“Without music, life would be an error.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Where words fail, music speaks.”
Hans Christian Andersen
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent”
Victor Hugo
I posted the Smiths video as a mantra for this week, but also for my sister.
If you haven’t seen the movie Juno, I highly recommend it but without the fantastic soundtrack it would miss so much. Garden State was like that and many of the movies I grew up with were enhanced by the soundtrack. The music was an essential character in the movie. In my writing notebook I jot down favorite songs that I would use if I ever wrote a screenplay. Or maybe if I had creative power when my book is made into a movie. Dreams…Of course, the big MUSIC movie of last year, Once, wouldn’t exist without music. Another great flick to add to your list if you haven’t seen it.
What songs or bands inspire your writing? Today find a song or band that could take you in a different direction with your writing. Maybe you listen to music as you write? Or you also write songs?
Now get back to work!
Lovingly,
The Writing Nag
I’ve always written to music. It started when I was living with my parents. I never really listened to what was playing in fact most of the time the music just acted as a kind of timer. Every twenty minutes or so the tape would come to an end and there’d be this loud click as the play button disengaged. I’d get up turn it over and do the same twenty-odd minutes later. Of course I was working on a manual typewriter back then. The reason for the music was simple, to drown out my family through the wall. Pink Floyd was a favourite particularly Dark Side of the Moon (words didn’t bother me) but it could be anything.
Nowadays I still work with music though I’m not so tolerant of music with lyrics and tend towards soundtracks (James Newton Howard is a favourite and I could listen to The Hours by Philip Glass all day long) although I’m also partial to electronica (Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre). I still don’t use music that reflects what I’m writing and I can’t think of anything I’ve ever written that owes anything to music. Strange considering I own five times as many albums as I do books.