Someone Planted Two Agaves. Now I Have 100 Songs
There is no weaker analogy in music than cooking ~ “cooking something up.” Second to this may be gardening, but while the analogy breaks down, a gardening simile is solid.
If you’ve got a home garden and you design it, and then you put that design into motion, you’ll find that a lot has to change from page to actual dirt. For some reason where I live-on a hill in Austin, Texas, I could have an American agave farm—large, ornamental, desert-style planting. Austin is 2 distinct ecosystems: west is Hill Country, and east is farm-y plains.
I'm west, and I'm not sure American agaves would work east. Do they recommend them in more easterly Austin nurseries? Would they work? If they worked would they thrive?
I may have 100 of them in my yard. There were probably two planted there at one point, and they just grew, making pup after pup. Horseherb is also all over my yard. Turns out that’s a really good grass alternative, and it’s shown up all over (west) town this year.
So as I start to redo parts of my yard, two of the biggest players are actually here already. Now I've even done some my-yard-only foraging, and I found a bunch of different other stuff that's native and that really works in my micro environment. I'm trying different plants and different cuttings in each part of the yard.
Unsurprisingly, as is the yard as is music.
I have the skills and the equipment in my 'musical yard' already. I do NOT need to go to the nursery and get more native fauna. Musically, the one thing I don’t do enough is assess what I've written vs. what the tools are then just try a bunch of shit out.
Do I have a song? Yes. Great. Now it’s time to try a bunch of (my) random stuff. See what sticks. So that’s what I’m going to try to do more of. I have instruments and systems that work. How can I use them, break them, move them, etc.
So, as in the garden as is musically. At least for now.