Why do I write the music? Why do I write words? Not really because I feel I have something extraordinary to share. Not at all. I write because the process gives me great pleasure. I feel free, not limited. I feel as if I touch the truth when I write my best, whether it be music or whether it be words. I feel as if I share in the deity’s creation in a spiritual sense, and deep down inside I have that feeling that I can do it. I can meet the challenge. I am not climbing the highest mountain or anything terribly dangerous, but it’s a challenge and it’s something I feel I can do. It is something new. It is like giving birth, the struggle and then the exhilaration.
I only write when I am happy. Some writers, composers or artists or literary people write out of angst, out of a need to express sorrow, but I only write when I am happy. And the process for both words and music writing is the same for me. First, there is the idea. The idea is unformed, but it is something I feel excited about. I clear my mind of daily distractions by relaxing. I start concentrating in a different sense. I concentrate on the world around me, noticing what my senses tell me. And then I experiment. I may sit down at the piano and let my fingers wander. I experiment with rhythm. I experiment with harmonies and with melodies. If I am writing words, I just sit and I write until ultimately a form emerges, whether it be music or whether it be words. And then, other people tell me, a voice develops. I don’t often notice it by myself. Something that is unique to me, not imitative. We know when a piece is Beethoven’s. We know when a piece is Copland’s. I find that there is rhythm in my word writing, as well as in my music, and then I become amazed at the possibilities. So many ideas can come from so few words, so few notes. My first book was only two hundred and two words. And after the experimentation and the concentration comes the revision, the polishing, filling in the details, discarding what didn’t sound right to my ear or look right to my eye. Very often the beginning of something gets discarded, for those were the first tentative steps toward finding form. After the revision is completed, or so I think it is, I ask for feedback from others. I stand back from the work, and I reevaluate it myself. And then I take the advice of other writers, of other composers, and I revise again. And I revise again. And I revise again.
For me, being creative is being open to new paths, new ideas. It helps me understand the universal qualities of truth, beauty, integrity, and form. If I am truly successful at what I create, I can communicate these universals to others and perhaps help them in a small way to make sense of the world we share.
Ruth Radin. Composer, poet. writer. Center Valley, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Ruth Radin composes for chamber groups. Tastefully Yours was premiered by the Amherst Saxophone Quartet in Buffalo, New York, in the fall of 2002. She has published ten picture books and novels for children, most recently Escape to the Forest, a historical novel of the holocaust. ryr2@Lehigh.edu
