Makeup for 11/29/25: Growing and Watering, Focusing on Small Goods
- john koenig
- Dec 6
- 3 min read
There’s a well-known adage that you should “grow where you are planted” which is a common foil to the idea that “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” These ideas illustrate the fundamental human issue that, unless we take control of our own desires and reactions to social pressures, it can be all too easy to slip into a cycle of chasing fleeting success after fleeting success only to find each achievement more hollow than the last, the dopamine hit even less potent, and the need for some intangible achievement even more aching. In order to avoid the idea that “the grass is always greener” we should instead try to “grow where we are planted.”
This “grow where you are planted” idea is an ok starting place, I think, but I also think it is fundamentally flawed. By choosing to focus on “growing where we are planted” does lead us to accept that almost everything, including where we are planted, is out of our control (a fine thing to accept). But it also immediately directs our attention in the wrong direction; it forces us to look inward, working on our own growth, instead of outward to helping the people we find ourselves planted with.
Recently, a friend of mine mentioned a fine alternative to “growing where you are planted.” They advised, instead, that “the grass is green where you water it.” I love this. This simple reworking of the “grow where you are planted” idea allows us to see ourselves as gardeners, helping whatever garden we find ourselves tending to grow instead of simply focusing on our own growth. It directs our attention outward, towards others, instead of inward towards ourselves. This idea is present in Leonard Bernstein’s famous finale to his operetta Candide, “Make Our Garden Grow,” as well as “The Money Song” from the Tony-Award-Winning Avenue Q (which beat Wicked for best musical the year it came out…low key demanding a two-part Avenue Q film adaptation).
So, once we’ve overcome the idea of helping ourselves (growing versus watering), the next temptation is that we must do BIG goods for others. This is also folly, in my opinion. Just like practicing and improving at music, I think a longer, slower, smaller approach to helping others is more sustainable than trying to do one or two really big things quickly. Small goods compound; big goods are just another quick dopamine hit.
Small goods compounding is reflected in music that is composed using additive
principles. This is music where bits of a tune or melodic line are added slowly, often one pitch at a time, but compound over time creating complex and beautiful tonal tapestries of music. A great example of this is Frederic Rzewski’s (pronounced “Zhevsky”) Coming Together. This piece brings together a narrator reading the famous letter that inmate Sam Melville wrote in 1971 from Attica Prison shortly before the infamous prison riot there and an instrumental ensemble of flexible instrumentation. The letter is read in an additive fashion, returning to the beginning and adding a new word or phrase each time, and the hypnotic melody in the ensemble is also constructed according to simple additive principles. Using these simple ideas, Rzewksi constructs a cathedral over nearly a half hour’s duration. Small goods create big things.
I was recently turned on to the music of Bill Callahan and was struck to find that he uses a similar additive process in the extended coda to his tune “Too Many Birds” from 2009’s Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. Bill’s music also reminds me very much of Denison Whitmer’s music, which reminded me of Whitmer’s tune “Shade I’ll Never See” from 2025’s Anything At All. Whitmer’s tune embodies the idea of small goods compounding over time, often longer than a lifetime. The tune’s narrator is “busy planting trees” whose shade they’ll never see, busy picturing a world where they, the narrator, no longer exist. This naturally forces us to confront the universal fear and acceptance of our mortality, but that’s another blog post for another time.
Leonard Bernstein, “Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide, Marin Alsop, conductor:
Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, “The Money Song” from Avenue Q:
Frederic Rzewski, Coming Together, performed by Group 180:
Bill Callahan, “Too Many Birds,” from Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle (2009):
Denison Whitmer and Sufjan Stevens, “Shade I’ll Never See,” from Anything At All (2025):
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