Last week the LA Weekly gathered Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem, and John Darnielle (aka the Mountain Goats) to talk about the relationship between music and writing. Each of these guys is passionate about both, so you can imagine they all had lots to say. There are a lot of little nuggets to chew on; my favorite came in the form of a question from the moderator, Alec Hanley Bemis:
It’s interesting that both Jonathan and Rick avoided the idea of influence and spoke instead of how music helped inspire the actual writing process. My suspicion has always been that music offers a unique fuel for writing because it can establish an emotional state with such an economy of means. Is music the ultimate Cliffs Notes version of emotional experience? Must writers inevitably be a bit jealous?
There is definitely something primal, concise, simple about music. As someone who writes songs and writes fiction—no, you haven’t heard or read any of either—I’ve always turned to music when I am most stressed, and also, perhaps tellingly, when I am most flustered with my writing. There is an instant emotional gratification about making music—maybe even just in listening to music, but truly in making music, whether a pop song or a droning, squealing feedback. And personally, not only is making music easier, I might even be better at it! Yet it is writing that I cherish more, maybe because I appreciate the difficulty. But gosh, Bemis frames my personal dilemma (if you can call two hobbies competing for my time a dilemma) in such a way that maybe I should just give in to the ease of songwriting, and give up that novel I've been struggling with for years now. Food for thought.
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