Somewhere; not here. Someones; not mine.

Sometimes a vivid bit of music comes into your head, belonging somewhere, but not anywhere in a piece of your own.
This morning, while transplanting Tomatillo seedlings, the slow movement of a never-to-be-written piano concerto -- throughout which the piano plays a persistent figuration which eventually accompanies a series of soli and small ensembles from the orchestra without ever gaining in intensity -- slipped into that part of the pre-conscience in which rhythms and tunes and bits of timbre often get stuck. First it teases: What is that? Have I heard it before? Am I making this up? Then it irritates: It really sounds too much like _____. Or this: Isn't that actually kind of good, too good not to use? Or this: How am I ever going to get any music made with that, that noise, hanging about? Then you get concerned: What do I do with it? I can't just leave it out there, unheard, alone, unused, unfulfilled. An archival instinct emerges: Is there a holding cell someplace for unclaimed or orphaned musical ideas? Get out the sketch book! And then, if you're lucky, reason, reconciliation, or better yet: Gelassenheit: you let it go. You just let it go.