{"id":1133,"date":"2018-02-01T01:36:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T01:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1133"},"modified":"2018-02-01T01:36:17","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T01:36:17","slug":"music-speaks-no-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1133","title":{"rendered":"Music Speaks, No Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ImageIn Twelfth Night<\/em> Shakespeare dubbed music the food of love. Beethoven considered it a higher revelation than wisdom or philosophy. Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To him, and he wasn\u2019t the sunniest of guys, music exalted the soul. Little wonder few topics get writers going–or even squabbling–like how music fits into wordsmithing time.<\/p>\n

What style or go-to artist do you put on? Crank it up or keep it down? Radio serendipity or playlist certainty? Or do you embrace the zen of silence? Hardly idle questions. Among author folk, music can be as essential as pen and paper.<\/p>\n

A confession: I can\u2019t carry a tune. I can barely keep rhythm or decipher sheet music. And yet music is nearer and dearer to me than reading or writing. Words may thrill me or move me, but music gets inside me. I remember in vivid detail hearing  R.E.M.’s \u201cLosing My Religion\u201d for the first time, me cruising in a cab down Michigan Avenue, my first solo business trip. The big brains of history weren\u2019t lying: music accesses parts of us too subconscious for language. And stays there as memory and inspiration.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this the sort of depth we hope to infuse on the page? That jolt of human connection is true whether writing high literary or pulp fiction. Music is maybe, just maybe a well tap into a more powerful storyteller self. Like Hans Christian Andersen said, where words fail, music speaks.<\/p>\n

Having soapboxed, another confession: I don\u2019t listen to music when writing. I did, early on. Rock, folk, alternative, whatever started me into a flow. Music seemed to help–until I realized it didn\u2019t. Mainly it helped me write meh stuff. Not because I was a terrible writer, but because I hadn\u2019t yet learned where music fit my writing process.<\/p>\n

\"Joe
Joe, from Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My stories work off voice and style. Landing that all-important tone forces me to seek out the point-of-view\u2019s wavelength, get our back-and-forth cooking in my head. I can\u2019t do that well when Joe Cocker is also in there belting out \u201cShe Came in Through the Bathroom Window.\u201d At last year\u2019s Southern Festival of Books<\/a>, Ron Rash and Jill McCorkle shared that they were in the silence camp. For other writers, a creative moment is when they need their Go-To most. Stephen King, as someone who\u2019s done okay for himself in publishing, famously rocks out when writing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve named my silence dynamic the One Distraction Rule. That is, I can hold the fiction zone together through a single pressing intrusion. Time pressure or a garbage truck slamming around a dumpster or a cat pawing the keyboard. A second invader, such as competing vocals, and my train of thought collapses. Poof. Goodbye, creative juice. What I\u2019m saying, I can\u2019t afford mad vocals starting me down a distraction.<\/p>\n

Sorry, Joe. You don\u2019t have to go home, but you can\u2019t play here.<\/p>\n

Instead, music has moved to my pre-writing stage. Before a session, I listen to stuff that clears my head. With luck, it nudges me toward whatever mood I want on the page. For humor, I\u2019ll put on the Great American Songbook, say Cole Porter\u2019s clever rhymes or Johnnie Mercer\u2019s playfulness. My story in MWA\u2019s Ice Cold<\/em> <\/a>anthology features a young Hungarian<\/a> who seriously digs the Stones\u2019 album Beggar\u2019s Banquet<\/em>. Honing her character meant listening to those tracks again and again.<\/p>\n

Once adopted, a music pattern gets ingrained but also transforms into situational variants. Sometimes classical music provides me the perfect gorgeous white noise. For casual essays, writing in my own voice frees up a potential distraction. Good music can relax and inspire me. Right now Emmylou Harris is warbling out my computer speakers. When working in a library or anywhere public, music on big, old noise-cancelling headphones is a must, the author\u2019s equivalent of the airplane introvert (of which I am also one).<\/p>\n

My point isn\u2019t to advocate a listening pattern. It\u2019s that patterns are best process. A strategy. Good writing is intentional writing, and music can make my writing better. Or worse, if I\u2019m not intentional. If anyone out there hasn\u2019t struggled with music as a writing tool, Nietzsche might worry you\u2019re making a mistake.<\/p>\n

\"Nietzsche187a.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Twelfth Night Shakespeare dubbed music the food of love. Beethoven considered it a higher revelation than wisdom or philosophy. Nietzsche said without music, life would be a mistake. To him, and he wasn\u2019t the sunniest of guys, music exalted the soul. Little wonder few topics get writers going–or even squabbling–like how music fits into… Continue reading Music Speaks, No Mistake<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[135,136,138,139,137,5],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-whole-writing-thing","tag-joe-cocker","tag-music","tag-so-not-the-ubermensch","tag-soapbox-confessions","tag-that-old-black-magic","tag-writing","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3CG0W-ih","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":631,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=631","url_meta":{"origin":1133,"position":0},"title":"Shortstops, Libraries and Tyler Avenue","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"June 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"If you spent a weekend with the crew at Grandma Fischer\u2019s, you spent it their way. 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