Back when I was a musician there was a “thing” in the culture about seeking to serve “the composer’s intentions.” So when I became, well, not a composer, but a playwright, I thought to myself, “Wow, this is going to be great, when people do my plays they will be calling me up night and day to ask about my ‘intentions.’”
Well, one more fond illusion shattered.
In all the years of my shows being done all over the world, well, there was one time a conductor asked me to come chat with the actors (at the Bahamas premiere), but other than that one time, not once has anyone doing one of my shows ever asked my opinion about how to stage it. In fact I have been often been politely asked to not bother the actors or the director.
Many people in music complain about orchestras always playing music by dead composers. There is a good reason for it. Dead composers never complain about how you play their music. And once they are dead, any conductor can claim to be the expert in how it was supposed to be done. Very hard to do that if the composer himself is still around and suddenly changes his/her mind on you. I often feel that my publishers wish I were dead– certainly I would be far more easy to work with if I was. Other than an annual royalty payment they certainly don’t act like I am alive.
When it comes to books, it’s a little different. At least with a play I can go and see the audience’s reactions in real time. With books you have to wait for sporadic reviews.
I confess that once I write a book, it’s a little like having a kid. The conceptualizing is great fun, the developmental stages are all-consuming of your time and energy, and you nurture it along as best you can, but at a certain point you have to accept the fact that the book is done and it has to go out in the world and fend for itself. You are of course concerned for its welfare and you explode with pride if it does well and people express acceptance and approval by buying it and reading it, but . . . It is all one step removed. Once a book it done, the umbilical cord is cut, it is not “me’ any more, it has to stand on its own.
That said, I confess to feeling very much on the edge with my latest book, “Time Light Love.” When someone buys it (it is only on Kindle for now) I leap with joy, but only vicariously. It is its own entity now. I gave it all the love and resources I had, and I could prop it up with excessive helicopter-author promotion as I have in the past, but I have decided this book needs no help, it has power all its own and there is no need to push it, I will just let folks discover it.
