Roads to Joy

I was reading, just the other day, how a television series might be suddenly abandoned, after one or two seasons. The creator is cast adrift, and the article provided some evidence of their chagrin, their tristesse. Apparently this process happens much more often than one might think.

I thought, as I read the piece, ‘Ah ha! I know that feeling, intimately!’ Over this past year, I’ve been working with our neighbour on a project that combines text and music, in what I’ve thought of as ‘a metaphor for our time’ though it has always been a story from ancient texts, reconfigured in contemporary language. The project is complete, and I’ve just got word from the printer that the second draft of the libretto has finished printing, and will soon be in our hands.

But the sad news is that the project has come to a hiatus, a juddering halt you might say. It’s unlikely to be taken up, though never say never, but we can’t see any way at the moment that it could come to fruition on the stage. It makes us feel sad to sense that our efforts have resulted in a creative stillbirth.

But we can look back and remember how it felt to be creating, to be working on something that felt exalted. And as I told our neighbour when the sad demise seemed inevitable, ‘I felt so blessed to be part of this, from the beginning, that the sadness really is just a fading echo of those delights.’

I think this perspective is not merely a ‘glass half-filled’ kind of outlook. Rather, it’s a sense that the effort of creation, in and of itself, was worthwhile. And I can certainly live with that, while I cast around to get deeply stuck into another project.

In the meantime, perhaps I shall try to write a simple poem about the loss, and about the delight of creating something, of working together and listening to the music that poured out to fit my words, and see where that takes my emotional being.

A tear or two may drop onto the printed page. But it’s my job to ensure that that tear is one of joy for what was, not tristesse over what cannot be.