So Many Ideas

I rarely struggle to have ideas. (Don’t laugh.) The problem is that I have far more of them than I have time, energy, or talent to pursue.

I hear a piece of music and think it would sound wonderful on handbells. I imagine an arrangement for a future performance, an original for a particular ensemble, or a familiar hymn approached in a completely different way. This one or that one. Or perhaps that one instead. Some make it onto a list. Many simply stay in my head.

Tour design is not much different. This place or that one. A new artisan. A restaurant we have not tried. A workshop that might fit perfectly between two stops. Most of those ideas never become itineraries. They simply join the collection.

Knitters seem to understand this particularly well. Many have patterns they hope to make someday, or yarn already matched with a project and waiting for its turn. Eventually, though, you have to cast on. The possibilities are almost endless. Time is not.

I always assumed inspiration was the missing ingredient. If the right idea came along at the right moment, surely, I would leap into action. Looking back, that has almost never been the problem.

Several years ago, after a dear friend who had traveled with us died, I knew almost immediately that I wanted to write something in her memory. I was not searching for an idea. I had one, and it mattered deeply to me. It still took me about eighteen months to write the piece.

I spent a year and a half avoiding a piece of music I already knew mattered. It was not because she had failed to inspire me, or because the musical ideas were not there. What had lived safely in my head had to become imperfect, audible, and real.

That is when I wrote it. Not when I cared most. Not when the idea first arrived. When it finally had somewhere to go. A performance date was approaching. Musicians would need notes. Rehearsals would need music. The piece could no longer remain something I intended to write someday.

What moves an idea forward is not always the same. Sometimes it is a deadline. Sometimes it is a purpose, a particular person, a problem that needs solving, or simply the decision that this idea has waited long enough.

Today's musings arrived in a less consequential way. I needed something for this Friday, so I sat down and began. The date did not supply the inspiration; it simply moved this idea to the front of the queue.

Some ideas stay with us because they matter. Others move forward because the moment finally asks something of them. Usually, I need both: an idea worth keeping and a reason to stop keeping it to myself.