A joke that circulates from time to time among colleagues:
“Honey, why are you staring out the window?”
“I’m composing.”
Well, to be fair, it’s a half-joke. Maybe even less than half. Staring off into space happens to be a great way to focus on musical ideas. Looking at nothing in particular, hearing sounds.
Spend enough time with a composer, and you will be treated to a lot of blank stares.
But I think the window is an important component of this image. Sometimes it’s not a matter of looking at nothing in particular: sometimes the experience of two simultaneous environments is an apt metaphor for the act of composition. You are indoors, contemplating the world outdoors. It may be noisy inside and quiet outside, or vice versa. Chances are, the temperature is markedly different. Perhaps it is dry inside, and drizzly out the window. The important thing is the contrast between simultaneous experiences: the world you inhabit is not the world you are focused on.
Isn’t this one of art’s great attractions, the ability to pull us away from the immediate?