All Work & No Play

I have been writing a book, which is part of the reason I have not updated this blog in so long. My goal has been to write an average of a thousand words a day. I have not met this goal. I did, however, pass the ten-thousand-word mark this morning. That’s about 40 pages, which is enough material to say definitely, “Yes, I am writing a book.”

I also made another piece of music. It is months old at this point, but I thought I would put it up here. I like it, and I will probably work on it more in the future. It’s my experiment in “process music,” an appealing thing to my mathematical mind.

Percussion Phase 1 Take 2

I will write something worth reading soon.

• C# Minor
• Modal Stuff
• Like a Student Film, Only Music

Over the past year, I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand music – what a scale is, why certain tones sound good together and others don’t, etc. I’ll be writing about all that as soon as I get used to my new keyboard layout, but meanwhile, here is my first musical composition! I wrote this using Acoustica Mixcraft, a very good music program ala Garage Band.

Opus #1 for 2 Cellos in C Major

I would like to distinguish between two related psychological states that I believe are rarely, if ever, distinguished. The first is fear, and the second is what I call “blockage,” as to my knowledge it does not yet have a name. Fear is an emotion with which we are surely all familiar; blockage is also familiar, though it is not often discussed, and when it is, it is considered as either part of fear, or as merely a failure of free will. Blockage is what makes action impossible. When a man is afraid to approach a woman, that is fear; when he does not approach women, even though he wants to, that is blockage. Although these two things are related, they are not the same – one may be afraid of women, but approach them anyway; also, one may find oneself completely avoiding certain activities without actually experiencing the emotion of fear. One is simply blocked. A pernicious but common misconception about blockage is that it is something over which a person has immediate and absolute control. One may be afraid independently of the will, the story goes, but whether or not to act is “up to you.” What is really being said here is that blockage has no cause; after all, what has a cause cannot simply be the product of free will, and advice like, “You just have to do it” is meaningless if blockage has a cause external to the will. I claim that, in fact, blockage does have a cause. When we see a pattern in nature (including human nature) we assume that pattern has a cause. Only when something is found to be random under even the closest scrutiny- as in the case of quantum mechanical measurement – are we allowed to claim that it has no cause. And blockage is by no means random – in fact, it follows very clear patterns, both in and between individuals. Whereas fear is unpleasant and troubling, blockage is debilitating; thus, it is incumbent upon us to understand this state and, as nearly as possible, find a cure.

Sometimes people say that one who cannot act is “too afraid,” thus implying that the solution to the blockage is to become less afraid. We can see this to be a false diagnosis, however. One may be as afraid as can be imagined, and yet act; likewise, one can be only slightly afraid of it, and yet be blocked. The fact that these two scenarios can occur in the same person in two different contexts is strong evidence that blockage is not merely a “weakness of the will,” but a complex conditioned psychological response in its own right. A coward is not one who is afraid, but one who is blocked. I do not imagine any coward ever was or could be cured by insisting that they “grow a spine,” or by any related advice. I think many have attempted (including this one), and I think they (we) have all failed.

Since making this distinction in my mind a few days ago, I have made it my foremost goal to “unblock” myself. I made a list of things I have not done because of being blocked, and have made it a point to do at least one of them every day. This has been much more effective than my previous, failed strategy of doing one thing I am afraid of every day. Focusing on inaction as the problem instead of fear has given me the freedom to feel afraid, or not, and act anyway. Two different problems, two different solutions. And I finally updated my blog!

This morning an old black woman say in front of me on the train. She smelled wretched; she had what my friend Mark had once called “a geriatric smell.” I did not move from my seat, mostly because there was nowhere to move to. I felt short of breath, as I frequently do, but the woman’s cloying smell was overwhelming and I could not catch my breath. I tried to just read my book, in which Thomas Merton was describing his surroundings on Perry St. in Greenwich 1939:

The air outside my window is quiet, and light hangs among the leaves and is soft and blue and warm. In one of the next houses I could hear pots in a kitchen, and water running from a tap, and I can hear the voices of kids. … This sunlight, this warm air, the sounds of the kitchen, speak of God’s goodness and His mercy. I can sit here all day, now, and think of that, and ask God to show me everywhere more and more signs of His mercy, and His goodness, and to help me regain my liberty. Peace.

Merton would later take vows as a Trappist monk.

I was breathing only through my mouth now, something I am unaccustomed to doing as I am so often short of breath. I chose not to complain within my mind to an imaginary listener, but instead to begin writing down my experience. This too was a change. As the train pulled in to Glenside where I work, I considered remaining on the train, to extend my experience. I chose not to, however, and went to work.