Friday, January 29, 2010
I happened to turn on the tv today and saw a very beautiful film about Sibelius
http://picasaweb.google.com/ibnunajib/LeaveToRemain?feat=email#
I knew that Sibelius was, in effect, silent for the last twenty or so years of his life and because I fear silence more that anything, and feel so imperative a command to resist it.. and because I was under the impression Sibelius had chosen silence I was somehow never really drawn to him.
And yet there is so much in him that I can relate to.
The fact he had to pay at the beginning to have his symphonies performed, that he lost money in the process. that he had to struggle against debt.
His ferocious capacity for self criticism. the appalling struggle to resist chaos and to create...
All this moved me so profoundly.
The constant struggle to find expression for what had to be said...
As I struggle, not at all in the same league (but that doesn't matter) struggle to get Every One into the best shape the script can be in for rehearsals...
In the times when I would find myself being sent abroad and put up in international hotels, i would turn on the TV and look in horror at the multiplicity of channels, and the power that represents, and the appalling low quality of the material they were transmitting, and feel so puny and helpless in the face of it all. Struggling to complete my works for tiny theatres...
And I am aware how the works never measure up to the power and the scope of the dreams that inspire them.
And Sibelius burning the movements of his last symphony that he had, after years of struggle, managed to complete...
How important to focus, somehow, on what can and has been achieved.
And try not to be obsessed by what has not.
http://picasaweb.google.com/ibnunajib/LeaveToRemain?feat=email#
I knew that Sibelius was, in effect, silent for the last twenty or so years of his life and because I fear silence more that anything, and feel so imperative a command to resist it.. and because I was under the impression Sibelius had chosen silence I was somehow never really drawn to him.
And yet there is so much in him that I can relate to.
The fact he had to pay at the beginning to have his symphonies performed, that he lost money in the process. that he had to struggle against debt.
His ferocious capacity for self criticism. the appalling struggle to resist chaos and to create...
All this moved me so profoundly.
The constant struggle to find expression for what had to be said...
As I struggle, not at all in the same league (but that doesn't matter) struggle to get Every One into the best shape the script can be in for rehearsals...
In the times when I would find myself being sent abroad and put up in international hotels, i would turn on the TV and look in horror at the multiplicity of channels, and the power that represents, and the appalling low quality of the material they were transmitting, and feel so puny and helpless in the face of it all. Struggling to complete my works for tiny theatres...
And I am aware how the works never measure up to the power and the scope of the dreams that inspire them.
And Sibelius burning the movements of his last symphony that he had, after years of struggle, managed to complete...
How important to focus, somehow, on what can and has been achieved.
And try not to be obsessed by what has not.
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