100 Rejections

How would you continue to compose string quartets if your previous several had never been performed or listened to by anyone? If they were just dots of ink on a page in a notebook in your closet?

Answer: You just would. Some blue fever driving you.

Still, dots of ink on a forgotten page are better than nonexistence, for sure. Those lush or unsettling chords still exist in your mind, gloriously. But why does it still feel “incomplete” without a listener/viewer/reader?

Well, not “without” in an absolute sense.

The composer’s insanely hot partner and a few good friends might listen to it and say very nice things about it and even help make it better. And that’s a genuinely beautiful experience; I don’t mean to belittle it.

But that creature wants out. It wants to rampage through the world. Yet it can’t find a way off of its island lair (can’t swim).

So it’s back to stitching together the next creature, I guess.