17/1/25 - Murky

Well folks, it’s a new year. Welcome to 2025. Today it is extremely windy. My large, flimsy 3rd storey windows usually rattle but I’m hearing some noises from them today that I don’t think I’ve heard before. The storm the other night was wild too. At its most raging, I watched sheets of water flung around in the wind as it bent trees over, and watched the gutter down on the street become a fast-flowing creek. Lightning flickered nearly constantly, all around. Late into the night after the storm seemed to have passed I was still watching stunningly big and bright lightning bolts while lying in bed. I do love living in my Summer Hill flat. But also, climate change.

Due to the time of year, I’ve spent a lot of time at home lately. I was out in Kandos this time a week ago, but I’ll talk about that a bit later. At this time of year, typically, I don’t have much on. No school or university, and lots of venues are on a break so not many gigs either. I try to spend this time composing, trying to get some things planned for the year for my music projects, and getting mundane stuff done that got put on the back burner when life was busier. This is all work of a kind, so sometimes it’s hard just stopping and doing nothing at home, when so many things seem to be calling to me to do them while I can. And my house could always be cleaner and tidier.

But this is my PhD blog. And, while the above might not seem relevant, it kind of is. It’s all related. Things feel a bit stagnant lately. Murky, frustrated. There are times in my life when the creative juices have flowed, very easily. This is not one of those times. Which is annoying because right now is a very good time to be creative, before other things start getting in the way. But, I guess you can’t force it. I’ll have to try to be patient. People have said I should try to take a break and relax. I feel Iike I’ve done that… sort of. Maybe not fully. Even my attempts at relaxing have been sort of murky and frustrated. I feel as though I am lacking spark, am less confident than usual, unsure of myself and a bit insular.

Despite all this, with input from Wangal Country I have managed to compose one new piece, for myself and cellist Mary Rapp to play. We’re booked in to record at ANU in a couple of weeks, and the plan is to play this new one, as well as two others which we performed last October at the ARRCC conference; “Go Mangrove” (I arranged a new trumpet and cello version) and “Butterfly and Vale”. The new piece is called “Wangal View from The Canopy”. Which is what I see every day I’m at home (my wifi channel is called “The Canopy” because I’m up at treetop-level, and have lots of plants). So I guess it speaks to my life at the present, being here and witnessing Wangal Country, knowing and feeling connected to it. The piece came out of an improvisation I recorded myself playing in December, as I looked out the window of my music room, on a day quite different to this one. I felt good when doing this improvisation; the ideas felt meaningful and seemed to want to become more. It’s quite a simple improvisation really, with a few ideas and shapes that I dug into and tried in different configurations. Most of the original improvisation has been kept in the piece, but I omitted some sections and repeated others. The cello takes some of the melodies at the start and finish, is a textural underpinning other times, and at other times will be more featured, as I keep to the simple melodies and Mary has space to improvise. Overall I plan for it to build in volume and intensity slowly. The piece is finished by a simple melody that roughly outlines the contours of Wangal Country as I see it from my flat, and know it from walking the area. Mary and I haven’t played it yet, so things could change. Hopefully it goes well!

I have the beginnings of ideas for other pieces too.

There’s one about casuarinas at Gumura/Iron Cove, inspired by the indentations of their fallen needles in my palms as I leaned back on my hands while sitting under them one day in December. The patterns the needles made on my palms was very striking and put me in mind of the way Country imprints on us. I’m thinking this piece will be for Spectra Jazz Orchestra and have a strong, jaunty rhythmic element inspired by the casuarina imprints. I haven’t made a start on it yet though.

There’s an idea for a piece about a mostly-dry creekbed in the Capertee National Park which, like my creative juices currently, is not flowing, but is instead murky and stagnant in the few places it holds water. While I was there a melody came to mind that’s quite melancholy (and if I’m honest, maybe a bit predictable), but I haven’t yet decided what to do with it.

Another idea for a piece is actually a bunch of related ideas which may actually be too many for a single piece. One idea is about feeling the pull of Country, specifically in this case Dabee Country, and the amazing skyline you can see stretching north to east outside the towns of Kandos and Rylstone, and how it always brings me joy and excitement. Following on from this is the frustration of wanting to get places that you can’t go. Private properties and roads, and the whole idea of possession of land which is colonial, and following from that a realisation of the vast difference between how people move through Country now as opposed to pre-1788. And then following from that an extra layer in my understanding of how much has been taken from Indigenous peoples. How cut off they are from Country they used to know so intimately. The fact that their nations seem small to us who call this whole continent a nation, but really, their knowing of these nations was so deep and detailed and multi-dimensional in ways we can’t fathom because we’re so used to only knowing a fraction of them. My understanding of what Country means to Indigenous folks is extremely limited, but in thinking about these things, and in feeling a pull and a yearning to know Dabee Country more deeply, as well as a pain that so much of it is off-limits because of this idea of possessing Country, living Country… Maybe I’m getting a tiny glimpse of comprehension. There’s music in all of that, somewhere.

And a last idea, a simpler one. On my last full day out in Dabee Country I was in the Capertee Valley, driving through and watching storm clouds move across the sky, heavy rain falling from them in white sheets, obscuring parts of the incredible landscape. I was sitting in my car at the triangular dirt patch at the intersection that leads down into Glen Davis, watching the clouds gather over the clifftops to the northeast, and revelling in the strong winds with my windows down. I had my trumpet with me (I don’t usually have it – I still feel like playing the trumpet in many of the places I go is too much of an imposition) and decided to have a play in response to the wind and general storminess, sitting in my car. I could see the approaches of the 3 roads so, since I was feeling self-conscious, this would enable me to stop playing in time for passers-by to just think I was sitting enjoying the sights (albeit from the passenger seat – not gonna try and play trumpet with a steering wheel in the way). So I recorded myself improvising with the wind and the stormy, cliffy scenery for a while. It could become another solo trumpet etude, although I won’t put myself through the pain of transcribing the whole thing, just the bits I find the most interesting when I listen back. Unlike the “Wangal View” piece, this one had a lot of notes, many quite fast.

And so, that’s where I’m at right now. One piece down, and ideas for four more. I’ll also have to prioritise the order in which I work on them. For a new Spectra piece, the sooner I start, the better, so I’m hoping to have a turn around in terms of creative flow quite soon. Forcing these things can result in a piece that is “not my best but it’ll do” rather than a piece that feels like it expresses something profound. I’m also aware I didn’t really talk in much detail about my trip last week, but at least some of the ideas I mentioned here give a bit of a picture. So, I’ll sign off for now, and perhaps next time some of these ideas will have been fleshed out.