Cupid's Trick

At university, it took me a long time to break free from the restrictions of superimposed forms on music. I had for a long time had a desire to compose a piano sonata in the strict sense. I had studied form and I thought I had understood it's importance in music. Indeed, it is important, but I believed it to be a point of departure in composition. This raised quite a few problems in that it restricted what I could do and how I could compose. Indeed, I was merely a prisoner to these forms, believing anything outside of them would be completely unjustified and therefore, fairly worthless. It completely hindered my progress, because I didn't know how to compose meaningfully around them. However, a good long hard struggle with this saw me break free of form entirely. This was equally troublesome. I explored this at depth in an earlier blog about being able to see all my materials, but being almost blinded by them, not knowing where to start or finish or where to go in between. I had come to a place where I understood that form was important, but is to be used with the knowledge the materials at hand and in the correct context. We cannot superimpose a form unsuitable to the composition being composed, lest it becomes mundane or unlistenable.

I was thinking about this as I walked home from my afternoon shift at the pub. I don't think it's an approach that is too far from that one should have in life. I am fairly unhappy in life at the moment. I could go round in circles trying to avoid the reason why I am unhappy, because I'm not happy with my own attitude that has caused it. However, I believe it is because I am craving a life I do not have here in Thatcham. I came back home from London (which was not always awesome, we must realise!!) and almost immediately wanted to be back in London. Why? I suppose because I had many friends, a decent church to go to (which I enjoyed going to) and I enjoyed London, albeit with many paradoxes. It excited me and I felt I was heading somewhere. Here, I am working in a pub, having failed to complete my degree and I am unable to find a job I actually want to be in. I listen to Elliot Smith's words with a perculiar poignancy...

"I hope you're not waiting, waiting around for me, because I'm not going anywhere, obviously."

I feel utterly stagnant and useless. I have turned bitter and angry. All because I cannot have what I want. That is amazingly selfish and shortsighted of me. The fact is I'm utterly confused with my life. I have composed a situation in my head where I imagine I will be happy if I conform to a form. A form I have constructed in my own head and that I'm trying to fit into, of success and status. My recent understanding of form in music should tell me something here, I think. I think now that if I try to fit my life into an abstract form (that perhaps I have invented or "society" has imposed onto me), because I suppose it will make me happy, I am in for a disappointment.
The truth is we all do it. We all say "if only I had this, things would be OK" or "if only I was here, things would sort themselves out". What nonsense. It doesn't work. It's proven. There are those who live in massive houses, have oodles of money, a high-paid job, many friends, but who are not happy in the least. As Bob Dylan once penned...

"How many times have you heard someone say, 'If I had money, I could do things my way'?"

It is the way of a world obsessed with possession, status and self-furtherment in the name of happiness and is something I see now that I have begun to fall into. It is a world obsessed with the present and not the future.

But I call myself a Christian, and it is shameful for me to be a part of that mentality. Listen to Paul's words...

"For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself."

Philippians 3:18-21

My future is in heaven, so why should I crave now earthly things? It is remarkable that I could invent for myself a form I should conform to, a form of earthly success and status and a happiness that comes not from Jesus, but from "early things". The fact is, that form and my happiness and satisfaction are incompatible. But I have been craving those things of late and I suppose that has what has made me so unhappy. I don't think it's going to be easy to change my heart on this. I know in my head that my searching for a satisfaction in life that is not from God is hopeless, yet it is so difficult for me to stop searching. I pray that the Lord Jesus will change my focus and my heart, to crave Him only and to focus purely on heaven. I know that knowing Jesus is to know Love, and to have the assurances of His love and my salvation, and an eternal relationship with God, must bring untold joy!! Perhaps it is that I am so cynical that I find it hard to trust His promise, but I know He is trustworthy and that the "form" that will work for me is the one He has set aside for me.

I have more to say, but it'll have to wait, because I've got to get back to work.
It seems lyricists always have the right words...

"All my life, I thought I needed all the things I didn't need at all"