Writing songs

My grandfather was a composer and professor of music. He left shelves full of his work, his own harmonies and counterpoint to which generations of musicians will always have access.  That's what composers do: they study the work of those who came before them, and then publish their own unique ideas.  They gain a beautiful immortality of sorts by adding a new idea to something that they love.

That sounds a lot like what scientists do, too. They study the work of those who came before them, and then publish unique ideas that build on those of their predecessors and influence future generations.

Some artists' work is more influential than others.  When Grandpa gave me a boxed set of recordings of Bach's complete Musical Offering and Art of the Fugue sometime in my early teenage years, I might have been a bit too young to appreciate that he'd given me the music world's equivalent of Isaac Newton's Principia or Einstein's papers on relativity.  Stuff that one person dreamed up that's going to be around forever.

Grandpa certainly wasn't trying to be the next Mozart of Brahms (no, he was definitely a Bach kind of guy).  He was just doing what he loved.  Much as my PhD supervisor, who has tens of publications to his name and is well respected in his field, seems to simply love his fluid dynamics work. The delight in his voice when he starts talking about an new idea that he wants to pursue is apparent.

But as a burnt-out PhD student, trying frantically to get anything published in any journal regardless of whether or not it sits on a shelf for the rest of eternity, I fear that I'm "writing songs, that voices [will] never share," to quote one of my favourite modern composers.

I'm still trying to write those songs, though.

That seems to be the best thing to do for now.