The List #23: The Avalanche

One of my first interactions at last week’s 2024 International Double Reed Society Conference was harsh, brutal criticism from someone who was about to perform one of my works for the first time. It was about my contrabassoon writing, which was too high and too fast, and I learned in that moment that my music had been changed without my permission to be more comfortable. It worked, because I am good at writing invertible counterpoint, but I felt that I should have been included in the decision to change my music.

This is the treatment that I am most used to when people perform my work. I am very accustomed to receiving criticism, because it is mostly how I talk about my own music. It is very easy for me to internalize criticism. This interaction was normal for me, and I started immediately discounting and minimizing the work I did on my first bassoon quartet because of that criticism. I can do better, I told myself. These people deserve better that what I gave them.

I have a very long history of crippling self-deprecation. Apparently people find it off-putting. And I now see why.

Because that was the first and last criticism of my work that I received at the 2024 IDRS conference.

I am not used to praise. I don’t really know how to take a compliment. When someone compliments me, I feel like a worm trying to wriggle off a hook. I usually deflect, ask the person about themselves. Anything to escape being complimented for my work, because my brain is telling me that I absolutely, unequivocally do not deserve to be praised at all for the work that I know I did.

Praise creates visibility, and I am used to being invisible. I am used to expending way more energy in creating music and receiving an amount of energy less than equal when it is experienced. It is hard to stand in the spotlight, because I have never felt like I deserve it.

There’s a big difference between someone telling you that you’re great and telling yourself that you’re good enough to be told that you’re great.

By the fourth day of IDRS, I had experienced 5 of 6 premieres and an avalanche of praise after each one. In the immediate aftermath of the premiere of Sandbox Mode, the English horn octet that my brain was convinced should have never been championed or made possible by eight English hornists in any normal reality, I finally broke down. Overwhelmed and overstimulated by wave upon wave of praise, my body had no further ability to process all the emotion and I collapsed onto a chair in a hallway outside the IDRS exhibition hall and began to cry, no longer able to stop myself.

Enter probably the best person to encounter at an IDRS conference when one is emotionally and physically bereft of energy: Julie of Barton Cane. She immediately plops herself down next to me, encourages me to let it out, offers me some much-needed water, makes me laugh, and informs me that the fact that I’m having trouble processing praise means that I am not an asshole but am actually a badass. She gives me a big hug, which allowed for some of the negative energy I had internalized to dissipate, and I went back into the fray.

I then sought out the advice of Jennet Ingle, who has changed my life in so many ways, most of which I will outline in my upcoming IDRS retrospective. She recommended additional grounding techniques, a book about self-doubt that has been an infinitely difficult but enormously illuminating read so far, and the wisdom that only 49% of my work is below average, which is simply true. All of this to say that she gave me tools to work through the fact that I struggle to process praise, and went back to the conference a little more prepared to face it.

I am not complaining about being praised for my work that was included at IDRS 2024. That was the culmination of eight months of composition work, the organizational power of many people around me, and a community of musicians breathing life into my music in unexpected ways that revealed something between my notes that I didn’t know was there. I know I did that work. I know that I surrounded myself with people who were there for me doing that work.

I really want to be able to tell myself that I deserve the praise I got at IDRS. I haven’t been able to do it yet. My brain keeps telling me otherwise.

I know that my ability to process praise in a healthy way is impaired. I know that my craving for criticism that centers me is an unhealthy addiction. I’m working through it. This was the first step in healing a long history of pain, humiliation, and self harm caused by chronic criticism. I know I had a lot of work to do. I know it’s not going to be easy, but I also know that I will be a better, happier person if I do it.

I also know that the contrabassoon part for my bassoon quartet was damn good, that the criticism I received about it was not warranted or timely, and that I deserve better than to normalize criticism as how I rational what I do and evaluate the music I make.

The List #22: Rebuilding Kincaid

You may have noticed some things have changed.

It’s not exactly a new website, but it’s a new design, and one that much more effectively features my music. There are things I’m not happy with about it (the classic blog format, for example), and I’m working on improving the new website design, but overall, I’m happy with each work having its own space to live and breathe.

It’s important to recognize what works and what doesn’t for you. The old website was clunky and took forever to update, but this new website design streamlines a lot of the things that made it difficult for me to enjoy the process of doing what I do.

I am much, much happier with the new www.kincaidrabb.com.

The List #21: Trevco

This item on the list is pretty short, but a lot of thought went into this decision.

My music is exclusively published by Trevco Music Publishing. My scores are only available in print from Trevco, and I no longer distribute my scores digitally (outside of commissioning).

My experience publishing with Trevco over the last year has been spectacular. My editor, T.D. Ellis, is a dream collaborator: patient, thorough, responsive, honest, discerning, and patient. I am so happy to be working with one of the best publishers a composer could ask for, and I am honored to have my music available exclusively through their store.

Trevco now handles all of my publication business. If a score for one of my works that you know exists is unavailable from Trevco, that means that it is not available at all.

This may sound a little ominous, but what it usually will mean is either a) the score for the work you’re after is in the publication pipeline with Trevco but not yet released; b) under exclusivity with another performer, ensemble, or consortium; or c) in need of substantial enough revision that I have shelved it until someone comes asking. If you email me and inquire about the availability of a score that is not already published by Trevco, I will tell you which of those three categories the work falls under and give you an estimation on when it will become available.

For example, at the time of writing this, Wasatch Crest is currently in the publication pipeline with Trevco. I don’t know when it will be made available, but it is one of my most requested scores by solo harpists looking to develop a callus from playing harmonics. Special is currently under exclusivity with Kontra Duo until July 1, 2024. After that, it will be made available in three versions: baritone saxophone and harp (the original), bass clarinet and harp (so I can play it), and (just in time for IDRS 2024) bassoon and harp. Three Aviaries for Oboe, English Horn, Narrator, and String Quartet is unavailable because it is the most poorly formatted score I have ever created, and it would take a significant amount of effort to make it publication-ready. These are just three examples of the different categories of publication status, but you can contact me directly through email to check on the status for any score at any time.

Most of my present and future commissioning agreements include some kind of stipulation on exclusivity, but after the conclusion of the exclusivity period, they will be made available through Trevco. In very rare instances, scores may not be available after their performance due to other factors.

For new versions of works arrange for an instrumentation that is not the original will be handled on a case-by-case basis. There are a lot of factors that go into how I handle arranging my works.

But, for the most part, all past, present, and future Kincaid Rabb scores are now only available through Trevco.

The List #20: Painting a Wall with a Power Drill

When I was a composition student, my teachers (especially in my undergrad) gave me a lot of tools that I use today. Everything from writing the rhythm first to reinventing set theory in a way that works for me, from extracting entire movements from one motif to thinking of form as an envelope of energy expenditure. But the tool that has most influenced the way I write to a fault? Counterpoint.

When I describe the kind of composer I am to other musicians, I usually say that I am a contrapuntalist. I don’t know a lot of composers of my generation that identify as a contrapuntalist, so self-identifying as one is an interesting take on what it means to be a 21st century composer. Throughout the last 600ish years, we’ve seen a clear evolution of what contrapuntal music looks like: Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg, Strauss, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Persichetti, Maslanka — and Rabb.

I remember when I first learned counterpoint in my junior year from one of the best teachers I have ever had. My brain simply lit up. Rules? For writing music? Sign my autistic ass up.

But counterpoint is not the only tool that can build a work of music. It can’t do everything, and I’ve been treating it as though it can.

Counterpoint is a power drill. It structures a piece of music together with steel supports, fixes a lattice of wooden frames to them, and binds the structure together with walls. Counterpoint is about hardware, about creating passages that are perhaps beautiful but definitely structurally sound. When people teach counterpoint, we talk in terms like “strong” and “weak”, because there are things that work and things that don’t. The counterpoint tool encourages musical tropes that reinforce our expectations as listeners.

It is hard to decorate the walls with a power drill.

This summer, I started teaching composition lessons to one student who has been my guinea pig for developing the way I teach, and I have found myself teaching the variety of compositional tools that were imprinted upon me as a composition student myself. Naturally, I got to thinking about how I don’t practice what I teach, about how almost every one of my compositions eventually become a counterpoint exercise.

The thing is, I think I’m more creative than that. I know I’m more creative than that. And I can prove it.

When I was writing Three Aviaries for Oboe, English Horn, Narrator, and String Quartet, I quickly realized that counterpoint could not write the whole work. Three of the movements are aleatoric. Two of the movements are for solo monophonic instrument and narrator. The five remaining movements are mostly contrapuntal, but I still had to expand the tools I used for them.

And that is the best work I have ever written. So far.

There’s nothing wrong with counterpoint or being a contrapuntalist, but I think I need to be more deliberate about the tools in my compositional toolbox I use when I write. I need to put my money where my mouth is and practice what I preach.

I am not just a contrapuntalist. I color with all the crayons in the box.

The List #19: Here (In Your Arms)

I just finished reading another book, nestled comfortably on the couch at home, occasionally looking up to watch as my ming aralia gets ruffled by the pivoting floor fan circulating air throughout my living room. This time it was Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material, a queer romance novel that’s too British for its own good and that pings that slow burn part of my brain that I cultivated by reading too much Harry Potter fanfiction when I was a teenager.

At the same time, I had my headphones on and was listening to music. I have a Spotify playlist that I associate with writing — not music, just words — and I stopped on one particularly song: Here (In Your Arms), by Hellogoodbye. I remember loving that song in high school, in the time between when my first relationship had disastrously imploded and I had been dragged, kicking and screaming, from the safety of the closet. It still makes me feel that first heartache in waves — first little torrents that tickle my ankles with the chill of the Pacific and then tsunami upon tsunami — and I can always rely on it immersing me in those feelings when I was young and still figuring myself out.

Spotify is kind of magical. Yeah, sure, they’ve made it impossible for musicians to collect any reasonable residuals from recordings of our works, but there’s one feature, Enhance, that takes an existing collection of songs and suggests similar songs. That algorithm is powerful, and today it kept suggesting banger after banger, each one reinforcing the feeling of reading Boyfriend Material and reliving the nostalgia I have for an earlier, less complicated version of me.

And, for the first time in years, my brain didn’t just immediately start analyzing the music. I got to enjoy songs I’d never heard before mixed in with very familiar songs without having to be an active listener as part of the work of being a professional composer. It was another breath of fresh air.

For composers, there is a danger of letting music become only work. You can lose the joy in listening to it. It happens to a lot of us. And for a long time, I did lose that joy. But, somehow, miraculously, I am finding a surprising enjoyment of music in that same place in which I enjoy reading and writing queer stories.

I’ve neglected my safe spaces for too long. Somewhere in all the degrees and commissions and consortiums and projects and goals, I forgot about the safe place in which I can thrive. What a cruelty I have inflicted upon myself. I am so lucky to be able to reclaim this part of me.

I have two more unread queer novels before I have to go back to my local queer-owned-and-operated romance bookstore for more.

As for listening music? Adventure is out there.

The List #18: Red, White, and Royal Blue

Today, I am sitting in my favorite place in the whole world, drinking my second jar of iced tea, surrounded by climbing umbrella plants and drinking in the cavernous, bright space. I’m also crying, because I just started and finished Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue in a matter of mere hours, turning pages after pages, my eyes darting between words, unable and unwilling to stop myself from devouring it all at one time.

I used to be a voracious reader. When I was a kid, I used to read and read fast. I used to read fantasy, science fiction, adventure — and love it. There weren’t so many screens, and I escaped into books.

And then something changed. Through middle school and high school, it was dystopia upon dystopia. It was Lord of the Flies and The Crucible, Brave New World and Catcher in the Rye. One woman was ostracized by her whole society and another walked into the ocean to drown. I struggled through the literary thickets of As I Lay Dying and the visceral gore of Life of Pi.

I read books that hurt to read, that murdered every happy moment with immediate and relentless tragedy and left only hopeless, broken characters and killed all the joy I had for reading and loving stories.

For a while, fanfiction was a safe place. It wasn’t the same as feeling a book’s spine expand at my touch, and my eyes strained reading incomplete stories about familiar characters in unfamiliar situations, but there was spark of joy in reading it. But then people in power tend to reveal the worst parts of themselves, and a whole safe place can evaporate all at once and fanfiction soured in my mouth.

I turned to nonfiction, but it’s not the same. Sometimes nonfiction is a reassuring voice, but it’s mostly a literary podcast, an avalanche of interesting information — but not a story.

So maybe that’s why reading a book that was fun to read knocked me over so hard and caused me to burst into tears in public. I haven’t laughed at a book like that in years. I’ve never seen myself in a book like that. It made me feel young again, made my brain feel fresh and exhilarated, somehow ready again to dive into it all.

I even hesitated to buy it in Bookmans this morning, laden with nonfiction and my partner’s selections. It was fiction, after all. I hadn’t even read a sentence of fiction in years. I thought that part of me was irreparably damaged. And I have never been so happy to realize that it isn’t.

I want to read more for pleasure. I want to be recommended a book and to feel good reading it. I was to reconnect with reading and unplugging, turning off my phone and ignoring a world that wants to notify me of things that don’t matter as much as the pages between my fingers.

I love reading. To protect me and heal myself, I need it. And I’m overjoyed that I found it in me again.

Today is a good day.

The List #17: Please Exit Through the Gift Shop

The biggest reason I chose to take a hiatus is because of boundaries. Now that I have established that I have boundaries (and that having boundaries are okay), it’s time I enforce them.

At theme parks, it is common practice to have a gift shop at the end of each ride or attraction. While this is an opportunity to create memorabilia around the experience to reinforce the theme of the experience itself, the gift shop phenomenon has become somewhat of a pejorative for the cynical to critique themed entertainment spaces and the people who enjoy them.

I’m reclaiming it. I’m a giving person, but I have limits. I have boundaries, and if you don’t like them or how I implement them in my life, you can simply exit my life through the gift shop.

You are welcome in my life as long as you respect my boundaries. If you don’t respect my boundaries or you need me to remind you what my boundaries are, we probably aren’t right for each other. If that’s the case, that’s okay. Not everyone gets along. If we’re not meant to work together, I’m going to ask you to get off the ride and exit through the gift shop.

There are lots of things to purchase in the gift shop. You can purchase any of my scores and play them to your heart’s content. You can purchase any number of future products I may devise. Or you can pass through the gift shop entirely on the way to your next ride or attraction.

If you have no intention of paying me what I’m worth, please exit through the gift shop.

If you’re not going to sign a contract with me, guaranteeing us a professional agreement and protection for both our rights as collaborators, please exit through the gift shop.

If you want to involve me in your drama, please exit through the gift shop.

If you want to create drama in my life, please exit through the gift shop.

If you want to stand on my shoulders to feel tall, please exit through the gift shop.

If you want to take advantage of my disability in communication or social interaction, please exit through the gift shop.

If you don’t communicate with me and expect me to understand unspoken expectations you have of me, please exit through the gift shop.

If you only want to talk to me about my music in terms of how it can be of use to you and not on the actual merits and artistry of my work, please exit through the gift shop.

If you choose to minimize my considerable talents and work ethic because of what I am, whether that be queer, trans, nonbinary, or disabled, please exit through the goddamn gift shop.

If you have no intention of accommodating my disabilities, please exit through the gift shop.

If you judge me before getting to know me, please exit through the gift shop.

If you repeatedly demand I take energy from tomorrow for you, please exit through the gift shop.

And if you want to gaslight me, create chaos in my professional life, or talk about me behind my back while pestering me to write you music for free, please exit through the motherfucking gift shop.

The List #16: Chill

I have a long history of having no chill.

People who have known me a lot time know that I once tended to be very high strung. I had opinions on everything, made mountains out of every molehill, recklessly overcommitted myself, and constantly worked as if everything was an emergency. There was always another hill to die on. Everything needed to be done, no matter the detriment to my physical, mental, or emotional health.

Some of you probably have memories of me being like this. For that, thank you for your patience with me and I am sorry.

I turn 30 this year. I don’t have opinions on everything and I don’t voice half the opinions I do have because I just don’t want to argue about it. There are very few mountains among the molehills. I am done making promises I can’t keep. Very little is an actual emergency. I’m not looking to die on any hills. I have back pain now. I’m not taking any more energy from tomorrow.

I am claiming some chill.

I am allowed to take things slow. It is okay to take the time I need to make deliberate creative decisions. It is okay to give people space and for me to have the space I need. I don’t need to jump on every opportunity or enter every award or submit to every call for scores.

Sometimes there are external deadlines. I have a couple on my mind right now. But as far as I can control the way that I work, expect me to take the most time you can give me.

Composing doesn’t need to be stressful. I have made a lot of bad creative decisions because I have procrastinated on things or because I was waiting on permission from someone else to make a creative decision. I’m done with that.

I am now a chill composer.

Feels so much better. A breath of fresh air.

The List #15: The Whirlpool

I need to be more honest with myself about my relationship with procrastination.

During high school, procrastination was a coping mechanism. As an undiagnosed autistic teenager, I was spending more time processing social interactions with neurotypical people than I was on my schoolwork, often relying on the burst of energy associated with having less time to do an assignment. I used procrastination to refocus on the work that needed to be done.

While I have used procrastination throughout my adult life and professional career on basically every piece of music I’ve ever written, my life is very different now. I know I’m autistic now and have put into place a lot of boundaries that minimize some of my most destructive habits. I’m not in school and have no plans on going back to it. Going forward, I have a much better sense of how I work and a commissioning paradigm that works for me.

And yet I still rely on that rush that I get when I’ve known about a project for three or four months but now I have a week to work on it before the deadline.

This is a trap. This is not an effective coping mechanism. This is a bad habit.

Procrastination is a very big and complicated problem for me. It’s not going to be solved by one change in habits, but by a series of incremental habitual changes that break the problem into manageable chunks.

The first way I’m going to minimize procrastination in my work is by restructuring the way I establish my own deadlines. It’s not working for me, and several projects have suffered because of the way I have done it up to this point.

As a composer, I don’t like being asked to assign a deadline for myself. Because I’m a chronic procrastinator, I have developed the tendency to not only give myself not enough time to write a work but also use procrastination to further abridge the allotted time. The result is a miscalculation that puts a too much pressure on me to deliver an unrealistically excellent work product in insufficient time.

This has caused me to blow virtually every deadline I have set for myself over the last three years.

It’s also hurting me to work this way. What if something happens that’s outside my control — a family emergency, a natural disaster, a sudden life change? — and I need to step away from work. Something like that did happen in 2022, and that resulted in the most egregious and embarrassing procrastination I have ever done. During that time, I had to focus on me, and because I didn’t give myself enough time on those projects to begin with, I hurt myself and people I never meant to hurt because of a system of setting expectations and deadlines that failed.

There was no flexibility. There was no stopgap. I had no ability to take a breath and regain control.

And then there was the shame of having failed to meet a deadline. Each day that passed weighed a little more on my conscious, but that was always defeated by an instinct to procrastinate towards nothing, to fabricate that burst of energy through that pang of guilt I’d feel every time I thought of something I should have done. I was at the bottom of the procrastination whirlpool, unable to escape with a urgency lifeline dropped from above.

Urgency is a powerful drug and I have been addicted to it.

I was lucky. I had people help lift me out of that whirlpool with urgent ultimatums to finish the music or else and, with great effort, I finished my most outstanding projects. And then — I took the breath I needed. Now we are here.

I am bad at determining my own deadlines. I don’t give myself enough time. I never have.

When I have estimated how long it would take to complete a project in the past, what I have actually been estimating for people is the bare minimum amount of time it could possibly take me to complete the music. In the past, I have gone with the bare minimum as the deadline, often against collaborators asking if I needed more time and assuring me that I could take more time if I needed to. What I have to do going forward is be honest with myself, acknowledge that I need more time, and communicate with my collaborators about how I have worked in the past and why that has been unhealthy.

Whatever I think is enough time to write something? Add three months. If they provide a deadline? Make sure my bare minimum is at least three months prior to their deadline. Give myself wiggle room, more time to do what I need to do.

What doing this creates is a window in which the composition could be complete, rather than a simple deadline that increases the pressure on delivery by that date. This would relieve a lot of the pressure I have been putting on myself. The way I have used the pressure of urgency and the overwhelming rush towards an avalanche of deadlines is a form of self-harm. And, like grading myself, I have to stop. I have to stop hurting myself.

This is just the start to resolving a much bigger problem in my work life. It’s one thing to give myself the time I need, but working more consistently throughout the time I allot to projects? Bigger problem to be broken apart and resolved. But it’s a start. And that’s okay.

I never want to be at the bottom of that whirlpool ever again. I need to put things in place that guarantee that I don’t spiral like that again. I have to stop procrastinating. This is the start.

The List #14: You Can't Take Energy from Tomorrow

I have boundaries. There, I said it.

For a very long time, I didn’t have boundaries. I was constantly available to work, and my mental and physical health declined because of it. I was overworked, addicted to Starbucks, working with a severe sleep deficit, and failing to take adequate care of myself.

This reached a peak in grad school. It’s a big part of the reason I can’t go back. I can’t jeopardize my physical and mental boundaries in that way again.

I was supposed to graduate from my Master of Music degree in Spring 2020. Prior to that semester (and some during that semester), I had composed a recital of chamber music that would never be performed. Much of it still hasn’t, and all that material, some of the best things I have ever written? Languishing somewhere on my computer.

Not a lot of people know this, but I composed two recitals for my graduate degree.

I remember the time I spent composing those works for the second recital, and I remember working myself to the bone. It was relentless, day in and day out. It was The Hustle, an unending barrage of begging people to join consortia that did not entirely fund themselves and drained every ounce of my energy and then some. It was a death spiral into all the habits I have just begun to dismantle, from grading myself to requiring permission to a few more that I haven’t written about yet.

In lockdown, I had nothing to do but write. I had to make a living somehow. I hadn’t graduated on time because the pandemic upended everything. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t have boundaries. I had to take everything I could get. It had to be done.

And I spent two-ish years abusing myself with this mindset.

Eventually, I burned out. In 2022, I composed two works (Three Aviaries and Special). Before then, a typical composing year results in 8-10 works. I spent months of that year trying to reclaim my ability to write after forcing my body and brain to go through so much work and stress. As more and more of this time went on, I realized that I had to accept that I have boundaries.

There’s a great saying that’s the title of this post from The List: you can’t take energy from tomorrow. Our bodies have evolved to need rest, time in which they can heal and regain energy. There is a limit on how much energy we can expend before we need rest, and you can’t take energy from the future and expect to be able to regain that energy during rest. Everyone is different and every day is different and it’s okay for your energy to fluctuate from day to day, but you can’t take energy from tomorrow.

During grad school and the limbo time during pandemic lockdown, I took hundreds no, thousands of hours away from my future. It’s why I needed so much time in 2022 to reclaim them. I’m now in a place where I am at energy equilibrium, and it feels good and healthy. I can take the time to focus my physical health, my emotional safety, and my mental stability and still have time to compose.

My body has limits. My brain has limits. I have limits that I shouldn’t cross, because, if I do, I’ll be taking energy away from a me in the future that needs it.

Going forward, I will only be available to collaborate on weekdays between 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM, Pacific time. I reserve my weekday mornings and weekends for me. That’s the only time interval I’m available for meetings or email. I will not keep any email apps on my phone.

I have boundaries.

I am done with Twitter. Threads is better and safer so far. I am done with TikTok and Snapchat. Going forward, I will only have Instagram and Threads on my phone.

I have boundaries.

I do not take energy from tomorrow. I know my limits and I am the only judge of how much energy I can expend.

I have boundaries.

It is okay to be unavailable to protect your health. It is okay to be mindful of your limits and how the energy you expend affects how you live your live. It is okay to create boundaries and stand by them so that you can thrive instead of merely survive.

I have boundaries.

The List #13: Music of the Moment

Yesterday, we had some new friends over for a board game afternoon. We poured each other generous glasses of wine and laughed about it. Towards the end of the night, when it was only the last few people here at the party, I sat the piano and improvised. Another person started to sing, and we made music together.

Then I played something wonderful and burst into tears about it, because I would never be able to remember it. I played it once — and then it was gone.

After the last party guest left, I had a much more emotional moment. I remember bemoaning that I was cursed with too much knowledge to make music like the music I had made with our new friend. I kind of lost it for a moment. I was distraught, inconsolable. It all came crashing down on me at once: I knew too much about music to improvise freely.

When you improvise, it’s not about all the rules that we’re all taught in music theory. It’s about what sounds good. No one will bat an eye at a surprise minor second or a few parallel fifths. You can’t overthink it. There’s no time for that.

But my brain is hardwired to analyze every bit of music it encounters. It does it when I listen to music, when I hear it live, and especially when I write it. And that kind of analysis takes time.

Improvising is very hard on me.

The worst thing that I ever did to myself and my music was give myself all the tools to analyze music and more through two degrees in composition. If I had known that my music would have been so impacted by amassing all this music theory knowledge, I would have thought twice about going to school for music at all.

The best music I have ever written was written before I knew what a secondary dominant was. It’s got this youthful joy to it that does not care about the rules. I will spend the rest of my musical life chasing that energy I had before I knew that parallel fifths were, in fact, evil.

I don’t think that music education is bad. I don’t think music theory is bad. I just have a very hard time separating the act of composition and my brain’s fixation on music theory. I don’t know how to fix this, but I can acknowledge that it’s making composition harder and it’s keeping me from enjoying music in healthy ways.

I need to improvise more. I need to let go of the idea that the music of the moment can be wrong. I need to accept that sometimes the best music is fleeting, gone in a heartbeat. And I need to stop analyzing everything.

I need more music of the moment. I need more music without rules. I need to be able to enjoy it again.

The List #12: I am Not A Transactional Person

As I near the end of the first month of my hiatus, I’ve been thinking a lot about the things about my life that have been reshaped by the hiatus. I’ve especially been thinking about the things about my life that I want to continue after hiatus, and one of those things is to have as few transactions as possible.

If you want to be my friend or one of my colleagues, I want you to know that I am not down for the “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality. I’m not comfortable with transactional relationships in my life. That said, I understand that commissioning is a transaction. But the transaction of commissioning is to protect everyone involved, compensate us fairly for our work, and make sure that we are all on the same page. That’s honest and a transaction I can get behind.

In the past, I have been a very transactional person, to the point that people can’t tell the difference between me being kind and generous and me wanting something from someone. I want it to be clear that I don’t need you to return my generosity or my kindness. I am kind and generous because I want to be, and not because I expect anything in return. And I want it to be clear that I don’t participate in those kinds of social transactions anymore, and that if you try to be transactional with me, it’s a huge red flag.

I want to be able to give freely. I want to surround myself with people who feel the same.

That’s the kind of life I want to live.

The List #11: Music Can't Tell Stories

Music can’t tell stories.

It just can’t. Music doesn’t have the transitive power of language that words have and therefore it can’t itself be a narrator. Music is not a proscenium arch or a television screen or a ride vehicle at a theme park. Music is not an apparatus through which one can tell a story.

And that’s a good thing.

The power that music does have is suggestion. Music is complex information that forces our brains to engage with it. Music’s greatest asset is its power to suggest that our brains tell us a story to justify why music is. Music has the enormous ability to subvert, confirm, or exceed expectations. Music has captured our imaginations for generations for generations and will continue to do so because no one justifies why it is in the same way.

Music is suggestive, an opportunity for our brains to engage in imagination. Music transcends diegesis, suggesting a wider world that any individual apparatus could capture. Music is sublime and subjective, sometimes surprising, occasionally devastating — satisfying and provocative, unyielding and mystifying.

But it can’t tell stories. Trust me — I’d know.

I’ve been trying to make instrumental, textless music tell stories for years. I probably spent most of my composition education doing this, but there are a couple (very unavailable and no longer public) works written around late 2017/early 2018 that are emblematic of my storytelling music. In my grad degree, after writing a large ensemble work that unsuccessfully centered the story of the Quidditch World Cup (yeah, I know… cringe content, now), I was finally confronted with the reality that music can’t tell stories by a composition teacher and I proceeded to write an unnecessary, unpublished thesis about it that consumed my creative life for way too long. All in all, my efforts have been mostly fruitless, but yet have yielded some pretty spectacular music.

Music can’t tell stories, but it can suggest a motorcycle chase through the American Rocky Mountains. Music can’t tell stories, but it can suggest a ride on one of the last historic wooden roller coasters on the West Coast. Music can’t tell stories, but it can suggest a feeling of adventure, bittersweet melancholy, or slapstick comedy.

I used to call this power of suggestion musical worldbuilding, because, in a storytelling practice, that’s essentially what it is. It’s suggesting a more complete world that the music inhabits without actually forcing the music to tell a particular story.

This has been problematic for a lot of reasons.

First, it makes composition way, way harder. It probably triples the amount of time I spend working on any individual piece. If I have to spend months wondering about the world a work inhabits instead of simply writing the music, I’m wasting composition time on building a world no one will ever experience because it is only suggested and not actually communicated.

Second, worldbuilding is work. I’m glad I have the skillset to do it when I do work with text, but applying it to nontext music is committing to a huge amount of work that will never be communicated to an audience. It ends up just being for you and your performers, and yeah, sure, it might make the experience of commissioning more immersive and intimate, it does nothing for the listeners of your music. It’s doing the work to generate lore that the audience doesn’t have access to because music can’t tell stories.

Third, there is a huge danger in the idea of musical worldbuilding in general. If I use musical tropes to suggest a world my music can inhabit, there is a constant vigilance required in order to not appropriate someone else’s culture in the service of worldbuilding. While I’ve been pretty careful about it, a lot of composers who engage in musical worldbuilding have not, appropriating timbres or forms from other cultures to suggest, say, an alien world. This has forced me to walk on eggshells during the act of composition, which adds more effort to writing music that is not a result of actually writing the music.

Lastly, worldbuilding is only really useful in the delivery of a story. If you’re writing a book, it’s useful to suggest a wider world because that makes the story more immersive. If music can’t tell stories, why does it need to be immersive at all? Is it not enough for the music to be a compelling prompt for the listener to rationalize with their own stories? If I accept that (on its own) music can’t tell stories, why am I miring myself in lore of my own creation in the composition of my music?

In other words, why I am making writing music so much harder on myself?

It is okay if lore radiates outward from my music. It is okay for me to prompt an audience with immersive program notes written after the composition is finished. It is okay (and encouraged) for performers to make decisions in their performances that reinforce the themed experience of my music. And it is okay for me to return to a work and strengthen the thematic material after principal composition.

But unless you commission me to work with text (or media), I am not going to do the work of storytelling or the work of worldbuilding while I compose. That kind of work is overcomplicating the act of composition that I am no longer sanctioning for myself. Storytelling and worldbuilding are forms of emotional labor for which I should be compensated, and I can’t continue to be composer, storyteller, and worldbuilder in the same breath for my mental health and the health of my creative practice.

For my works that involve text, I’m fine with engaging with worldbuilding and storytelling. That’s part of my process in creating those works. Storytelling and worldbuilding are tools in my toolbox, but that doesn’t mean I need to use those tools every time I write something. Each project is different, and we can have a conversation about what’s required for our collaboration at the start. My ability to tell stories and build worlds is something you can include when you commission me, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

Not every work needs to be a complete story in a complete world. And if my work on something feels bogged down and made heavier by a compositional tool at my disposal, that’s probably a good indication that it’s not useful for the project.

So for most of my music, I’m fine with writing a program note after composing a work that acts as a framing device to prompt the storytelling instinct in people who are about to experience my music. I’m not down with the actual composition of my work getting dragged out because of extra steps in the service of something that will never be communicated because — what was it again?

Music can’t tell stories.

Music can’t tell stories, but it is powerful. My best music engages that power, but not because I overthought it to death while I was writing it. It’s powerful because it’s good music that suggests you think while you listen to it. That’s it. It’s that simple.

I’m not always a storyteller. I’m not always a worldbuilder.

But I am always a composer.

The List #10: Stop Asking (and Waiting) for Permission

When I was in grad school, one of the ways that I manifested my fear of failure was through my perceived need to constantly ask permission.

Every project I did, I sought the approval of every one of the composition faculty. After the third or fourth time I did this, they said, in unison, “ Please stop asking that. Just write.”

I didn’t want to write something that would sink me. I had the safety net to experiment and make mistakes (and, oh, boy, did I make mistakes), but that didn’t stop me from feeling like I needed permission to write. Without the need for approval from my professors, I turned to collaborators. When my collaborators made the same boundary clear, I turned to myself.

In the midst of the pandemic, I treated consortium participation like permission to compose. (Gosh, that looks so much worse when I put it in writing.) Each time a member joined each one of those consortiums, the idea for a work to be created became more valid, more possible. I realized this towards the end of the period I did all those consortiums, when I started to become burned out, because ideas that I was not passionate about became more permissible than enjoyable. It’s a big part of the reason I stopped doing consortiums.

Whenever a commissioner reaches out and commissions something, that is clear, transactional permission to write. I thrive on that, because it means I have permission to compose. But when it gets complicated is when I’m forced to confront the thousands of tiny permissions I have to give myself while working. Or worse — when I’m working on something for me.

I have been demanding permission for so long that I don’t even know if I could write for me if I tried.

That’s a hard thing to come to terms with. How does one write without permission? That’s scary, but it’s also wildly liberating. It feels reckless, like making the decision to writing without permission from anyone is some kind of daredevil approach to composition. It feels distant and only barely possible for someone like me.

And it’s not. It’s just… not.

Whenever thoughts about whether or not I have permission to write what I want to write bubble up inside me, I have to remind myself that I do not need permission to make every tiny musical decision. I don’t need permission, but the work I have to do not is dismantle the fact that I want permission and I’m used to thinking about composition only when I have it.

It’s one thing to acknowledge the lack of need for it. It’s another to unpack the addiction to wanting it.

That’s right. I said it. I’m addicted to permission. It feels safe and cautious and wise and deliberate. I constantly want it. But the way my creative practice has become warped by permission is ineffective and unproductive. My relationship with permission is bad and too trusting. And while it scares me to think about it, I know that what I want is not what I need.

I don’t need permission to be the composer I am. I need to be the composer who would be possible without permission.

Without permission, I could be that composer. I could do anything.

The List #9: I Will Never Grade Myself Again

I got a “ C” in music history in my undergrad. My life was over.

The class was just way too much information about renaissance music. I don’t remember any of it, from either semester. I kind of remember something about propers (?) and something called a menstruation mensuration canon (I had to look it up). Other that that, zilch. Nothing. And I studied for the tests and everything and I just can’t for the life of me remember anything substantive from that course.

What I do remember from that course is the stress. Everyday, being terrified that a drop-the-needle listening pop quiz would come. Having these massive tests that required multiple essays to be completed with the 50 minutes of class time. Figuring out how to fit the entirety of a course into six point font on a tiny notecard only to find most of the information included was utterly worthless and superfluous for the final exam. Requesting that undergrads use Chicago style with no onboarding whatsoever. No quarter given to students with commutes from classes across campus. Watching other students take that class over and over again until they dropped out, thinking that they weren’t goon enough to survive in the field because they couldn’t pass music history.

Of all the courses I took in my time in college, music history was the one that I most wish had a pass/fail option. I will carry a “ C” on all my college transcripts for the rest of my damn life because that class was so hard.

Growing up, I was taught to believe that anything under an “ A” might as well be failing. A “ B” would get me nowhere in life. A “ C” was a sign that I was worthless. And anything lower? A death sentence.

I used to be punished for getting a “ B” or a “ C.” Sometimes it was grounding or privileges taken away. Sometimes it was extra chores. One time, my parents told me that I could not go to the eighth grade graduation dance because I had failed two semesters of English (by a teacher who couldn’t spell “ separate” ) and had to take summer school. I got told I was going to get pulled out of Arizona School for the Arts I went to because I got a “ C” in Health. My failure to get into the highest band was because I was a crappy “ B” student with no real ability — though as soon as I got a clarinet mouthpiece that wasn’t a stock mouthpiece that came with a plastic rental clarinet, I got right in.

My relationship with getting graded has been about doing fine, but being told I had failed and getting punished for it. Anything but an “ A” was grounds for immediate and unyielding punishment, a clear indication of behavior needing correction.

And now, I punish myself by grading myself.

Even after being out of school for several years, I have found myself grading myself. I have made a very bad habit of only showing people what I consider to be “ A” work, doing everything I can to minimize “ B” work, and utterly erasing “ C” work for online existence whenever possible. One of the ways that my fear of failure has manifested in my creative practice is through this internalized grading system that I have created.

In order to avoid failure, I grade myself. Anything that doesn’t get an “ A” doesn’t see the light of day.

What happens when you grade yourself is you create a level of stress that no one sees and is damn near inescapable. Most of the time, you don’t even realize you’re doing it. It weighs down on you, and it makes it so that your creative work is work that will be evaluated and usually deemed worthless.

This is not fair to me, and people have proven it over and over again. Before presenting the Consortium Captains for The Automaton and the Aeronaut and The Many Adventures of Mr. Maverick with the scores for their respective works, I preambled with the fact that I thought the two works were “ B” works. I thought I had failed to live up to the highest standard I could.

I was wrong. They loved those two works. I couldn’t believe it. Those were both “ B” work. They weren’t good enough for me, but they were good enough for them, the people who would actually play them.

Those were the first cracks in grading myself. That clued me into the idea that maybe I was being too hard on myself, that I was punishing myself for work I could be celebrating or that I was holding myself to an impossible standard.

Over the last few years, I have slowly relaxed and begun to unpack my relationship with grading and how it has shaped my work. I have begun to share “ B” and “ C” work more to surprising results. People don’t care how I evaluate my own creative work, and they love seeing what I deem worthless, because it means that I keep working anyways, regardless of the quality I internally assign to everything.

When I don’t grade myself, my capacity to work doubles, maybe triples. My productivity skyrockets because I’m not stopping myself to ask questions like “ isn’t this a little basic for Kincaid Rabb?” or “ do you really expect anyone to spend money on this mess?” and I can just keep going unfettered. Because of my extremely negative relationship with grading, doing it to myself is a form of self-harm. It’s an act of subconscious self-sabotage, but it feels safe because I have never lived my life without being graded.

But I have to stop hurting myself like this. I have to separate myself from the act of grading in order to grow and in order to heal. I have to break the cycle of writing music, grading that music, deeming that music worthless, forcing myself to trash that music, and starting all over again.

I am not trashing my music when I put myself through that cycling over and over again. I am trashing and abusing myself.

I don’t think that grading is super useful in my life. I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t think it uplifts me or my creativity. For me, I think grading is usually destructive, perpetuates competition in our field, and encourages gatekeeping. Even, maybe especially, when it all happens inside your head.

But I will never be graded again. I’m not putting myself in that situation again. I’m not giving anyone else the power to grade me and me work. I’m done with that.

And I will never grade myself again.

I can’t keep doing it to myself. It’s not healthy. It’s not fair. It’s harmful and painful and I need to stop it.

I will never grade myself again.

The List #8: I Fear Failure.

I keep trying to do other items on The List, but they all keep bringing me back here: my fear of failing.

I don’t think I’m the only person who experiences a fear of failure. I’d actually be surprised if most people haven’t experienced this fear at some point in their lives. But most people don’t have a public relationship with failing, and most people can overcome this fear in private or avoid it altogether.

I have had a very public relationship with failing. I have failed to fund several consortiums, I have failed to collaborate effectively with ensembles and performers, I have failed to meet deadlines, I have failed to communicate with commissioners, and almost every application I have made in the last five years has been a failure.

My experience of failure is a not the typical experience of failure and that scares the shit out of me. For every success I have, I have a hundred failures. Or more. Probably more.

And… There is nothing stopping me from writing music more than my fear of failure. Let me explain.

I’m really, really good at self-sabotage.

Whenever I’m writing music, I can’t help but say things to myself like “ that seems kinda basic for Kincaid Rabb” or “ you missed a parallel fifth, dumbass.” I’m really good at negative self-talk when I’m working on anything. Nothing is ever good enough. When nothing is ever good enough, everything is a failure.

And for what? What does “ this is basic for Kincaid Rabb” even mean? That’s not a bad thing. Being honest, I think my music could probably benefit from being less complicated. And some of the most successful music of the last 20 years is entirely built on parallel fifths. Most of that music is at least decent. These things that I am using upon myself as negative self-talk are not failures, and yet my instinct is to perceive them as hundreds of tiny little failures that leave me creatively paralyzed, so afraid to fail that I can no longer write.

I’m fascinated by my own brain’s capacity to spin everything into death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s not fair to me. It’s not okay that I do this to myself. I like to think that I’m not alone in having this problem, but there has to be way for people like me to recover from the terror of failure. The best that I have been able to come up with is to take a breath when a self-sabotaging thought occurs, take a moment to unpack it, acknowledge the failure and the fear that envelops it (often out loud), then keep moving forward, hopefully having let go of the idea that it was a failure at all. I’d like to be more successful at moving through what I perceive as failure in that way. I have not always been successful at rationalizing these fears and the failures that inspired them.

But it’s not just the little things. Sometimes, it’s scrapping entire projects that I’m afraid won’t work.

As a composer, I tend to put myself in high-risk, high-reward situations.

At the beginning of my post-college career, I did a series of consortiums: Wishful Thinking, Switchback Daredevils, The Automaton and the Aeronaut, Exploring Infinities, The Many Adventures of Mr. Maverick, Diamondback Darlene, and Crystal Depths. These were the successful consortiums that actually resulted in works. But I have come up with a dozen or more ideas for consortiums beyond those that felt wrong or impossible that I cancelled because I was afraid that they would fail.

The funny thing about cancelling those consortiums? By cancelling them, I made sure they failed. I was so afraid of failing to fund the consortiums for those works that I made sure they failed on my terms. And it was during a period it which I was killing myself with The Hustle, so I never gave myself time to process the failures I hoisted upon myself and learn from them. I just internalized the failed consortiums and all the regret that came with them and moved on to the next thing without giving myself the space I needed for healing.

I think part of me didn’t want anyone else to be to blame for the failures. I tend to be trusting person, but I have also watched that trust get broken and promises made get broken and been burned by my own trusting nature. I hate feeling like I failed because someone I trusted failed.

It’s not just consortiums. I have the unfortunate habit of overcomplicating in projects, imagining that my work needs to be a comprehensive, all-encompassing masterpiece with the highest degree of detail and something that appeals to everyone. Each piece I write is a theme park ride, like Pirates of the Caribbean or The Haunted Mansion, failing to recognize that theme park attractions have teams of hundreds of people working on them at one time. I am one composer who cannot continue to be responsible for creating perfect works that capture the imagination over and over again. I can’t hold myself to this standard anymore and fear failure like I do. I can’t hold myself to impossible standard anymore that I have failed to deliver before and will probably fail to deliver again.

I can only do my best. And I have to be able to accept that sometimes my best will fail. Even better, I need it to be okay if I don’t do my best. I need to be able to try new things without worrying whether or not they will fail. I need to give myself the space to experiment.

My fear of failure was most pronounced during the composition, rehearsal, and performance of Three Aviaries for Oboe, English Horn, Narrator, and String Quartet. I remember being absolutely terrified of performing what I had written in the weeks leading up to it, constantly seeking out advice and guidance from other composers to assuage the idea that it could fail. I was terrified that audiences wouldn’t get it, and that people would reject it and that I would walk away a complete failure. I remember bursting into tears during its first rehearsal because it worked. I’m crying writing this because that place I went to write that was so stressful and fearful that I was emotionally compromised for most of IDRS 2022.

The worst part? I’d do it again. I’d do it all over again just for the feeling of what it was like when it didn’t fail.

There’s got to be a healthier way of succeeding.

A lot of advice about failing doesn’t work on me anymore. The suggestion that everyone fails is not comforting. Just because something is normalized doesn’t mean the emotional weight of the thing is lessened. The idea of another opportunity being out there for me also the idea that I could fail at that too. And the suggestion that the best thing to do is to keep putting myself in a position in which I am subject to someone else telling me I failed does nothing for the emotional energy it took me to fail in the first place.

Over the last few years, I have had to tell myself often that someone else’s success is not my failure. This has helped me a lot with being able to be happy for people who got opportunities when I didn’t and to celebrate my community’s successes. But it has done nothing for my own self-image or to increase my capacity to respect myself.

So I’m reframing it: My failure does not mean success is impossible.

I don’t know how to fix this. I really don’t think it’s realistic to expect that I can overcome a fear of failure in one fell swoop, but that the only way of dismantling it is with incremental growth. That means there’s a lot more where this came from. There’s like ten items of The List that deal with my fear of failure.

But first… I need to accept that my fear of failure and the way I have allowed it to shape my creative practice is a problem.

The List #7: For Me

Today, I was improvising at the piano, sipping on iced tea and enjoying the view out the window, listening to the soft rhythm of the dishwasher in the distant kitchen. I happened upon a really pretty melody, and the music was so good that I did something I told myself I wouldn’t do until September 1: I wrote it down.

It’s just a thought so far. Just a little glimpse into a piece that could be. But it was enough to spark inspiration and joy and a feeling of intense longing that formed a lump in the back of my throat. It made me want to go back to writing so badly, even though it’s not a thought that’s attached to any of the ongoing projects I suspended for hiatus or any of the projects I know are waiting for me to start when I’m ready.

If I continue that little thought, this work would be for me. I wouldn’t get paid for it (at least, not for writing it… perhaps some performance or publication royalties later). In the past, that’s where this would have ended. I’m not getting paid for this music, so it’s not worth writing down.

But I want to do more writing for me. I think the instinct to stop myself from writing something compelling down because it’s not related to anything I’m currently being paid to write is a bad thing.

For all of the boundaries and policies I’m creating during hiatus for works I’m writing for other people, I haven’t been focusing at all on making my creative practice fluid enough that I allow myself no, that I encourage myself to write things for me if the inspiration is there. I want that freedom. I’m claiming that freedom.

I’m writing that little harp solo. While I’ve been writing this post, my brain has been working on it in the background. And then I’m going to send it to one of my dearest friends and repeat collaborators, who has yet to refuse a work from me and plays everything I send her beautifully.

And through the whole thing, I’m going to remind myself that writing for me is okay. I’m going to tell myself that writing for me is taking care of myself, because that’s what it is. I’m going to remind myself that stopping myself is an instinct that I need to break down, because it kills beautiful little ideas like this one before they even have a chance. And I’m going to keep telling myself that it is okay to keep moving forward.

I need it to be okay for me to write for me.

The List #6: Life's About Change

My mom used to say this a lot to me whenever something happened. Life’s about change. It didn’t always make things less complicated, but there was truth to it. It was reassuring, comforting, and gentle, even if what was happening around me wasn’t.

As I have gotten older, I have found myself saying that during periods of my life that are uncomfortable, especially when there are big emotions involved. Life’s about change. I feel it most when I feel pulled in more than one direction, as if different parts of me are ingrained in different places.

I feel it profoundly now. Life’s about change. Big change.

When I announced my hiatus, I said there were two reasons that I was taking it. First, because of some of the posts I have already made (and will continue to make) about taking care of myself and my creative practice. And, second, because I am going through a lot of change right now. Life’s about change. Complicated, logistical change that I cannot avoid and that is taking up a lot of time and emotional energy.

For safety reasons and privacy concerns between me and my partners, I can’t talk about the actual change. There are some extenuating circumstances that prevent me from outwardly celebrating the change itself, which is how I would normally overcome it. This time, all I have, besides the support of my partners, is that simple little mantra. Life’s about change.

I am fine. I will be fine.

Life’s about change.

The List #5: I Do Not Need a Doctorate.

I am unlikely to get a doctoral degree in music composition. It’s not just that I don’t need one, or even that I don’t really have any more faith or respect for the academy’s bureaucracy. It’s that I don’t want one.

I have applied three times to DMA and PhD programs across the country, spending thousands of dollars in application fees, a backbreaking amount of emotional and mental labor, and countless hours on what would become fruitless applications. I got waitlisted once, but every other application was a rejection.

Getting rejected is hard, but getting rejected for a doctoral program is something else. It’s more than just not getting an award or a grant or a job; it’s the act of putting your entire life on hold for another year as you hustle to create a better application for the next cycle. Applying repeatedly for these programs takes a huge toll on you because it means you wasted the last year of your life trying to improve upon yourself until you’re good enough for someone else. You’re stuck in this cycle until you either give up or you are deemed worthy.

And I can’t really justify putting myself through that again.

I will not sacrifice my own mental, physical, and emotional health to get rejected from academia again. I do not understand what these degree programs are looking for if not me. I am an accomplished composer, an already seasoned researcher with valuable expertise and an excellent academic track record, a passionate new music practitioner, and a blossoming pedagogue with a thriving group of wonderful composition students. I have everything it takes to be successful in a doctoral program. I am not the problem.

What is a doctorate in music composition, anyway? It’s a certification to indoctrinate composers into being okay with the way the academy treats them. It doesn’t really center developing additional musical expertise or improving the pedagogy of teaching composers or even the research that goes into creating a large work. Do I really need a doctorate just to get saddled with a slew of committee assignments instead of spending my time writing or teaching people to write? All that a doctorate in music composition would provide me with are the skills I would need to perpetuate a toxic culture that sucks the life out of everyone involved in it.

And I don’t need that.

I would find it very difficult to justify subjecting myself to what I have watched friends and loved ones go through to get their doctorates. I don’t want to uproot my entire life in order to spend a few years living like a graduate student again. I am currently surrounded by houseplants and midcentury modern furniture, enjoying a glass of wine at 2 in the afternoon on a Monday because I’ve already finished everything I need to do today. You think I want to give this up to go back to school? Give me a break.

Don’t get me started on giving up my weekly trips to Disneyland.

And for what? For someone else to tell me that my work isn’t good enough? The other thing I’m coming to terms with is that I already work at a doctoral level. In another world, Three Aviaries could have been my doctoral dissertation, and my projects have only gotten more nuanced since. I have a 30 minute long clarinet quartet based on a tasting menu. Two of the projects that I know I have coming up after hiatus are going to be bigger and more emotionally complicated than Three Aviaries. Do I really need a doctorate to work at a doctoral level? No. The answer is no.

I am already a professional composer. I do not need a doctorate.

I have no faith that there is space for me in the academy, and even if there was, I feel like I would spend my entire academic existence fighting to break down a hostile system from the inside. There are people who can do this, and who are doing that kind of work within academia.

I respect them for it, but I also need it to be okay that I don’t have that kind of energy for that kind of work.

I am a composer. A creative at heart. The best way I can change the world is by writing music. It’s not going to be encouraging the next generation of composers to pursue a comfortable plush office or heading up a committee on DEI opposing old white cishet men that are just going to retire in a couple years anyway. It’s going to be at my desk, plunking out notes on my keyboard as I figure out how to express what it is I need to say in my music and helping other composers be the best composers they can be.

The List #4: Drink Enough Water

I’m from the desert. I should know better.

Yesterday, I had about 12 ounces of water total. Everything else was lemonade, sparkling water, a cocktail, or wine. According to the Hydration Calculator at Everyday Health, for the body I have, the recommended daily water intake is at least 167 ounces. That’s a little more than 2 and a half gallons, but that also includes tea and sparkling water intake.

That amount sounds high, but I bet I would probably feel better if I made sure I was drinking enough water.