You have forty beginnings.
Eight bars each.
All of them promising.
None of them done.
I know this
because so do I.
Beginnings are cheap
and thrilling.
The first idea arrives
already sounding
like the record.
Then comes bar nine,
where the idea has to decide
what it actually is,
and suddenly
starting a new one
feels like inspiration
instead of what it is,
which is running.
A beginning promises.
A finished thing
has to deliver,
and delivery is where taste
gets embarrassed in public,
even if the only public
is you at midnight
with headphones on.
Nobody is waiting
for this song.
No deadline.
No client.
No crowd.
That is exactly why
finishing it matters.
The unfinished song
teaches you nothing
about endings,
and endings
are the whole craft.
How to leave.
What to drop.
Which promise from bar one
you have to keep
so the last minute
doesn't feel like a lie.
You only learn that
by going all the way through
something mediocre.
The middle is unglamorous.
It is arrangement,
and arrangement is just
a long series
of small subtractions
made by someone
willing to be bored
on purpose.
So pick one.
Not the best one.
The one you can bear
to hear
two hundred more times.
Give it a bridge
that is worse
than you wanted.
Give it an ending
that is too simple.
Mix it badly
and call it mixed.
Perfection is a polite word
for stopping early
and blaming the standard.
Then put it down,
finished,
where you can see it.
That done thing
is a teacher.
It shows you,
without argument,
exactly which skill
you do not have yet.
The forty fragments
are just a loud room
full of people
talking about a trip.
Nobody asked for this song.
Nobody asked
for most songs.
Finish it anyway,
and notice
that the next beginning
arrives
already knowing
how it ends.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
Top comments (0)