Category Archives: Music

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Crank up the cello and listen for the words!

A sick seven-year-old has graced me with her full-day presence the past two days. Now, I’m behind on all things computer based, including email. I’m not complaining about the time spent with my little prolific reader. She’s amazing. (That’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.)

Of course, since I had no time to write during the days,  The Muse picked that time to come calling. I’d been mulling over a short story idea for a while, but suddenly a few key pieces fell into place.

So the last two nights, when I disconnected and slipped some YoYo Ma cds in the player, the words flowed along with the notes. The first night I totaled 902 words. Last night I added 436 more.

I know some of you knock out more words than that daily, and I have too in the past, but I’ve had some trouble getting back in the groove. I’m please with my progress on this story. Whether this story will end up a winner is still open. As stubborn as I am, I won’t give up on it easily.

By the way, I’m unclear on using a famous person in fiction. I’m using an actor’s name and likeness, but he only exists in my MC’s dreams. Anyone know the rules on that?

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Breath of Heaven

Presenting a public persona is a tricky business. I am a writer; this is a writer’s blog and, as such, I’ve chosen not to discuss politics or religion here. Today’s post is not meant to be a statement of my faith in any organized religion because I subscribe to none.

However, this is a season that speaks to my spirit and for the past several Christmas seasons, I’ve fed it with this song, sometimes on loop as a meditation while my hands are busy. Amy Grant’s version is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Obviously, it’s a Christian song, but to me something about this song transcends dogma. I suggest you close your eyes and feel as you listen.


Peace and Joy



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Seeing the music

I sometimes forget to view song lyrics as writing—stupid, I know. This morning I had a nearly ninety-minute “commute.” By that, I mean I drove my husband to work, my granddaughter back to her house, and then drove myself back home. On my return trip, I plugged in my iPod and listened to Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing. (Yes, it’s old—1987!)

For several months back then, I listened to this and her debut album (on repeat) while I worked in my art studio. For the first two songs, I was lost in memories of that place and time, but then I clued in on some of the lyrics for the third—”Ironbound/Fancy Poultry.”

Instantly, the same mental picture of the scene I conjured long ago popped into mind. That visual effect always happens when I reread a novel or story, but usually when I listen to familiar music, I only have the memories associated with the time or place I heard it before—like in my art studio circa 1987. Why was this song different?

I restarted the song and listened closely. Here are the opening s:

In the ironbound section near Avenue L
where the Portuguese women come to see what you sell
the clouds so low the morning so slow
as the wires cut through the sky

The beams and bridges cut the light on the ground
into little triangles and the rails run round
through the rust and the heat
the light and sweet coffee color of her skin

Such beautiful description. Is it any wonder I “saw” this song? Today I have housework and more driving to do. I think I’ll listen for more description.

Note: There is an interesting subtext on the subjugation and objectification of women to this song. Here’s a video with lyrics. (Warning: a few words are wrong.)

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Leave Your Sleep … and write a poem

In perfect timing for my Creativity Workshop goal this week, I’ve been listening to Natalie Merchant’s newest recording Leave Your Sleep. I have to thank Cynthia Newberry Martin’s lovely post on this 2-cd with accompanying 80-page book for incentive to purchase this.

Natalie’s latest work was seven years in the making. Inspired by poems she read to her daughter, Natalie wrote music and lyrics to twenty-six poems and nursery rhymes in musical styles as varied as Celtic, pop, jazz, bluegrass, reggae, chamber orchestra, R&B, Chinese folk, Balkan, and others. Listening is an amazing adventure.

Some of the 19th and 20th century poets she honored are: E. E. Cummings, Laurence Alma-Tadema, Robert Louis Stephenson, Nathalia Crane, Ogden Nash, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney. A multitude of musical talents accompanied her, as varied as Wynton Marsalis, The Memphis Boys, Hazmat Modine, and Joseph Fire Crow. Recorded in live ensemble, this work is an aural feast.

I’m almost as new to poetry reading as I am poetry writing and must confess I hadn’t heard of most of the poets represented in Leave Your Sleep. But through reading the works of new poet friends (as well as my published poet d-in-l Sarah Chavez) my mental wall is crumbling. This is why I chose to write four poems as one of my workshop goals. I’d like to fell that wall once and for all.

Please enjoy this performance video and visit Natalie Merchant’s site for more videos and to read the poems she selected for this work. Cynthia also has a great interview video in her post.


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Here be heaven

Last night I watched a movie that made me cry. The movie was Songcatcher, about a musicologist who visits her schoolteacher sister “up the mountain” in Appalachia and falls in love with the people and their music.

I am a descendant of Scots-Irish immigrants who, long before the American Revolution, settled in the Appalachian Mountains in what would become West Virginia. As the frontier moved west, so did my ancestors, but no farther than Eastern Kentucky.  Some of my best childhood memories are of visiting my grandparents’ tobacco farm.

My grandparents.

My grandparents.

The film starts with a woman sitting at a piano singing an old English folksong, “Barbara Allen.” She’s the music professor who soon finds out she’s been passed over for a full chair in the school again, presumably because of her sex. And in anger, she leaves the school to get “as far away as possible.” Next, we see her climbing up into the back country.

I tear up at the first shot of a cabin in the woods at dawn. Olfactory memory snatchs me away to my childhood. The morning scents of dew and earth and greenery waft over me as I sit on the stepstone outside the door to the summer kitchen. My feet are bare and I slide them over the cool, smoothness of the stone worn down by the feet of all who have entered this door for over a century. From behind me comes the sounds and smells of breakfast being cooked. Smoked jowl bacon, cream gravy, and biscuits, made from a heart kept “recipe” passed from mother to daughter for generations, will be served with butter I helped churn and blackberry jam like none you’ve ever tasted.

I am in heaven.

The house that grew from the cabin.

The house that grew from the cabin.

And now, I’m walking through the woods. I look down and see mayapple pushing through the thick carpet of leaves slowly decaying into rich, black loam. I hear the bob-white calls and the rat-tat-tat of the woodpecker. My feet slip on the shale as I step into the crick and then the mud squishes up between my toes. There’s a movement on the other side and I freeze. A doe steps out of the tree line and gazes at me, then inches forward to drink before she turns and disappears back into the cool green.

I am in heaven.

The best is yet to come. I sit on the porch in a cane rocker, sweetly creaking. The heat of the day seeps away, the cricket chorus rises, and then someone starts to sing and Oh! It’s “Barbry Allen” in the way it was surely always meant to be sung. But this is just the beginning. We’re going to a barn dance. Listen to the music … banjo, guitar, fiddle and dulcimer. Look at us, we’re dancing … clogging. And there’s more singing. We’re a pure distillation of our Ulster roots.

From somewhere deep inside, genetic memory, past life recall … something … feels the pain and grief and joy. I weep, with great gulping sobs.

I am in heaven.

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Musing through music

The car we drove to and from the coast recently had no satellite radio, and I forgot to bring cd’s orBose Media Sysytem my mp3 player. So, we were stuck with plain old radio. The strongest signal came from our local classic rock station. It came in clearly most of the way, though at one point, we heard a fade in/fade out duo, which made it seem Pat Benatar had joined a mariachi band. You’re a heartbreaker ai yi yi yi ya!

Listening to these oldies revealed that, for me, certain songs evoke clear-cut memories. These may or may not be associated with the first time I heard the song, or even when it was in the Top 40, but the songs have become permanently attached to specific moments in my life.

madmanWhen I hear Elton John sing “Tiny Dancer” I am lying, exhausted, on my sofa during the first few quiet minutes of the afternoon. My two little ones, plus the three I babysit, have just been put down for their naps, and I’m praying, “Let me make it through this one song before one or more of them pops back up again … and please don’t let them wake the baby.”

When I hear The Doobie Brothers’ slide into “Black Water” it’s a steamy Indiana summer afternoon and I’m driving our dark blue Chevy Impala with the glasspack muffler. With the radio cranked high, my foot heavy on the gas, loose tendrils of hair dancing in the wind, I pretend not to notice the cool guys in the next lane trying to get my attention.

cougarWhen I hear John Mellencamp—who will always be John Cougar Mellencamp to me—break into “Hurts So Good” I stand thrilled, frightened, awed, and deafened by the roar in the Indianapolis arena as the “hometown” crowd celebrates the success of one of their own.

I could share with you dozens of these evocations, but these suffice to illustrate how opening these crystal-clear sensory time capsules is a way I can enhance my writing. They are inspiration, and research, in its most intuitive form.

Let the music play … let the writing begin.

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Inspiration any way

Early last summer, I had a dream with a situation that gave me the idea for my current work. I had my characters, but I didn’t enough about them to start writing. At that same time, I was addicted to playing Bejeweled 2. It was during these sessions I first heard my character Jalal speak to me. I don’t understand the connection, though I do know there is one particular sequence in the background music that evokes him instantly.

In any case, the story started to come together, and when I needed more dialogue, I just played the game and it started flowing. So, I had this lovely little happy-ending story, and then I rediscovered Joan Osborne’s Relish and her song “Crazy Baby” became my theme song for Jalal because, suddenly, I knew at some point he would be in the depths of depression.

There’s something about running water that inspires me so often, I’ve thought about figuring out some waterproof writing device for the shower. (I wrote in another post about using an eyeliner pencil on the mirror.) And someday I’ll remember how to use the memo function on my cell phone so I can record the thoughts that come to me when driving … like when Meredith informed me I had misunderstood her reason for withdrawing from life!

I’ll take inspiration any way I can get it. Anyone care to share, other than reading great writing, what inspires you?