Relying on Inspiration
For many younger composers, the word “muse” is merely a euphemism for drugs and alcohol. Even the most secluded Professors know that Rochester is the cocaine capital of Upstate New York. I’m aware that some of my students travel to Canada to drink alcohol and gamble. These vulgar activities are not of the mind but of the flesh, just as music composed by “inspiration” is not for the mind but for the ears and the sex organs.
Young people like to get “high” on drugs and alcohol. It is difficult to convince them that they can get just as “high” analyzing the cosmocentric complexity and deterministic chaos of my TANDY compositions. All Professors have a responsibility to discourage their students’ dependency on alcohol, drugs, inspiration, and muses. It may be difficult to go through life with an underdeveloped sense of structure and integrity, but drugs and alcohol are not the answer. Composition students should look to their Professors as role models, and Professors should set good examples as intellectually mature, cultivated individuals for whom drugs, alcohol, and inspiration are not substitutes for structural superiority.