The Point of Distraction

A memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves that looks at the creation of eight piano pieces.

'A brief yet elegant excursion into the nature and execution of creativity' Clemency Burton-Hill, Financial Times

'A wonderfully sensitive and probing meditation on the writing of words and music' Rolf Hind, composer and pianist

What lies behind the creation of a piece of music? Does it spring fully formed from a composer’s mind, or take shape in the recesses of the brain, revealing itself in stages over time? Is the creative act deliberate or happenstance? An inspired vision or the result of practice?

Will Eaves, author and musician, shares his experience of writing eight new piano pieces after many years away from the keyboard. Some of the music is found in old notebooks and teenage enthusiasms, some of it is caught on the wing – a response to the resurgence of the natural world during COVID lockdown. None of it is what he is meant to be doing.

But then not all artistic interests are primary or professional interests. Sometimes it’s the second-string activities, the diversions, that bring work – and life – into focus.

The Point of Distraction is a unique account of music-making that embraces Bach, film, jazz, literature, neuroscience and the mystery of will power in its search for meaning. At its heart is a love of skill, an openness to self-doubt, and a belief that we are all more than our declared aims.

Will Eaves is a novelist and poet. Murmur won the 2019 Wellcome Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize for fiction. The Absent Therapist was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize; The Inevitable Gift Shop was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. He has worked as Arts Editor at the TLS and Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. He is a columnist for the Brixton Review of Books and co-host with Professor Sophie Scott of The Neuromantics, a podcast on science and literature.