One of my life goals has always been to write a novel. I have been kicking around an idea for a novel in my head since my sophomore year of high school (roughly 7 years now). The title of my perpetually un-progressing novel project is
Progress. I currently have nearly 60 pages of the book written, but between writer's block and lack of time, it's been over a year since I've touched the manuscript.
God willing, I will still finish the book someday. In the meantime, though, I decided to record the score to the movie that would be made of the book if it ever gets finished and published. I also wrote the main theme to the score in my sophomore year of high school around the same time I came up with the idea for the story. Otherwise, the rest of the musical version of
Progress was composed during my first 3 1/2 years at Bucknell, parallel to my composing of
Come Together. Sometimes on those nights when I'd go lock myself in a practice room, I worked on creating the themes and motifs to
Progress. I finally put them all together and recorded them over the span of about a month at the end of 2010 after I recorded and distributed
Come Together. As with
Come Together, the recording is unprofessional, but I still say the character of the music shines through despite that and the intent that it be performed by an orchestra. For what it's worth, I do think this is my personal favorite of the three CDs I've recorded so far. It's certainly the most complete and well-developed.
Most of the text below is taken directly from the CD insert I included with every personalized copy of
Progress. It includes an introduction to the story, brief descriptions of where each song fits into the plot, and an excerpt from the novel's prologue. Videos of the pieces with corresponding Mojave Desert photographs can be found in the previous post. Have fun!
DISCLAIMER: Please, do not use any of the music, photos, or text from these videos without express permission from the composer/photographer/author (me). All rights belong to yours truly.
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Plot Introduction
Progress is set in the not-too-distant future in Sun Mesa, a small but growing city in California’s Mojave Desert. The story traces the relationships of two Sun Mesa families, the Droffards and the Adkins, both with each other and their city, across a time span of two-and-a-half decades. The city’s struggle to survive in spite of perpetual drought and an ever-decreasing water supply plays a crucial role throughout the story.
Major Characters
Will Droffard: A high school-educated groundskeeper for the Sun Mesa Parks and Recreation Department, who has lived in Sun Mesa his entire life. Will is a heavy smoker and drinker with a prickly personality and a propensity to heavily complain about his job. However, when a plot is hatched to destroy the city, Will may be the only one with the knowledge of how to save the city and its residents.
Darcy Droffard: A native of Central Pennsylvania, who eloped with Will while on an extended vacation in California one summer. Despite her college education, Darcy remains a homemaker from her marriage with Will until her untimely death from breast cancer. Darcy often questions whether her marriage to Will was a mistake and never stops hoping that she will one day be able to move back to Pennsylvania, with its four seasons and greenery.
Zack Droffard: The only child of Will and Darcy. Zack is highly intelligent and excels at academics, but can be very socially awkward and timid. His best friend is Martin Adkins; their friendship survives for many years in spite of Martin’s increasing insanity, mainly because Zack feels as though he has no one else to turn to (particularly following the death of his mother). Throughout the story, Zack is forced to make a series of difficult choices that puts his relationships with his father, Martin, his love interest Sara, and even the fate of Sun Mesa in jeopardy.
Horton Adkins: Like Will, Horton has lived in Sun Mesa his entire life, but their social statures could not be more different. Horton owns a highly successful firm, Sunset Engineering Solutions (SES), serves as general manager for the Sun Mesa Water District (SMWD), and is eventually elected as the city’s mayor. Horton is motivated by a desire to see Sun Mesa turn into a destination on the scale of Las Vegas, no matter what the economic and environmental cost. During his term as mayor, Horton also hatches a scheme to convert the public agency SMWD into a for-profit private corporation with himself at the head. Horton is a greedy, selfish, manipulative womanizer, but he also possesses a great deal of charisma and speaking ability, and is therefore beloved by a majority of Sun Mesa residents. However, Horton engages in a wide variety of illegal dealings and corrupt actions over the years, which eventually become public knowledge and result in scandal. At the story’s end, Horton has become a disgraced shadow of his former self.
Martin Adkins: The only son of Horton and his first wife Linda. At age four, Martin witnesses his mother die a tragic death when a major earthquake strikes Sun Mesa, and sits alone in the rubble of his house for nine hours before Horton returns. Martin’s childhood is a casualty to Horton’s self-promoting aspirations; following Linda’s death, Horton marries his secretary, Julie, and lets her do most of the work in raising his son. Martin instantly loathes his stepmother and terrorizes her for years until she eventually seeks a divorce. Martin has a certain natural brilliance and inherits his father’s charisma, but he is scarred by his unpleasant childhood and gradually develops serious mental health problems that are left untreated. After graduating from Cornell University into an economy in deep recession, Martin is unable to find employment and refuses to work for his father. He creates an anarchist, ecoterrorist group called Greenspots and recruits hundreds of similarly disaffected young adults to the cause. As the drought and economy worsens and Sun Mesa’s government under his father’s leadership becomes ever more corrupt, Martin and Greenspots hatch a destructive plot of truly apocalyptic proportions.
Sara Wallean: A short, overweight young woman with a heart of gold. Sara takes an interest in shy, enigmatic Zack. The pair become close friends and then on-again, off-again lovers.
A Personal Note on the Story and Score
The idea for Progress popped into my head one day around the middle of my sophomore year of high school. I instantly knew that I wanted to not only tell the story in novel form and hopefully eventually also as a film, but also to tell it musically in the form of the film’s score. I composed the score’s main theme, heard most prominently in “Reverse Metamorphosis,” shortly thereafter. Over the next six years, bits and pieces of the novel and score were gradually put together, with my creative process marked by occasional flashes of brief but intense creativity and long, desolate stretches in which the realities of being a full-time student and part-time employee trumped my more creative impulses. After I successfully completed the original score Come Together for Common Ground 2010, to an overwhelmingly positive reception, I was inspired to return to Progress and, at the very least, complete its score. My approach to composing this score was highly character-based. Each of the major characters has a recurring theme that develops along with them throughout the story. In addition, I have created a series of recurring motifs that represent important locations, situations, or ideas, such as a motif to represent drought and a motif to represent Martin’s anarchist organization Greenspots. All told, there are more than 20 such repeating themes and motifs that work their way into the score. Like Come Together, this is consequently very much a CD that is intended to be listened to as a whole rather than as a collection of disconnected individual tracks. Also like Come Together, this score is performed on the piano but written with a full orchestra in mind for the intended eventual recording for film. However, this CD also has a number of differences when compared to Come Together. The story is darker and the music reflects that in its more brooding and intense tone. This score is more structurally complex, and is in many places more restrained and subtle (though it still contains a number of tracks, such as “Saving the People,” that are anything but). As it is written very much with a specific story and series of events in mind, it is perhaps not as listenable as Come Together. However, it is my hope that it will still be accessible to a general audience and enjoyable as a self-contained work.
–MT, 12/4/10
Track-by-Track: Matching Music with Story
Video 1
1) “Six Days, Maybe Seven” (0:00-2:25)- Prologue scene (excerpt from novel appended). Martin and Zack meet on the outskirts of the city and discuss the Greenspots plot to destroy civilization in the American West.
2) “Reverse Metamorphosis” (2:26-4:23)- The score’s main theme is introduced as the main titles play over a reverse-time lapse image of Sun Mesa’s development to 23 years previously.
3) “Family” (4:24-6:40)- Will and Darcy Droffard are introduced. Darcy gives birth to Zack.
4) “Mud” (6:41-8:22)- When ¼ of Sun Mesa’s residents start getting mud out of their faucets instead of water, the city government and the SMWD realize that the underground aquifer that provides the city with its water supply is drying up. SMWD director Horton Adkins is introduced.
5) “Horton’s Speech” (8:23-10:37)- Horton reveals the Sun Mesa Water Security Project, his plan to build a series of aqueducts and dams to ensure that the city has a long-term water supply.
6) “Dam It” (10:38-12:13)- Horton oversees the construction of the Sun Mesa Water Security Project.
Video 2
7) “Crisis Averted…Sort Of” (0:00-4:08)- A disastrous 7.4 magnitude earthquake strikes Sun Mesa. The Droffard family attempts to cope with the disaster. Martin Adkins witnesses the death of his mother and becomes trapped in their partially destroyed home. Horton frantically scrambles around assessing the damage to the newly constructed aqueducts and dams. He returns home hours later, where he is greeted by police who were called after the neighbors heard the sounds of Martin screaming from the rubble.
8) “Horton Rising” (4:09-5:12)- Horton is elected mayor of Sun Mesa and oversees the city’s recovery from the earthquake and continued growth.
9) “We’ll Be Friends” (5:13-7:26)- Zack and Martin meet on the first day of kindergarten and become friends.
10) “Birthday Proposal” (7:27-10:03)- Will and Horton meet when Zack attends Martin’s sixth birthday party. Horton reveals an important secret about Sun Mesa’s water supply and offers Will a job with SES. Will declines, preferring the familiarity of his job with Parks and Recreation.
11) “Escape Attempt” (10:04-11:23)- One day in first grade, Martin is already bored with school and convinces Zack to attempt to run out the school’s front gate with him during recess. The pair is detained by a school security officer.
12) “Up and Out” (11:24-13:14)- Underscores a montage sequence covering approximately a decade of Sun Mesa’s continued growth and Zack and Martin’s progression through elementary, middle, and part of high school.
Video 3
13) “Strain” (0:00-2:07)- Zack and Martin’s friendship is challenged when Martin attracts numerous female classmates and Zack attracts none.
14) “Sara” (2:08-5:04)- Classmate Sara befriends Zack while Martin is off messing around. The pair draws closer and begins to fall in love.
15) “Unfamiliar Territory” (5:05-6:59)- Represents Zack and Sara’s love and Zack’s uncertainty about how to conduct himself in close relationships.
16) “Crossroads” (7:00-10:15)- Zack, Sara, and Martin approach the end of high school and must make their college decisions. Sara chooses to attend the local public school, Sun Mesa State University, while Martin nabs a legacy spot at his father’s alma mater, Cornell University. Zack applies to and is accepted to both schools and is conflicted about his choice, feeling that he is implicitly choosing to favor either his longstanding but damaged friendship with Martin or his short-lived but passionate love for Sara. He ultimately chooses Cornell for its greater academic reputation.
17) “Split” (10:16-12:11)- Sara is upset by Zack’s decision to move to the opposite end of the country and attend Cornell. Sara chooses to break up with Zack rather than attempt to maintain a long-distance relationship. The friends graduate from high school.
Video 4
18) “Ithaca” (0:00-2:34)- Zack and Martin move to Ithaca, NY to attend Cornell University and are faced with the highs and lows of college life. Zack feels somewhat lost in the crowd of such a large university and Martin is basically his only friend at Cornell. He is also still very much in love with Sara and pines over their breakup and the distance between them. Martin, by contrast, makes many other friends and continues to mess around with a wide variety of young women, even as the stresses of college worsen his untreated mental health problems.
19) “Reckless Expansion” (2:35-3:06)- Sun Mesa continues to grow rapidly while the aqueducts and dams constructed earlier in the story begin to show signs of strain.
20) “Pause” (3:07-5:20)- During the summer prior to Zack’s senior year, Darcy is diagnosed with a severe case of breast cancer. Her condition rapidly deteriorates and she passes away just days before Zack is set to return to Cornell. Always the intellectual, Zack does decide to return for his senior year, but struggles with ever-worsening depression and isolation.
21) “Bad Timing” (5:21-6:27)- Zack and Martin graduate from Cornell just as the economy crashes and enters a severe, lengthy depression.
22) “Confusion” (6:28-7:45)- Zack and Martin unsuccessfully attempt to find post-collegiate employment. Zack is unable to find a good job and returns to live with his father, where he takes a job as a substitute school bus driver and writes gruesome horror stories in his free time, hoping to become a published author. Martin is unable to find a job on his own; his father offers him employment as an assistant in the mayor’s office, but filled with hate for his father, Martin declines. After months of boredom, Martin founds Greenspots, an anarchist, ecoterrorist organization, and begins recruiting members. Zack reluctantly joins the organization as a sign of his ongoing friendship with Martin.
23) “The Harder They Fall” (7:46-9:33)- A journalist for the Sun Mesa Observer uncovers the truth about Horton’s long record of corruption. The scandal engulfs the town, directing public attention away from the more severe problem: the impending collapse of the city’s water supply.
Video 5
24) “Young, Smart, and Bored” (0:00-2:13)- Martin’s organization Greenspots rapidly grows in size and popularity among the region’s largely unemployed twentysomethings.
25) “The Only Solution” (2:14-3:42)- After studying the facts about the American West’s rapidly vanishing water supply, Martin concludes that there is no way the region’s civilization can survive. He hatches a plan to set fires at strategic locations throughout the West, believing that the fires will all converge and burn up the entire region and all of its inhabitants. In his insane mind, Martin believes that doing so would ultimately be more humane than the protracted decline of society he otherwise perceives, and also sees the action as a way of returning nature to a balanced state in the long-term. He reveals his plan to the other members of Greenspots, using his charisma to convince them that it is the only viable plan for the future of the city and region.
26) “Overheard" (3:43-4:59)- Will, concerned about Zack’s well-being, secretly follows him to the meeting at which Martin reveals his apocalyptic plan. Will confronts Zack after the meeting and the pair discuss the situation and their conflicted feelings and loyalties.
27) “It’s Time” (5:00-7:21)- Martin and Greenspots put their plan into action by lighting the fires throughout the American West. A major character is killed.
28) “Convergence” (7:22-10:01)- Montage sequence: As the fires converge, the major characters speed toward their ultimate destinies.
Video 6
29) “Unlikely Savior” (0:00-1:30)- A major character makes a last-ditch attempt at halting the Greenspots plan and is killed.
30) “Never Easy” (1:31-2:58)- Zack and Martin have a final confrontation, the outcome of which has potentially millions of lives hanging in the balance. Another major character dies.
31) “Saving the People” (2:59-7:34)- The residents of Sun Mesa frantically try to survive as the fires begin to engulf their city. Sara returns and plays and important role in the story’s conclusion.
32) “Miracle” (7:35-10:16)- Three days after the Greenspots plan is put into action, a huge rainstorm appears over the American West and gives the survivors hope that they will be able to rebuild their civilization.
33) “Beauty” (10:17-11:41)- Two of the surviving major characters discuss the story’s climactic events, concluding that while the situation is certainly bleak, things of beauty and hope can always be found even in the darkest of times.
34) “Progress” (11:42-18:39)- Mishmash of various themes and motifs from the score played over the film’s end credits.
Prologue
Engimatic. If one word had to sum up Martin Adkins, that would be it.
Of course, no one is simple enough to be summed up in one word, and if there was anything that Martin Adkins wasn’t, it was simple. That was a great deal more than could be said for the rest of his family, of course, which just so happened to be one of the main reasons why he had driven out to this abysmal place on this equally abysmal day.
At last, his blue Chevy Volt reached the gate at the top of the steep hill. He put on the parking brake, turned off the ignition, and stepped out of the car. His long, dark hair fluttered in the ubiquitous Mojave wind.
He gazed beyond the gate into the large, lonely reservoir. Or, rather, what was left of it. The last time he remembered any rain falling on Sun Mesa was more than four years ago now. The small, several-inch-deep puddle in the middle of the reservoir was all that remained of Sun Mesa’s water supply.
The Mesa’s 265,000 or so residents remained blissfully ignorant. The reservoir was located well outside the developed portion of the Mesa at the end of a steep, winding, unpaved, rocky path, and it was closed to recreation. Not that anyone would want to recreate in this miserable heat to begin with.
Moreover, the Sun Mesa Water District hadn’t exactly jumped at the chance to let the Observer or Channel 6 in on the secret, considering that they were still raving about the scandal involving the Sun Mesa mayor, Exelon, $2 billion, seventeen prostitutes, and a brand-new nuclear power plant whose construction had, under the circumstances, temporarily been put on hold. The distraction had provided the SMWD with an opportunity to quietly attempt to negotiate water-exchange agreements with the nearby cities, but as it transpired they were all on the verge of looming crises of their own. The Colorado River was now dry before it even reached the I-10, and Lake Mead was down to a depth of only about four feet and hadn’t been open to boaters in six years.
So, barring some unforeseen miracle, Sun Mesa, in spite of all its regulations and penalties for excessive water usage, in spite of the fervent prayers for rain that had taken up most of the last four SVWD board meetings, was going to run out of water in fourteen days, give or take a few. Like a row of dominoes, most of the rest of the American Southwest would suffer the same fate shortly thereafter.
“Go West, young man,” the youth of generations past had been advised. West they had in fact gone, and by the millions. The only problem was that someone forgot to tell them to bring more water with them.
Newton’s third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In short, the reaction was about to begin.
As Martin Adkins stared out at the decaying earthen dam and the increasingly miniscule reservoir it contained, a second, rather short man descended from the nearby rocky hills and joined him.
“Morning, Adkins,” the newcomer said. “Feeling better?”
“Well?” Martin inquired, without answering.
“The gas is being obtained from Bakersfield as we speak.”
“Excellent. How long until we can begin implementation?”
“Six days. Maybe seven.”
Martin grimaced. “Many thanks, my friend. We could have done so many more great things together. Not that we aren’t going to do great things. But you know what I mean.”
The newcomer gave a noncommittal grunt in response. He hesitated for a moment before asking, “Is that all?”
Martin looked pensive and was silent for a moment. “No. I want you to answer one question for me before you go.”
“Yes?”
“How can there be so much hate in a world filled with so much beauty?”
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question?”
“Hmph. You always were a bit of a smartass.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, I’ve always tried to focus on the beauty more than the hate.”
Yet the man’s voice wavered, as though he were in fact trying to mask a great deal of hatred.
Martin appeared not to notice. “There is no beauty left in this hellhole now. Hate destroyed it. All of it,” he replied.
“Well,” the second man replied, “beauty can be a rather strange thing. Sara…”
“Are you finished?” Martin interjected. “Spare me your nonsensical nostalgia. Sara is going to die, you know.”
“We’re all going to die,” the other man said. “The only question is when and how.”
Martin sighed and shook his head.
“Is that all?” the second man asked again.
Martin hesitated a moment, then nodded.
The short man began walking away. Just as he began to hope that he was in the clear, however, Martin Adkins shouted after him.
“Zack, wait,” he said. “There’s just one more thing. You and I both know that there is one person who knows what we’re up to, and he will do all that he can to try and stop us. But he is the one who is going to be stopped. And you are going to have to be the one to do it, Zack.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Zack responded, unable to mask his fear and anger.
“Let him try to stop us. He will come here first. And when he does, we will be ready for him. And by we, I mean you,” Martin said. “I’m going to stand here and watch you do it.”
“Whatever you say, my friend.” The last word was dripping with sarcasm. Zack raised a hand in goodbye and disappeared back into the rocks.
Martin continued to stare out at the dying reservoir as the wind blew his dark hair askew. He heard the drone of an Air Force jet above.
There really was so much hatred in the world, he thought. Why was there so much goddamn hate? He remembered a time when this place had been beautiful. Now it was just another dull, sprawling conurbation, filled with freeways, strip malls, casinos, gangs, and corrupt politicians and businessmen. And this horrific reservoir. Adkins Reservoir.
It was not named after him. It also might have been up for a name change in the not-too-distant future, were it not for Martin’s plans.
He watched several large chunks of the earthen dam break off and crumble to the dead, dry ground below. They burst into dust and were no more.
Beauty. There was no beauty to be found here, whatever his oldest and best friend said. Not anymore.
Six days. Maybe seven.
He honestly wouldn’t miss the place much.
