The “Muse Room” is the room in my house where I make music and my wife makes visual art. Published the first Monday of the month, each issue of Letters from the Muse Room will include news and updates about my music, as well as something that has inspired me creatively over the past month.

Dear friends,
Happy May! Spring has finally sprung in Kansas City, and I’ve enjoyed sitting out on my balcony (which is just outside the Muse Room) to do some handwritten revisions on panicpanicpanic.

I have a quick favor to ask you. After I sent the April edition of Letters from the Muse Room, someone suggested that perhaps Monday mornings aren’t the best time. People have so many other things going on that it could easily get lost in the shuffle.

Could you please take 10 seconds and respond to this one-question survey, letting me know on which day of the week you’d be most likely to read the email if you received it first thing in the morning?

Take the survey…

Thanks!

Not a whole lot to report this month. I’ve finished the first draft of panicpanicpanic and I’ve really enjoyed revising the printed score with a pencil. I just started doing this with the last piece I composed, and I don’t know why I haven’t been doing it all my life. It gives me such a fresh perspective and really makes the music better.

I’m still working on getting my website set up to sell sheet music (and other things), but hopefully that will be done this month. Being a perfectionist and being very picky about how I want things to look makes it a slow process….

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In addition to being inspired by blooming trees and flowers, sunshine, my balcony, and my 0.9 mm Pentel Twist-Erase pencil, I was inspired this month by a Rudyard Kipling poem I read in a book my daughter checked out from the library.

It’s called “Seal Lullaby,” and it’s just eight short lines:

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
   And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
   At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
   Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
   Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

I read it to my daughter as I was putting her to bed one night, and the language really struck me. Try reading it out loud. I love the way the words feel as you’re saying them, and the alliteration is delightful — “weary wee flipperling” (my daughter’s favorite phrase in the poem), “asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas” (my favorite phrase). It’s the one of the most musical poems I’ve read in a long time. I have an idea for a piece or two I want to work on after I finish panicpanicpanic, but after that (or maybe before) I might try setting this to music.

I hope you’re enjoying blue skies, green trees and warm weather where you are. Till June!

Peace,
AJ Harbison

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