I love music. I love music almost as much as I love books.
There isn’t a genre of music that I can’t find something to enjoy. The talent
it takes to compose, to play, and to sing aren’t things everyone possesses.
Now, I believe that with enough practice, people can become proficient enough
with an instrument or compose basic melodies. I think some people are just
gifted though. I play several instruments, but I wouldn’t say I’m good at any
of them anymore. With work, I could regain my proficiency. But I’ve never been
and will never be gifted with music.
My grandfather could play piano by ear. He heard most songs
through a minor key (which probably explains my preference to those kinds of
songs) and so when he played, it was transposed in his brain. He barely needed
to hear a song more than once to go to his tiny keyboard and play it back. He
was brilliant like that. He taught me so much. Between his playing and my
grandmother’s singing and the musicals she and I watched together, it’s no
wonder that I nearly constantly have music on.
Every time I sit down to write, whether this or fiction, the
first thing I do is put on music. I often create playlists to suit the mood of
the fiction I write. I take time going through all my songs deciding whether it
fits the tone of the piece or the character I’m inhabiting that day. When I
start to write something new, I spend at least a day generating the playlist.
There are three such playlists in my music player currently for each of the
stories I’ve been working on. When I start the second book in my series, I’ll
create a whole new playlist. Some of the songs will reappear, certainly, but
different characters mean different vibes, means different songs.
I am absolutely one of those people who associates albums
with certain life events or seasons or moods. Or worse: exes. There is more
than one band lost due to being too tied up with memories of various exes. Same
with periods in my life that I’d rather not spend too much time remembering. Sometimes
new memories can be made around those artists, but often, they wind up lost to
the sea of things I’d like to leave behind.
It always surprises me when I haven’t heard a song in years,
and I can somehow still remember all the words. That’s just how it is with
music. My brain stores it. I used to play games with myself when I was bored in
class (which happened often, I have the attention span of a fruit fly) where I
would write a song lyric, then connect another song to the last word of the
lyric. I had pages in my notebooks in college of that where class notes
should’ve been. My wife is similar with music. Her friends used to call her
“The Jukebox.” It’s one of only a handful of interests we share. And even with
that, our tastes in the music is drastically disparate. We are true opposites
in most ways.
My wife even has a much more visceral response to music than
I do. Where I find music alleviates the things I already feel, she winds up
mirroring the mood of the music playing. So, while I may listen to a sad song
and feel the sadness slip away, she may listen and feel sadness well up inside
her.
Music is like that though. It evokes. It calms. It excites.
It stimulates. It depresses. It does things we don’t even notice sometimes
because we weren’t paying attention. Music makes you forget. Music makes you
remember. And, according to Madonna, music makes the people come together.
Yeah.
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