Writing About Music Is Like

WRITING ABOUT MUSIC IS LIKE… Martin Mull (or so it's believed) as soon as mentioned, “Writing about music is like dancing about structure.” I first learn that attrbuted to Elvis Costello, but in any case, was he/had been they proper? I assume what Martin Mull (and Elvis Costello, and Laurie Anderson, and…) were making an attempt to say is that music critics are awful. I can understand that. So are book criticsâ€"there’s no reason to get me began. This isn’t a weblog about writing evaluations, it’s a blog about writing fiction, but does this similar warning (or is it a dismissal?) concerning the futility of capturing music in prose hold true for us? In my online worldbuilding course I supply up this passage from George Orwell’s essay “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”: But in all societies the frequent individuals should live to some extent in opposition to the existing order. The genuinely in style culture of England is something that goes on beneath the floor, unoffic ially and more or less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one seems instantly at the common people, especially within the huge cities, is that they are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are dedicated to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language on the planet. They need to fulfill these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical legal guidelines (licensing legal guidelines, lottery acts, etc., and so on.) which are designed to interfere with all people but in follow permit every little thing to occur. Also, the frequent individuals are with out definite non secular perception, and have been so for centuries. […] One can learn a good deal in regards to the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you just see within the home windows of cheap stationers’ shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English folks have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-f ashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there. I point out that this will get into how folks reside, their behavior and interactions: And this is the way you bring a sense of private involvement into your characters’ lives. It’s not all about the excessive-minded ideals of duty, honor, country… Sometimes, and I’ll facet with George Orwell in asserting that this is true more often than not, what actually defines us are cultural expressions like slang, trend, music, courting, sports and games, and so forth. I would suppose that if you really spoke to most individuals who reside in the developed world you’d get to know what kind of music they appreciated before you got into their opinions of the new button political topic of the day. Likewise with their favourite meals, their favourite movie, and so on. So, yes, okay, perhaps from the standpoint of an a rtist any critic of that art type is making an attempt the inconceivable, however authors of fictionâ€"and certainly together with science fiction, fantasy, and horrorâ€"got down to do exactly that with each word we write. Consider these passages from In the Court of the Dragon by Robert W. Chambers: To-day, nonetheless, from the first choir I had felt a change for the more serious, a sinister change. During vespers it had been chiefly the chancel organ which supported the beautiful choir, however once in a while, fairly wantonly as it seemed, from the west gallery the place the great organ stands, a heavy hand had struck throughout the church, at the serene peace of these clear voices. It was something greater than harsh and dissonant, and it betrayed no lack of skill. As it recurred again and again, it set me thinking of what my architect’s books say in regards to the customized in early occasions to consecrate the choir as soon because it was constructed, and that the nave, bei ng finished generally half a century later, usually didn't get any blessing at all: I questioned idly if that had been the case at St. Barnabé, and whether one thing not normally imagined to be at home in a Christian church, might need entered undetected, and taken possession of the west gallery. I had read of such thing occurring too, but not in works on architecture. Here, we see Chambers actually writing about singing about structure… or one thing like that. And extra… I belong to those kids of an older and simpler technology, who do not love to seek for psychological subtleties in artwork; and I actually have ever refused to search out in music something more than melody and concord, but I felt that in the labyrinth of sounds now issuing from that instrument there was one thing being hunted. Up and down the pedals chased him, while the manuals blared approval. Poor satan! whoever he was, there seemed small hope of escape! Sometimes, there are tales about music, and people s tories can’t be dismissed out of hand, like “James Dean Garage Band” by Rick Moody: Rocket threw down his guitar in front of the ampâ€"already cranked to capacityâ€"and stormed out of the shed. Into the rain, if I keep in mind accurately. A sudden and vehement desert rain. And the suggestions from the pickups within the amplifier, in conjunction with the primitive electronics of the amp, commenced to gloriously wail. As if the guitar, the circuitry, the tubes, the pickups, as if all of this gear had been falling into lamentation, as in the event that they have been doing name and response with the lightning, over the plains, over the hills. It was a beautiful, fuzzy overtone, nearly aboriginal in its way. Rocket walked around in circles out in the rain, attempting to get straight in his head whether or not or to not punch out Dean, after which I suppose he heard us laughing, heard Wallace and Dean and me laughing on the racket the amp was making. So he came again. Drenched. An d he heard it too. Listen to that, he stated, grinning wildly. Damn. That is good. The characters’ lives activate their reaction to a sound: Feedback changed every little thing. For our sound, for the band, for the members of the band. It was ritualistic one way or the other. Feedback foreshortened the nice distances between things, and cleared up the mirages within the desert. It made the entire American West look like a goddamned world village. It was the legend that wired up our thatched huts out in Lost Hills. Consider the significance of music in both your worldbuilding and the story itself. What do these people take heed to and sing? What instruments do they play? Do they dance? Is singing a part of their spiritual and even political lives? Back to Orwell, from 1984: The new tune which was to be the theme song of Hate Week (the “Hate Song,” it was known as) had already beeen composed and was being endlessly plugged on the telescreens. It had a savage, barking rhythym whi ch couldn't exactly be called music, but resembled the beating of a drum. Roared out by the hundreds of voices to the tramp of marching toes, it was terrifying. The proles had taken a fancy to it, and within the midnight streets it competed with the nonetheless-in style “It Was Only a Hopeless Fancy.” The Parsons kids performed it at all hours of the night and day, unbearably, on a comb and a piece of bathroom paper. And beforehand, Orwell shows us a proletarian woman absent-mindedly singing while doing her chores: She took two extra pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling: “They sye that point ’eals all things, They sye you'll be able to all the time forget; But the smiles an’ the tears acrorss the years They twist my ’eartstrings yet! She knew the entire drivelling song by coronary heart, it seemed. Her voice floated upward with the candy summer air, very tuneful, charged with a kind of happy melancholy. What extra can I say? Maybe next week I’ll make a scul pture about cinema. â€"Philip Athans HORROR INTESIVE STARTS THIS MONTH Starting Thursday October 17, get in contact with what scares your readers… and yourself in my two-week on-line Writers Digest University course Horror Writing Intensive: Analyzing the Work of Genre Master Stephen King. About Philip Athans