Quarantine Project Day 30
Someone asked me what music I listened to while I'm writing. I must have had my jaw open too long by way of response, but the question did astonish me. I can't listen to any music while I'm writing.
Firstly the idea of any lyrics yodelling in the background would probably make me want to break something; but I can't deal with instrumentation either. On casual enquiry I find that quite a few writers do play background music while they are working.
They must be wired differently is all I can say.
I have this notion - foolish mayhaps - that prose writing is a rhythmic and temporal art. That is to say, whatever the style or the content or the genre, the idea is to seduce the reader with engaging rhythms, like a poet but not so much. The basic English language is spoken in the only slightly varied iambic pentameter of one unstressed followed by one stressed beat. So when old Billy Shakespeare says, in strict iambic pentameter:
Now all the youth of
he is only simulating the natural rhythm of the English language, but formally.
So, writing is also about sustaining, varying and operating a very strict control of the cumulative rhythms of the language. Don't matter how informal you make it. And if you have music playing behind you, isn't that going to govern and manipulate the beat? Or at the very least influence it when you are in the semi-trance state of writing.
My story. My book. My rhythms. I don't care if it's Bach; I want some bloody quiet around here.
Written today without the unconscious assist of music: 1916 words
(For yesterday's blog in the Quarantine Project click on "achives")
