Here are four musical ideas. In each case the idea doesn’t arrive intact; it presents itself as an accident, a series of marks in sound, a fragment of melody, a chord, an arc. The fragments and marks then have to be assembled so that we can hear what it is they belong to, where they come from. Composition (for Will Eaves) is as much about reconnection as it is about development. It’s like listening to a conversation through the wall: you’re pretty sure the subject is interesting, but the wall is in the way, so you have to infer things. Whether Will is drawing something or writing a poem, a story or a piece of music, he always seems to be doing two things at once: listening to his aesthetic intuition (it needs to be this way, or such-and-such a shape) and putting a scattered object back together again.

 Music example