the better part of two years before the final piece needs to be ready for a November 2021 premiere.
• Get more sleep. Going to bed much after 10pm means that my 6am composition slot is not a healthy habit. For a few weeks, I wonder if I ought to make a rule that I’m not getting up early if I go to bed late and stick to it.
• Change up the routine: I have this opportunity coming with the end of the semester. I have a couple of weeks where I may not have to rely on my 6am hour as much. As good a thing as it is, some of my best work happens when I am able to break out of the 6am slot and compose in other times and places.
• Exercise. I can’t get the sunlight I was getting earlier this semester, but I can at least get my body moving.
• Diet. Halloween put a temporary end to my attempts to lower my refined sugar consumption. Since then, it has been a cookie or a piece of candy whenever I feel like it, and that can’t continue. I’ve gotten into a 2:30pm diet cola habit at work, too, and I need to break out of that.
• Confidence in my training. I know that I can write this piece. I know that I know what to do to keep going in the face of a loss of lift.

I can pull out of this stall.