If the wind is right, they almost—almost—play Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ But of course they never play it perfectly.”
Claudia’s wind chimes are a great example of the happy serendipity that research and necessity can bring to a novel. Claudia and McAnnis are on the porch, talking. For pacing, I needed a break in dialogue — something for them to do. But what? I don’t know — maybe they look up and see wind chimes. Great. But I didn’t know anything about wind chimes. Some determined googling led me to the website of a company selling wind chimes that purportedly play famous riffs from classical music: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc. Terrific. Except when I listened to the sample of an “Ode to Joy” wind chime, I realized that it didn’t really work. The notes were all there, but the odds were a million to one that they would ever play in the right order and in the right rhythm. I thought of people all over the world buying these chimes and waiting, waiting, for the wind to be absolutely perfect so that they could, finally, hear the “Ode to Joy.” But of course that would never ever happen. And I found this unspeakably sad. The notion haunted me so much that it resurfaces twice more later in the novel.
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