Honoring What Came Before and Facing the Music

One of the things every artist knows is that there are no original stories. There are just the same old ones, and you need to find the inspiration to tell that story your way with your voice. That doesn’t mean you don’t need inspiration. Creating anything is work. You hear that, it’s WORK! It’s the sort of long grind that needs to be fed not just with food but with inspiration. One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2015 was to expand my musical horizons. For the record (pun intended!), I have been pretty shallow about my musical options. I’ve stuck to the pop music on the radio, you remember radio, and my geeky love of all things Broadway. Never listened to country, or to punk or folk. Well, that’s changed. Never listened to the deeper cuts of my favorite bands, like the Beatles, and I’m working on that, too. I haven’t paid attention to current music scene, but I’m learning about some of the best people making music today. I’ve listened to everyone from Patsy Kline to Ariana Grande. I’ve like far more of it that I ever suspect that I could. I decided early on in this quest that I wouldn’t do any other research about anything I put in my CD player. I would take it all in as it came. And, right now, it is a larger source of fuel for my writing than reading is. Well, you could say that songwriting is a kind of poetry, which counts. I just like the cross currents of it all.

Here’s what I’ve discovered on this odyssey. I’ve always liked singer/songwriters and that hasn’t changed, but I’ve expanded my list to more women, more country and more classic albums. I was always like, I don’t like punk or soul but then I got ahold of London Calling by The Clash and Songs In the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder and discovered that I could roll with them as much as anyone. Guess what? I’m attracted to the badasses. Joan Jett, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Green Day, and Zac Brown Band have been added to the list of people I love. In writing we talk about the voice of a work, well the best songwriters have one, and I like the ones that don’t let the process of making their art take that away from them. I plan to do an end of the year round-up here where I’ll list all of the music I got through this year. I’m proud to say it will be long one.

I’m not alone. Tons of writers put playlists on their websites’ that they listened to while they wrote certain books or even parts of books. I think I’m going to do that from now on. I know there are people who can’t write with music, but I miss it. I would also like to publicly express my gratitude to my local public library. As a poor writer, being able to order just about anything for free has been one of the big blessings of my life. It’s time to merge my creator and consumer selves. My playlist page is coming soon.