i  can’t remember a time when music wasn’t playing in the house where I grew up. My dad started with a record changer (the kind where you could pile 10 records on top, and it would move them off–at least that’s how I remember it when I was five) and moved to a double-sided double tape deck when those came in vogue.

It was all classical music, and since it was my Dad picking the stuff, it all ended up being baroque and literal classical, and usually written by Germans or Austrians. When I was older, I developed my own musical tastes, and so my MP3 player has Duran Duran and the Violent Femmes and Erasure on it. But I also developed my own musical tastes in the classical arena, too, and to this day, most of what I listen to is classical. Much of it is music I found on my own, independently from my father.

I discovered that the book I was writing had a musical soundtrack on its own after a handful of chapters. At first it was Bizet’s Carmen Suite (not my dad’s kinda music: romantic, of course, and French). For the longest time, there was something about that piece that really pushed it forward. If I got stuck and I needed to get back in the mood, I’d just put it on, and things would start to flow again.

Then Bizet stopped working. I couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was. I played it louder. I played it softer. But I had about six weeks of near-total nonwriting that had me quite stymied. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It took me a while to sort through everything and make some changes to my story that appear to have helped (although there’s going to be hell for rewrites–something I’d long since resigned myself to, so oh well).

The biggest surprise for me was that the soundtrack changed. It broadened and it lightened. Bach appears to work where once he didn’t (Bach is one of the few composers my father and I both appreciate in common). As do Celtic folk tunes played by Galway. And I started writing again.
Funny, that. Do you write in silence or have the music on? Can you write to music with words (I can’t)? What do you need to push your creativity?

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