Just Push Play!
Music can make us sad, angry, happy and wistful. It can send you back to a moment in your life that you’re not going to forget…or that you may wish you really could forget.
When you tap different keys on a piano, it creates different musical notes. When you listen to different types of music, it sounds different notes in your creative psyche that allows you to perhaps move through the parts of you which are harder to work through, for one reason or another.
I find, personally, that Aboriginal Drum & Pow Wow music pulls out an emotion in me that is so overwhelming that I normally end up in tears. Celtic music mellows me out and lets me slide into a happy place in my mind and let’s me stay there for a while. Rock music let’s me pretend that I’m real tough and no one can hurt me, which is nice in small doses.
Do you use music to create and shape your writerly projects? What emotions does music help you work through?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Lindsey Childs
Loading...
Strange, my daughter (who is also a writer) and I were discussing this the other day. My current project has three main characters–two who live in the present and one from the past. They each have their own music that I listen to while I am writing them. At one point in the storyline one of the characters from the present becomes involved with the character from the past. The other day my daughter called while I was writing a scene that revolves aroung these two characters together. The music that was playing in the background when she called was the music of the character from the past. My daughter laughed and said, “I wondered how long it would take before R’s music became dominant for those two.”
Music does evoke strong emotional responses. While Rachmaninoff’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini” always makes me wistful and somewhat melancholy, my three daughters and I have adopted the “Eagles” song “Get Over It!” as our personal anthem.
I too get the weepies when the chanting begins and when I hear the first skirl of the pipes. I write songs, sing, and play a bit of guitar, so making my own music is very therapeutic for whatever ails me at any particular time. I love this quote from one of Ferron’s songs – “But if music be a boulder, let me carry it a long while. Let it turn into a feather, let it brush against my smile…”
Thanks for this post, Lindsey.
Debbie
That is a very nice quote, Debbie! Thanks for sharing!