Nervous breakdowns are not great things to go through. You become
despondent and useless to the point that you can't get out of
bed without assistance. All your accumulated troubles and mistakes
collect inside you all at once and life seems utterly hopeless.
However, if you survive them, you may come out of it ahead in
ways you never expected. This is what happened to me.
Fortunately, when I had my breakdown in the fall of 1993, my wife
Marianne found me an excellent therapist. He felt that my emotional
problems had left physical manifestations. He recommended that
I see a massage therapist. The massage therapist also turned out
to be excellent. Through her work and her recommendations for
taking care of myself at home, I was able to reverse the severe
tendinitis in my hands and arms. When
I started with her in October, 1993, I couldn't play the keyboard
for more than five minutes without pain. In half a year, I got
to the point where I could easily play for hours at a time. With
my hands back in shape and more importantly, my mind back in shape,
I enthusiastically started writing songs for the CD in April,
1994.
"Inspirations" is a musical
interpretation of the 12-step program for recovery from addictions.
Since I knew what the subject material was, I came up with the
titles for the 12 songs in advance. Then, I planned to write songs
that would capture the mood of each of the steps. I struggled
with this idea for a while. Was I being too arrogant? I'm no expert
on the subject. But, I finally decided that what I was doing was
a personal interpretation. If people enjoyed the music, great!
I was writing music for people to enjoy, not creating a health
tool. If they never heard of the 12-step program, they could still
enjoy the music.
This resolved, I started to write the first piece, "Confession
I." This was one of the hardest to work out. I worked on
it a little bit each day until my creative ideas ran out. It took
about ten days. But, as time went along, the remaining eleven
pieces came together easier. One of the songs, "Surrender"
came together in less than half an hour. I had a sudden burst
and I decided to record it right away. This was one of the first
lessons I learned about the creative process. It's hard to tell
how long things will take. As well, the quality of a piece of
work bears no direct relationship to how long the piece took to
compose.
When writing, I followed a loose working format. Whenever, I had
the time, I would work on coming up with appropriate themes for
the pieces. When I came up with something I liked, I would record
immediately on the workstation. Sometimes, I would record disjointed
phrases of melody and connect them later. Usually, I would come
up with only a basic instrumental sound (piano, harp, etc.). I
would wait for input from my producer Marianne before working
out the final orchestration and the supporting instrumental parts.
I worked away at writing for a month and a half and by the start
of June, I was ready to commence the final recording. At this
point, Marianne joined into the process full time. For six weeks,
we locked ourselves in the studio and did nothing else but record
music, eat, and sleep.
The recording phase was not a smooth ride. For starters, Marianne
and I had significantly different concepts of the CD. I wanted
it be soothing, lightly orchestrated background music. Marianne
wanted a strong melody for every piece and more orchestration
to give every piece some depth. I ended up doing two or even three
times the writing I had done initially. Song 2, "Faith"
started life as a gentle harp piece. It ended up being orchestrated
for ten different instrumental parts. It grew from two to six
minutes. Song 10, "Truth" had to be completely rewritten:
Marianne felt the melody wasn't strong enough. Cursing all the
way, I wrote an entire new song. We fought each other and swore
and yelled quite often. At the end of every day, though, we were
able to throw the work aside and just be a normal husband and
wife again. I don't know how we did that but I'm so glad we were
able to separate the work relationship from the personal relationship.
We had to.
In the end, I discovered that Marianne was right almost all the
time. I disagreed with her often but I would at least try it her
way and then if I didn't like it, I was free to try something
else. After hearing the result, I would inevitably end up sheepishly
agreeing with her and feeling rather stupid about the dramatic
fuss I raised before. I think that my views were initially clouded
by a lack of confidence about my skills. Fortunately, Marianne
had no lack of confidence and focused only on what she thought
would sound best. I was happy with the end result in that I knew
it was the absolute best I could do at the time. At the risk of
sounding egotistical, I'll say that I'm quite proud of it and
I still enjoy listening to it from time to time.
