Posts tagged feed
Spark

I was twelve when I composed my first full-length piece on the piano—it was moody, and emotional, in a minor key that modulated suddenly to another key and back and ended in a storm of arpeggios. The whole process had been thrilling, but when I played it for my teacher, he raised his eyebrow and sighed heavily, taking off his glasses to rub his forehead. When he finally spoke, it was to ask me if there was something dark in my soul that inspired me to write such an emotional piece. I had no idea what to say. He never asked me to compose a piece again, and I felt effectively like the gatekeeper to the world of the creators had closed the portal in front of me. I was crushed, and I put it out of my mind, returning to the world of classical music to play the compositions of the masters and earn my BA in piano. It was a stunning world, with transcendent music, but rigid, with little room to stray into creativity or personal interpretations without leaning into heresy—like a closed canon.

It wasn’t until I lived in Portland that the portal opened again; this time I opened it for myself.

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Willa Greyfeed
Bows Up

She was nervous, and it showed from her raised shoulders to her rigid posture. Getting her to loosen up would be essential if this collaboration was to go well. Christmas lights reflected against the black windows, and stars began to backlight the high ridge of hills outside the window. Laura had been a music student of mine when she was young—she’d gone on from our early piano lessons to study violin and become a virtuoso on the instrument in the classical world. That was her background, and as highly skilled as she was, asking her to play away from the notes and jump into the pool of her own creativity to collaborate was giving her intense anxiety. Her energy was becoming more rigid and contained by the minute.

I was unsure if she would jump in or not. It would be brilliant, no doubt of it, if only I could coax her to jump.

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Willa Greyfeed
Sing

In my early twenties, I found myself in a painful season that could not be circumvented. All around me was falling away, and I wavered between depression and anger, and finally decided that I wanted to sing about my experiences. At that point in my life, songwriting wasn’t something I had any experience with, and singing was only something I'd done in a choir. Still, I couldn't shake the desire…

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Blackbird

Randy was a character—a lawyer, but the kind of lawyer who helped people and never seemed to get any richer from doing it. He was broad-shouldered and quirky; a man with simple tastes, who always wore a blue denim jacket and a floppy-brimmed hat to keep off the Portland drizzle, and walked with a slight lean to the left. I met him a few months before my divorce, and he looked over my papers for free because I was just north of broke at the time and he wasn’t about to let anyone take advantage of me.

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