I’m happy to have a guest post for the second time on Roz Morris’ wonderful Undercover Soundtrack, where authors talk about how music influences their writing process. Cheekily, I confess that music may have no influence on me whatsoever. But genuinely, I explore why I constantly listen to carefully constructed playlists as I write, if not to evoke a character or scene. It’s an interesting journey of discovery. Here ’tis:
When I started writing in 2003, Apple introduced iTunes, and with it, the ability to make playlists on your computer. I had reveled in playlists for years, pretending I was a DJ in my bedroom as a teenager, making cassette mixes for friends, and providing young choreographers with musical resources. But to work on my series, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles, where in each of its 1001 chapters a character recounts a past life story, the iTunes playlist became a default writing tool. To examine why I listen while I write, I looked at how I slap together a playlist for the day’s writing. I noticed song choice patterns:
A predilection based on artists. Often I look for a rarely heard track from a familiar artist, like “Indian Summer” by The Doors, but sometimes I make every fourth track by a single artist, like a movement from a Sibelius symphony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zHZzxJtOKw
An old favorite, off the beaten path. With iTunes, I found Jack Bruce’s masterful solo album Songs for a Tailor, with great songs like “He the Richmond.” But it took years to find George Harrison’s first film soundtrack, Wonderwall, the Indian collaboration he did during The Beatles.
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l_9Qr3kPoz3BLx3SZTFMiPqI8Jwt6Mi5w
A perky track for uplifting energy. Even if I’m not tired, hearing the famous Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Concert, say “One O’Clock Jump,” really gets the juices going.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=cTvxFOZHH3w
By contrast, sometimes I need calm. In the morning on the train, or after work in the late afternoon, I need peace to concentrate. Gentle repetition, like Brian Eno’s ambient Music for Airports might not actually focus my brain, but I can trick myself into thinking so. For my latest book, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, which just launched, I had to contemplate the effect of Maya, the Hindu concept of worldly illusion. The qaraq, my group of characters who have lived 1001 lifetimes together, lose their powers of memory, blocked by the mountain of trivial details we face each day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d81G9W8pEno
Long cuts, the longer the better. To minimize distracting shifts within my eclectic playlists, I like progressive rock epics like Procol Harum’s “In Held Twas in I,” or Fela Kuti’s half-hour jam “Look and Laugh.”
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=NjjSizDqsNM
My favorite selection process: a Favorites contest. I will intersperse a playlist with ten recent downloads, assess which I like best, eliminate half, make a new list, and narrow down to a winner. A current winner: The Beach Boys’ gorgeous, new “That’s Why God Made the Radio.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAmk-Wk2pNA
This examination revealed my basic responses writing with music. Assessing ‘winners’ while writing exposed the Number One benefit of mixing music and work:
Procrastination. I’ll gladly stop to drink in a track. For example, I sobbed inconsolably when I heard David Lang’s ethereal The Little Match Girl Passion last winter, after seeing homeless people freezing on the sidewalks. How difficult to choose a favorite section, especially since they are so unified; The Kyrie won. Checking where I’m at on a list, re-organizing the next half-hour of songs, or acting on a whim to mix in every Andante from Mozart’s first fifteen symphonies – anything to stop for a few minutes, or more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WROUFXPJaM4
Flow. The other end of the spectrum, when I don’t even notice the music and get on a roll. Perhaps those calmer choices push music into the background. Deeply meditative pieces, like Alice Coltrane’s incomparable “Journey in Satchidananda” might trigger creative fluids to the brain. There are present day sections of The Reincarnation Chronicles, set in suburban New Jersey, which are more calculated, plot-driven pages. The past life tales are more fanciful, full of my wild imagination, like a love spat between atomic particles; in writing these romps I tend to lose myself, and the music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQtEFdyhgdE
The Pause That Refreshes. Some moments I look up from the monitor to enjoy a beautiful passage, like the final dissonances of the Love Duet in Copland’s under-appreciated opera, The Tender Land. A moment later I dive back, recharged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-2jk56rJK0
Taking the Pain Away. When I stare into space wondering how the next word will appear, it’s comforting to have music in my ears, like a parent telling a child “You’re okay.” Or a virtuosic arpeggio from Glenn Gould’s brilliant reading of Beethoven Piano Concerto #1 makes me think “You can do this! You’re on Book 4, only 7 to go.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp7S5gkUlC0
Music and Text exist on separate levels. I don’t think music could influence my writing even if I wanted. Playing a tune that always give me shivers, like “Come to Jesus,” by Richard Rodgers grandson, Adam Guettel, evokes nothing in my writing. I only experience it on its own terms; maybe I should be a writer who can’t listen during work, but that’s no fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v6MqK_ZDjM
To conclude, music must have some unconscious effect on my work as it filters into my brain. Besides being mad as a hatter, there must be some reason why my brain conjures up atomic particles having a love spat, an inter-galactic Xoo for cosmic dissidents, or an alternative Persian history that explains how Scheherazade was born. I hope music enriches my style, or encourages my imagination. Being an unconscious process, I will never know, will I?
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