I’ve just released my final project of 52 Things (version 1.0). It’s called ‘Fairy Tales’ and you’ll find it here.

First a bit of housekeeping:

In 52 Weeks…

• 35 pieces of music
• 6 paintings/sketches
• 5 scripts
• 4 short films
• 1 animated .gif
• 1 sculpture

Also one other little detail… I announced that I was going to take part in the RPM Challenge back in the beginning of February. Alas that was not to be. I actually did create enough rough music to technically complete the challenge if you include raw ideas and such, but I decided not mail anything into them. Maybe next time!

So what to make of this little experiment in 52 Things? Pretty much everything I said at the halfway point still holds true. I guess I’ll conclude with a couple of final observations:

• It’s about the process, not the result. I’ll quote here a comment I made on my friend Dav’s blog, who’s also begun his own “52 Things”:

“For me, I have to keep reminding myself that doing anything creative at all is a victory in itself. Sometimes that thing you might think is lame is the seed of something larger. Other times it’s just lame, but it’s necessary lameness. It’s like you’re getting the creative dreck out of your system in order to make way for better ideas. Congratulate yourself for doing something (anything) in the face of (possibly) feeling like just saying “I’ll just skip it this week… it won’t matter”.” 2/11/08

• 52 weeks are going to go by no matter what. The question to ask is “What are you going to do with that time?” I look back and go “Damn, look at all this stuff I’ve made. Whether anyone else likes it or cares about it or notices it doesn’t matter. I’ve made stuff.” That feels pretty good.

What’s in store for the future? I’m not certain yet. I’ve loved the process and definitely think I’ll begin another similar challenge at some point. One thing I would like to do is thank all of you who have been so supportive through the last 52 weeks! (You know who you are! : ) Also if you’ve read this far I’d like to point you in the direction of a couple other creative folks who’ve started their own 52 Things… One is my friend Dav over at AkuAku who I mentioned earlier. The other is someone (whom I’ve never met) who left a very gracious comment recently… Go check out Siobhan over at Sew-n-So’s to see some very cool creations. To both of you I say please keep doing what you’re doing! It’s been incredibly inspiring to see the things you’ve made and I look forward to seeing what else you come up with. (I’ve totally been subscribed to your RSS feeds so don’t think no one is watching! ; )

If you’d like to say hello or ask me any questions about anything you’ve seen on the site, feel free to email me at thomas {@} 52things.org.

For now…

ts - 3/16/08

I’ve decided to take part in this years RPM Challenge. The goal is to record 10 songs, or 35 minutes of original music in the month of February.

I see this dovetailing well with 52 Things. It provides another deadline and will force me to write more frequently. I’ve been very pleased with the progression of the music I’ve created here, but think it’s time to take it to another level.

After (and during) the completion of this weeks project, I began to ask myself “Is this thing that I’ve created art?” I walked out the door of my apartment today without any idea of what I’d make. I had my watercolors. I had some colored chalk that I’d purchased last week. I had a box of clay. I had no preconceived notions, other than “I need to make something, and I want to stay out of my comfort zone.”

There’s a nice spot down by the Hudson river near my apartment with good light. It was a pretty day so I headed in that direction. I sat down on this big stone and began playing with chalk. After a while I shifted to clay and started working with blotches of color pressed into the stone. I had no idea what I was creating, but it was very meditative to just work with color, texture and light. While I was finishing up and photographing the piece, a colleague rode by on his bicycle. At that point, I still had the word “ART?” stenciled next to good old Frederick.  (”Frederick” was a name I only came up with after my colleague looked at the piece and saw something in it that I hadn’t. At that point I had no idea what it was that I’d made…)

To be honest, I was a bit shy about having anyone look at what I’d created and found myself making excuses for the quality. I felt embarrassed to be caught red handed out on the Hudson river pushing clay into a rock. Writing “ART?” next to what I’d created was my way of apologizing. It was like saying “Yeah, I know this sucks but is it art?”. After he left, I decided “You know what, screw it. Let people look at this thing and make up their own damn minds about what it is.” I pulled off “ART?” and re-photographed. In the end, it’s enough that I spent time creating. What I ended up with was something that is uniquely my own. Whether or not it’s “ART” (or good “ART”, or bad “ART”) is immaterial. I made something, and that’s enough.

I have to say that I’m extremely proud of this weeks project. I’ve never really painted anything before. (I’m sure I must have painted as a child… it’s the type of things children do… but I have no memory of it.) It was extremely meditative and I lost track of time while I was painting. It’s interesting how similar the process was to composing music. Many times when I’m writing something I’ll have moments in the beginning where I’m thinking “This absolutely sucks.” I plow through those voices in my head, and eventually come up with something that I like, or at least something that’s a hell of a lot better than when I started.

When I first began this piece my little voice was saying rather loudly “I suck at this!” I managed to plow through. It’s no Picasso, but I have to keep reminding myself that 52 Things was never supposed to be about creating masterpieces. It’s always been about simply creating. I kept painting and what I ended up with was a hell of a lot better than when I started.

Also, a major hat tip to my friend Dav. He’s recently begun his own 52 Things, and seeing the cool things he’s come up with has inspired me to take more chances in what I’m doing here.

Yesterday’s post marked my 26th project release. Unless my math is worse than I thought that means I’m halfway to completing 52 Things. It seemed as good a time as any to reflect on how things have gone so far. What have I learned? What have I noticed? How can I shake things up moving forward?

I suppose that my first observation would be that times flies incredibly fast these days. It doesn’t seem like it’s really been six months since that first snowy week back in March. I’m more and more conscious these days of how easy it is to lose time. So easy to let days, weeks, months slip by. Not letting those days, weeks, months slip by is something I need to work on.

My second observation is that I’m surprised at how easily it is to forget the things you’ve created when you’re releasing them out into the wild consistently. This is probably a good thing. It’s good to have a record of what you’ve done, but it’s also good to create for the sake of creating without having to worry about the results. I’ve enjoyed being able to let go and let it be ok to write little 30 second snippets of music. It’s like each one of those is a seed that I could go back and revisit at any time and nurture and develop further.

The other thing about this journey has been that I’m repeatedly surprised by the process of creation. I’m learning to just trust myself and not judge as much while I’m in the process of making something. This has especially been true with composition. It’s so easy to think “Man, this sucks” while you’re first putting ideas down at the keyboard. I’m learning that if you get over that impulse and just trust that you’ll find something you inevitably do find something. Many times that crappy little idea that you begin with forms the foundation of something that’s much cooler in the end. You just have to go through the process and be patient. And if you can’t turn that idea into something right now, then set it aside and come back to it another day. Maybe you just need to be a different you to see the coolness in the thing you thought was crap. Your brain just needs to be older and more experience to recognize the tree in the acorn.

One final comment would be a little constructive criticism to myself. I am concerned that I’m not taking as many risks as I could with regards to the diversity of genres that I’m working in. One of my stated goals in the beginning was to overcome fear and to find out what it is that I like to do. After those first couple of weeks I settled into a comfortable routine of releasing short pieces of music. There have been a couple of forays into scriptwriting here and there, but I really want to challenge myself in the next six months to not settle for only doing the things that I’m good at. Music is the genre that I’m most comfortable in. It’s where the majority of my training lies. The thing is that I know I have other talents. I have other things that I love to do. I know this because in the past when I’ve overcome whatever the mental roadblocks were that kept me from doing those other things I’ve been extremely pleased by and proud of the results.

My challenge to myself for the next six months is to begin to think outside of the box. Begin broadening the definition of what a project might be. Let your creativity loose and play. It’ll be ok.

This weeks project is:

• Write a piece of music

I know it seems like I’m doing alot of the same types of projects each week, but the book has been taking up a lot of my focus of late.  I’ll hopefully be able to try some new things in the near future.  Having said that, this week I will…

• Write a piece of music

This week my project is:

• Write a piece of music

This week my project is:

• Write a piece of music

I’m not sure what my project will be this week.  I think I’ll see where my creativity takes me and go into this week without any expectations other than “I will create something”.

This week my project is:

• Write a piece of music

There are a couple of preliminary parts to the project this week:

• Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art (complete)
• Spend a couple of hours there checking out paintings and writing (complete)

I’ll then…

• Write a scene of dialog that’s inspired by that visit

Here’s the concept… I’m looking for new things that will feed and nourish both my writing and other areas of my creative life. I’m hoping that the visuals of the Met will provide that nourishment. I’m kinda putting myself out on a limb here, because my schedule is already pretty darn packed this week. I’ll find a way somehow.

–Update:  8/2/07–

I went to the Met this afternoon and it was a really positive experience.  I’m not sure yet if it’s going to lead to a script this week…  I my put some music up instead.  We’ll see how things go.

This week’s a travel week, so I’ll only actually be at my home base for 3 days.  Keeping that in mind, this week I’ll…

• Write one scene of dialog

Way back when (I can’t find the original progam, so I’m actually not sure of the exact date) I wrote a piece for dance called “Baggage”. It was for Kelly Grogan’s NYU graduate recital. (Kelly was the choreographer and also an all around really cool person…) Not too long after the performance I went into the studio and recorded the music (we did it live for the recital).

What you’ll find in this weeks 52 Things are the parts of that session that I could salvage.

“Salvage” you say? Please explain!

Baggage is one of those projects that I’ve been saying I need to finish for years. As I said, it’s been so many years now that I can’t remember when it was we worked on it. I do remember that I spent over 900 bucks in studio time with the idea that I’d turn “Baggage” into an asset… Something I could use beyond the single performance we had. (I never actually defined what it is that I wanted to do with it, which was part of the problem.)

I recorded the tracks and then they sat there in the studio that I recorded them in for probably 2 years. I eventually made it back to the studio and had them transferred from ADAT to Pro-Tools so that I could do something with them. (Yes, it’s been so long they were recorded on ADAT).

And then the tracks sat in my apartment.

“I really need to finish “Baggage”, I’d say to myself.

And the tracks sat in my apartment.

Finally when I decide to actually finish Baggage as one of my “52 Things”, I realize that some of the tracks are missing. (I’m not sure if I lost a CD someplace, or if I even got them from the studio…) Ouch. Luckily it only affected a couple of the movements but alas, the “Baggage” you hear before you today is not the complete “Baggage”. I’ve resigned myself to this fact and hopefully learned a valuable lesson about putting things off.

The titles and order of movements have changed since the original performance (I can’t remember what things were called) but hey, at least I have part of “Baggage” to present to you this week! You’ll find it here.

Also on the positive side, I did re-purpose some of the music a while back as a duet with a dancer friend of mine from Brazil. We called it “The Fabric of our Dreams”.

This week I’ll do the following:

• Mix, recut (augment if necessary) and master the following movements of Baggage*

Intro

Piano / Trombone Trio

Percussion Interlude

Piano / Vocal Duet

Piano / Trombone Duet

Outro

*Baggage is a piece I wrote and recorded for a dance recital years ago, but never finished.

This week I’ll do the following:

• Write one scene of dialog.

I’m trying a new approach this week, based on something that seems to be working well on another project I’ve begun for the summer. I’m including below a sketch of what I’d like to create for this weeks project.

It’s something that I avoided doing in the beginning. I wanted to give myself the maximum amount of flexibility to take baby steps, and give myself permission to create something. Even if it was small… even if a part of me was going “this shouldn’t count…”. While very helpful in the beginning, I feel like this approach has grown a little stale and that I’m not challenging myself enough. I want to try setting a more clear and specific goal at the beginning of the week for what I’d like to have done at the end of the week and see where that leads me. I want that goal to be S.M.A.R.T., which can be tricky when you’re talking about something that’s creative. So far I’ve done well with “Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely”… I want to get more specific with exactly what it is I want to create.

Rather than jump completely into the deep end just now, I’ll give myself a couple of options.

Plan A
Since I have an opportunity to work with a very skilled guitar player tomorrow, Plan A is to create a piece of music that includes his playing.

• Write (a minimum of) 32 bars of music that features the guitar, and is accompanied by (at the minimum) the bass.

Plan B
My backup plan is:

• Write one scene of dialog.

Plan B is definitely valid because I’m not sure what my guitarist friend and I will come up with when we get together.

One of the challenges to creating a specific plan like this is that on the face of it it seems more difficult to turn “writing a song” into a widget to crank (to coin a phrase from David Allen’s Getting Things Done.) It seems much easier to get specific about writing (plays, scripts, novels) than it is to get specific about music. If you write 1200 or so words of dialog, you have approximately one scene of a script.

I suspect that this is probably in my head and based on fear. I have less invested in whether or not the scripts that I write are any good, thus I’m more willing to “just write” and not care as much about the output. If I turn out the 1200 words then I’ve been successful. I figure that eventually I’ll learn how to write something someone might want to actually act in someday.

With music I have a much larger ego investment. “I’ve spent the better part of 20 years doing music…I should be able to write something great…” my ego says to me. It makes it much more forbidding to commit to the specificity of “write a minimum of 32 bars with these criteria”. My “standards” say that I have to make something great because I’m a great musician and that gets in the way of creating anything at all.

That pretty much sucks so it’s time to try something different.

We’ll see how this goes. Look for an update in 7 days!

–update:  7/1/07–

Beginning the week with a Project Description was helpful and kept me more focused.  There were definitely moments during the week where I had doubts as to whether I could create something that sounded decent, but I’m pretty happy with the results.

I’ve been pretty lax in updating the journal section of the site, but wanted to welcome any new visitors that might have stopped by since my last email. Enjoy!

It’s 3:50 a.m. on Sunday evening, and I’ve just posted my project for the week. I’ve been away from my “home base” for most of this past week visiting family, and finishing it was a challenge. The project isn’t as “in depth” as I’d originally planned, but I feel good that I stuck to my guns and finished something. Baby steps, I suppose. The challenge moving forward will be to learn how to plan and execute projects when I have limited time and don’t have the luxury of being in my normal workspace with my normal tools.

Well, it seems I’ve begun this thing. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead and all that! It feels good to start. Only 51 more to go…

See you on the other side, and all those places in between.