Carter Dewberry

This week I got a dose of what parents must go through when naming their children. For months I have called my...

Until my divorce, writing music never crossed my mind. I had no training, and I was terrified to hear others' judgments about my own creations. It was hard enough playing other people’s music well. When I stood up for myself and left my ex (and what many perceived to be a great life), I tasted failure on a new level. My comfortable life shattered into fragments of unreturned phone calls to supposed friends, slashed bank accounts, and doubts about my sanity.

I could taste the silence when I accidentally let it slip that I was just beginning to score a film.

I was in Fresno celebrating the completion of the 4th Cal State Fresno New Music Festival with a room full of composers decorated with degrees worth more than a celebrity’s jewels, and I was known as the cellist – not as that sort of colleague.

We all make mistakes. The key for me is to make new mistakes and not repeat the same ones (like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day”). My challenge is that I don’t always see when I am caught in a pattern.

I have fallen flat on my face in auditions more times than I can count. I dropped my bow out of nervousness during the opening chords of the Dvorak Cello Concerto and the playful Scherzo of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream on two separate occasions. My endpin that anchors my cello to the ground has slid out from underneath me at least half a dozen times. And then there were all the memory slips, wrong notes, sloppy phrasings…

Sometimes it’s too scary to look up and see the vast expanse of forest looming ahead. At times like these, I keep my head focused on my next step. Last week at this time I felt like I was jumping off a cliff. Today I feel like I am in the Amazon without a map.

I am leaning forward on my tiptoes at the edge of the precipice, peering through the fog, trying to locate a familiar figure or element. When I cannot, my pulse quickens, and I feel the fear – and thrill – of being alive. The longer I gaze intently, the more I understand why people engage in extreme sports and other adventures, like skydiving and bungee jumping. The adrenaline rush, the forced attention to the NOW, is life affirming, and in many cases, addictive.

I now know why I am not content with a traditional performance of a cello sonata or solo Bach. It’s because I don’t have single answer to the question, “Who is Carter?”

My mind spiraled out of control as I contemplated how to answer his question, “So, who is Carter?”

Asked over a cup of tea in our first meeting, this was an entirely appropriate inquiry. Yet, my response tasted stale, even as it crossed my lips. I turned the spotlight back onto him as quickly as I could to collect my thoughts.

The more I compose, the more I feel the need to clean every nook and cranny of my home.

This is new for me. (Just ask my mother.)