One of the greatest lines ever written is Every Life has a Story. Five short words which sums up an absolute truth. Not just the lives of those noted in the history
books, on film, or printed on a brass plaque.
The phrase is the voiceover on the Biography Channel, which I love to watch. When stories unfold one can see the thread along which a dream travels. Determination making anything seem possible. It is this which draws
me in to books, newspapers, blogs, tweets, Facebook, Pinterest, music, and
social events. I love a good story. Chances are if one listens long enough, one
will hear several.
Someone recently posed the question on a writer’s blog, “How
do you rejuvenate yourself when your creative juices are depleted?” My immediate response, listen to music. Ironically the next day a friend asked, “Do you listen to the
lyrics? I don’t. I have no idea what they are saying. I just listen to the
music.” I almost keeled over. My life generally functions in absolute silence
or in lyrical saturation.
Pick one artist, right now… Eminem, The Beatles, Frank
Sinatra, Blake Shelton, Stevie Wonder, Three Dog Night, Bruno Mars, Pink, Tony
Bennet, Amy Winehouse, One Republic, Metallica, Mary Chapin Carpenter or Justin Timberlake.
We know these people, not just for their antics, but for their ability to
convey intense emotion in the story that they sing. We hear a performers name
and immediately feelings of like or dislike, happy or sad, run through us. If
we don’t sing along, we push the button, turn the station. A song can remind
us of when we were ten years old, first dates, high school prom, vacation, a
smell, weddings, birth.
I would say that music is primal. Like sight and smell, it
is trigger happy.
In thinking of how a lyricist moves through the arc of a
story in three to four minutes, I began to understand the need to distill images
and emotions with similar brevity. Whether blogging or writing a novel, extra is
distracting. Around the time that developing this skill became my OCD, I attended a
workshop on self-branding and social media. As far as I can tell, Twitter is
the social media of brevity. I, who am wordy, tweet off and on throughout the
day to practice.
I don’t want to follow everybody on Twitter. So, I go
hunting with discretion. I found Andy Roddick (tennis player, sports
commentator, married to Brooklyn Decker, seriously opinionated, very
intelligent). Yesterday he wrote, “When is One Direction gonna go in five?” If my math
skills are up to par it only took fifty three characters to express very
clearly his opinion.
But how does a salmon swim upriver? I haven’t written a blog
in forever, in part because my life has been fraught with big experiences and
these occupy a great deal of thought and emotion which cannot be neatly packaged, let
alone distilled into 140 characters including hash tags. My brain feels like it
has been broken down into boxes with lids neatly labeled: “For Later,”
“Deadline,” “Grief,” “Job,” “Feet,” “Social Media,” “For $#@% Sake!”
So I do what I always do in these situations, look for
something to focus on while my brain quietly meanders through the maze of
containers, taking lids off and sifting through, bit by bit, one by one. All
this occurs in the background while I keep my hands busy typing, knitting,
hugging, kneading bread, weeding, chopping… even my hands are wordy!
I return to lyricism and biographies. They are hand in glove.
The words to a song rarely focus on inanimate objects or emotionless voids. I
actually looked for examples, because every good writer enjoys research. The
song I am a rock by Simon and
Garfunkel came to mind, but that is all about despair and isolation. I searched
Water on YouTube and found a perky
little song by Brad Paisley about swimming holes, courage, and bikini’s. A
similar search for Purple pulled up a
list having mostly to do with drug induced states. A similar search for Void directed me to a band with a song
entitled, Who Are You. After
listening to two screeching minutes of it, I found myself thinking, “I don’t
care.” I pushed the stop button.
As is true with literature, music induces discussion. Little
Mac and I were in the car the other day and had a wonderful conversation trying
to discern the dividing line between Hip Hop and Rap. That line is becoming
more blurry to both of us. As we pulled into the driveway, the conversation had
become how we had surprised each other. While I know he is a great lover of
music, I had no idea his repertoire was so broad and so emotionally directed.
He was shocked to find out that I love Eminem!
This conversation reminded me of when our children were
young and how we would crank the radio up after dinner and dance with them. Our
Fluffball chose Elvis Presley’s A Little
More Satisfaction over and over, while Little Mac danced to whomever. It was
him who brought Bruno Mars, The Lazy Song,
to our attention when he was a boy of eight. Of course we
reached a place where our dancing was too embarrassing for our kids to endure. There were a couple of years where they pleaded with us to NEVER dance in public. Fortunately,
enough time has passed that whether they think we are awful or not, we find ourselves dancing in the kitchen again.
I’ve long believed
that the elderly are not hard of hearing, they are just replaying a lifetime of
memories in their heads, while staring off into the distance. When I am old and
grey, I will see our family singing and dancing in front of my eyes, humming Don't Blink.
Thanks for reading!
