My Father’s Dragon - An Introduction
I recently celebrated my 29th birthday. My brother surprised me by driving down from WA to take me out to Mount St. Helens, and it was a perfect day out in The Nature.
Earlier this year, I completed one of the most substantial works I’ve ever written: a thirty-minute work for flute and cello with narration. The text, My Father’s Dragon, is an extraordinary and quirky children’s tale by Ruth Stiles Gannett. The story follows the narrator’s father, Elmer Elevator, who runs away to Wild Island to rescue a baby Dragon. From a fateful meeting with an old alley cat, to the shores of Tangerina, deep in the jungles of Wild Island, and in the face of every danger he comes across on his way to the dragon, the story simply oozes charm, wit, and imagination in every chapter.
I’ve been away from the blog for awhile now, and this piece is largely why - while I finished it earlier this year, I’ve had a hard time figuring out the best way to write about such a large, multifaceted work.
It’s not just an 11-movement work. In addition to the thirty-minute version with narration, there exists also a version without narration, two 15-minute versions both with and without narration, a 30-minute and 15-minute version with narration between movements over vamps instead of throughout each movement, and—finally—each individual movement. Getting into the whys and hows has felt like such an overwhelming task, especially given the substantial length of the “primary” version. It’s made me feel stuck, and I know I’ll have a hard time writing about anything else until this has been put out into the world.
As imposing a project as it is, I’ve really wanted to share more about this piece, because I honestly think it’s some of the best work I’ve done. I have never felt so confident, so excited, and so proud—but sharing it is also pretty scary! While there isn’t anything about me as a person in the text, sharing something you’ve poured months into and genuinely love is a really vulnerable thing. There’s always the chance the world will do its best to tell you that you’re wrong; it becomes a real test of how confident you really are in your work. It has taken awhile to muster up the courage, but I think I’m finally ready.
Over the next few [days? weeks? posts? posts. let’s go with posts], I will be sharing from start-to-finish about how this project came to be. I hope it proves helpful to those who are thinking about tackling any kind of narration piece, modular work, or theatrical/instrumental theatre music. I hope it’s inspiring to people who feel anxious or cautious about sharing their work. I hope it’s interesting to people who love stories and to people who love music. But if I’m being honest, I hope most of all—that no matter what does or doesn’t happen with this music—I continue to love this piece as much as I do now.
