Insane

May you live in interesting times.

It’s one of my favorite phrases because it requires us to decide what it means. We can hear it as a blessing, as in, may your world be filled with interesting things. Or we can hear it as a curse, as in, may you have no peace or tranquility.

I choose to hear it as the former.

The other evening, a most interesting thing happened to me. I heard from a Canadian composer named Stacey Brown.

Stacey wants to use words that I wrote as subtitles for a five-part piece of chamber music she’s been commissioned to write. She’s named it “The Five Stages of Insanity.”

A few nights ago, she Googled the phrase hoping to find some inspiration in a scholarly journal article or somesuch. Instead, she found only this.

She wrote to ask permission to use them, perhaps, if the piece continues down the creative road it’s on. I’ve given her permission because, wow, what an amazing request. And now, perhaps, someday, when the piece is complete and performed in Montreal in March 2011, my name will be attached.

Sometimes it pays to go off your meds.

But only sometimes.