I love having The Blue Sky Conversation. It’s one of my favorite parts of doing creative work.
The term “ Blue Sky” is part of the creative process that I have taken from theme park design. In the early stages of designing an attraction or themed environment, the creative team goes through an extensive brainstorming session in which they suggest everything they’d like to include within the project. During this Blue Sky stage of the project, the attraction or environment can be anything, with no consideration for budget, scope, or even physics.
The Blue Sky Conversation is a time when a project can be anything. For me, it’s not considering the duration or the cost of my labor or even instrumentation, but a pure expression of creativity shared between collaborators. This space is sacred to me and a necessary and important part of every project.
I think The Blue Sky Conversation is a really effective way of getting to know a potential collaborator and I have (and will continue to) use it as a litmus test to see whether or not we would be a good fit. If you don’t contribute to The Blue Sky Conversation, it’s a big red flag for me and we’re probably not going to work well together. On the other hand, if you bring a lot to the table during The Blue Sky Conversation, we are likely to become repeat collaborators.
The Blue Sky Conversation is a discussion of a creative idea purely in the abstract. The moment that musical parameters are introduced to the conversation, that is a pivot point out of abstraction and into reality. It is around this time that we introduce ideas about instrumentation and duration to The Blue Sky Conversation that we talk about how the project will be funded and how we will be compensated for our work.
If you have a successful Blue Sky Conversation with me and you go through the commissioning and contracting process, congratulations, you’ve done it. We have crossed our i’s and dotted our t’s. If you have not had a successful Blue Sky Conversation with me, we are probably not going to put together a contract and I will likely have suggested another composer for you to work with or stopped having the conversation altogether.
If you have a successful Blue Sky Conversation with me and you do not go through the commissioning and contracting process, you forfeit any shared thoughts we may have come up with and any ownership over those shared creative visions. If you choose not to commission me after The Blue Sky Conversation, I reserve the right to use any ideas we have spent time and effort developing for any other creative project with any other collaborator.
I’m not interested in stealing ideas you may have approached me with. The Blue Sky Conversation is special because because you don’t walk into that space with preconceptions or expectations. I’m not interested in taking your ideas and pulling them out from under you, I just don’t want to do the work of Blue Sky and come out the other side with a great idea that can’t be funded or used ever again. This is a thing that happens in theme park design: a designer will spent months coming up with an awesome idea that doesn’t get approved for funding and then that idea is archived, never to be used again. I have gone through that before, and it’s always hard, and I’d rather not deal with it again.
It’s okay to not have the ability to go through the commissioning process, whether it be because of funding or timing or scope or for any other reason. It’s also okay to have The Blue Sky Conversation with no intention of commissioning, because of serendipity or a desire to get to know me better. And it’s even okay to opt out of The Blue Sky Conversation altogether because it’s not compatible with how you work with composers.
As for me, I will continue to love and cherish The Blue Sky Conversation. I hope that we get to have one someday. I hope we both get to be in a space together in which the music can still be anything.