Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

"It's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations."

–DSCH

The Creative Process is a very interesting thing. I employ it often–an understatement, yet I still don't completely understand it. Or at least how others apply it. Somebeasts lay out sketch after sketch, draft after draft, like a blueprint for a building intended to last uncountable seasons. I don't see why they bother. Often, the end product is woeful, worthless. It's not played, not because it's banned but because nobeast feels a need to play or hear it. I work differently, I just sit and write everything down in full score, vertically down the staff, measure to measure. There's no real planning, so to speak. No physical sketches, though I usually plan in my mind. I'll image the whole thing before I write a single note on paper.

Sometimes, there is a topic or thought to compose on. Sometimes there is a story you simply must orchestrate. And sometimes the idea for an entire piece materializes from thin air or very swift imagination. Sometimes circumstances hold a large part. The mind of a composer never shuts off, criticizing and creating. A reflex. Even right after a concert. After my concert at Redwall, I wanted more than anything to escape the overwhelming appreciation the Redwallers heaped on me. I wanted someplace to sit and recover and collect my thoughts. Someplace, above all, quiet. I can compose most anywhere, through most any noise. The quiet was for my nerves.

I managed to slip out of the ecstatic crowd only after much time and effort. One might say that the crowd actually helped me get out; in the knot of bustling Redwallers, one creature slipping away could hardly be noticed. I emerged, though, to a place from which I had no direction. So therefore I stood near the door for a considerable amount of time, as if something was going to happen so I would suddenly know where to go. Sense of direction does not come spontaneously like creative inspiration might.

Volklov saved me again, so to speak. He knew me very well; it had been fairly obvious to everyone that I was uncomfortable. After some time, he too squeezed out of the crowd, a frail-looking old mouse beside him. Both were positively beaming, though Volklov was able to sympathetically throw an arm around my shoulders and remark, "Here we go, Mitya, we'll get you someplace quiet."

The mouse was the Abbey's Recorder, his name slips my mind at the moment. He was pleased to the point of trembling–it was a motion not unlike my own nervous tremors. He also babbled incessant praise, a welcome sentiment that was obnoxious in magnitude nevertheless. I tolerated it with polite nods and such. I'd sooner find quiet through tolerance. Further, I would certainly have made the wrong impression on the old fellow by requesting his quiet–modesty or simple dislike for much noise wouldn't have come across. I'd seem, simply, cold against the recorder's praise. Incorrect interpretations can cause ruin, I can solidly testify.

Redwall Abbey's gatehouse, as you probably know already, is also the archives and the Recorder's study. Volklov knew I liked places like that; he must have talked to the Recorder beforehand, since that was where I was led and left. The study was mine to use for the night and up to when Raikh had to take me back to Mtsensk the next day. I probably could have hidden in there longer and perhaps escaped returning just then, but I would have eventually been found out and gotten into even greater trouble.

In addition to attending any concerts I can manage to get to, I've always taken the advantage to read whatever printed material I can get my paws on. Granted there wasn't very much of any interest at Mtsensk, but the Redwall archives held enough to keep me in that room more than long enough to hide, had I wanted to. Naturally, I had to consider what to look at first. Many of the scrolls I looked at were simply records of recent feasts or the quasi-philosophic ramblings of the current Recorder and former ones. All right to look at, examples of a simpler, more peaceful existence than I'd ever known. It was almost enviable, but I got drawn away from those papers quickly.

I have always felt very drawn in by old things, and I can't quite describe why. The past reverberates, not unlike the soft but very present beat of a low-pitched drum. That's a device I've tried to imitate, but though music can do so much more than words, even it is often not fully complete on issues like that. The stories contained in the old volumes, though, are a different matter. I became immersed in the old records of invaders and heroes, chivalry, combat, riddle and rhyme. It was all confusion, I'm certain, to those who were there. I imagine I too would have been lost in the problems had I been there, though they could hardly be compared to the problems I've had since. In hindsight and yet in first discovery of those stories and scrolls, though, I heard them. I heard the valiance, oppression, despair, and victory. Even before I actually knew much of it myself. Hindsight and foreshadowing, fancy that.

I come back now, full circle, to the Creative Process. They say the Creative Process is more work than inspiration. I think they left out decision, the kind you're faced with when potential inspiration is plainly overstimulating. Even then, that definition may not be accurate. One might say that, for some people, long consideration is also a great factor. That s not true for me. When I'm stuck or overstimulated, I don't get up and pace the grounds, looking at the knot from all different mental angles. I make up my mind that I'm going to, well, make up my mind, so to speak. If that process goes on too long, I sleep on it. A creature's dreams focus on what he wants, so the process doesn't end there.

I normally feel uneasy about describing dreams, the ones I remember, that is. They're vivid, realistic, and disturbingly depressing. I've become good at concealing my dreams sometimes, they're dangerous as well. This one was after I told it at first, but that's subsided. I can tell it again now. I dreamed I was at an opera, a world premiere. I'd never heard the music before, but I knew it well. I knew it was mine, though I had no recollection of ever writing it. I knew the story being depicted on the stage; it was, naturally, one of the ones I'd read before going to bed. The stage, though, seemed more like the reality of Mossflower Woods; the actors were too convincing to be only that.

You know the story well, I'm certain. Most creatures do, if not before my take on it, almost certainly afterwards. It was still quite new to me when I dreamed, but it felt familiar, like my unwritten music being played. I felt like I knew personally the hard-eyed mouse with his midwinter blade, the character shaping up to be the lead and hero. He sang me the libretto; it felt to be coming as much from him as from me when I wrote it down later. The words sung by the tyrannical wildcat empress also felt more based in familiarity then just legend.

I sat in a private box by that dreamcast stage and watched the whole opera. When it ended, I was called to the stage like at the real Redwall, and I bowed in the same way, nervously and uncertainly. I was near the edge of the stage, and I felt like I might fall off into the orchestra pit. That must seem a trivial detail to remember, especially in comparison to the rest of the dream, but it actually comes forward more lucidly now that circumstance has explained it.

I awoke before the applause ended and looked out the gatehouse window at the subtle yellow of pending sunrise. It was very early, but I wasn't tired. It's generally hard to feel exhilarated that early in the morning–how odd! Creatures tend to channel exhilaration into physical activity. I set mine to transcription. Not composition–I'd already heard the music. For my intense work on the opera, I served mainly as a mere copyist, so to speak. My subconscious was the composer, but in most of my waking time after that dream, I wrote down what I'd heard in perfect orchestral complexity. The story would come alive to others, even though it took more life from me.