Many writers listen to music as they write, whether to simply minimize distraction, or to let the mood of the music work its way subconsciously into the writing. In this weekly series, we ask Creative Writing students at UNCW what music helps them cultivate a good writing atmosphere, and we keep a running Spotify playlist of their recommendations. (Scroll down for the link.)
This time around, we’re hearing from Isaac Faleschini and Michael Bacon.
Isaac Faleschini:
I took a sculpting class in undergrad. We made life-sized busts of a model's head and shoulders out of clay. The instructor put the classical station on the radio, very low. That was the secret, he said. You want the music almost imperceptible. Its mechanics working on your brain subconsciously. There's a structure to classical melody, free flowing as it may seem.
And of course, we've all heard about the studies that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. I don't know that such data is quantifiable and anything more than urban myth. Still, ever since that class if I'm creating, if I'm editing, if I'm working, I like to have classical music in the background, but quiet, like white noise. It's a reason to stay in the chair, the sound and the earplugs shackling you down.
I love some Bach, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Debussy, Gershwin playing Gershwin, any version of Rhapsody in Blue, Liszt. My most used Pandora station is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. You Tube has a straight hour of Clair de Lune on repeat, and it's lovely.
But don't get me wrong, every once in a while, I gotta change it up. Manu Chao, Rancid, Beck, AC/DC, The Clash. And I like to turn it up too, loud. Sometimes, you know, you gotta shut it down. Mix it up. Dirty that martini and put a little iron in the amplifier.
Michael Bacon:
I rarely listen to music when I write, but when I do it's for very specific reasons. Sometimes it's because the tempo is just right to evoke a feeling I want to stay locked in, such as the time recently when I listened to Radiohead's Lift on repeat for about an hour as I wrote a burst of intense, high tempo poetry. The lyrics of the song have nothing to do with what I was writing. What I was looking for was that the music would keep me moving, not letting me settle. It produced some really interesting work and I would like to try it again sometime.
More frequently I'll be listening to a song and something in the lyrics will spark an idea. That's what happened with Civilian by Wye Oak and Daisies of the Galaxy by Eels, both of which helped me to write some of the best short stories I feel I've ever produced. When I was first listening to Civilian I couldn't decide if I thought the song was being sung to a lover or child. I've settled definitively on the former now, but while I thought it might be the latter I got hung up on the elusive line "I want to love you like my mother's mother's mother did". I thought, how strongly did women love their children back when society offered them no other outlet for their emotions and ambitions? What would happen to a woman who believed she was going to love her child like that, only to have children and find she struggled to feel anything toward them but resentment? It’s a bit of a misreading of the song, but the underlying conflict went on to drive one of the best relationships I’ve ever written.
My piece Daisy of the Galaxy was also a misreading, this time more intentional. The song is a sweet, sad tale of two people (one assumes child siblings) going to the cinema. One of them seems very depressed, and the other tries to cheer them up by picking flowers in the parking lot and handing over the bouquet. As with Civilian I took this initial idea and altered it slightly. A younger brother accompanies his older sister into the rough side of town on a kind of adventure into the underworld. They have a distressing experience, after which he tries to cheer her up with flowers. But as they are heading back to get picked up by their stepfather, she does something which disturbs her brother greatly, and he runs away from her and leaves her on the bridge between their part of town, and the gritty place they have just been to.
For the most part then, it’s the lyrics of songs that feed my creativity. But once an idea has started fermenting, I’ll listen to the song on repeat, over and over, to lock that initial sensation down and bring consistency and pace to the writing process.
—Dan Willis
Image by Toshiyuki Imai, via Flickr Creative Commons
Editor's Notes: This essay is part of the ongoing series Music for Writing.
Dan's Spotify Playlist can be found by copying and pasting the following URL into your browser: https://open.spotify.com/user/1245593611/playlist/3qiIBIlBmasH08yhmlD0WD