The Existence and The Bliss
What do you listen to while writing?
Answering this is intriguing for several reasons, not the least of which is the practical ouroboros at its center: an implication that one should be listening to whatever it is they are writing about. Beyond just that, there are as many answers to the question as there are people who write about music. As with any creative discipline, one does what works for them.
For me, this is less a question of writing, or inspiration, or the interplay of the stimuli-driven outer thought-space with the idea-generating inner one. Choosing music to play while writing can be very much not about what one wants to hear in a given moment; very often the reasoning has infinitely more to do with the types of music that put one in the mode to be comfortable - the resulting comfort becomes the narcotic that lets ideas connect and flow.
While it may be somewhat counterintuitive, I almost never* listen to the music that I am writing about at the time. If I need to find a passage or lyric in order to clarify or describe something for the sake of the piece, I will perhaps just cue that up and listen to only as much as I need to. Lyrics themselves can almost always be found online without having to listen to anything, and that path of least resistance usually wins out.
But when I am writing about one song, one album, one band, something focused on a limited quantity of music, I will listen to it ad nauseam in the hours and days leading up to the writing. This time is spent forming ideas, sometimes locking in word choices and phrasing. By the start of the actual writing phase I have typically clamped down on the angle it is I want to take in my discussion, so gathering these aesthetic fishes in the netting of compositional plans comes fairly naturally.
Then comes the writing itself, and during that process the success or failure depends completely on me as a creator. This is a major reason why it helps me to not be spurred at all by the art itself. I don’t want my thoughts in the moment of dissemination to be dictated directly by the thoughts in the music. This is more than a little bit about ownership and the independence of my end product, but for me it’s also about honesty. I personally want to know for myself that the words on the page are mine, that they are unadulterated by their subject matter. This is important to me for reasons I probably couldn’t elucidate with a gun to my head, but the principal behind it is one I take as a creative mandate. (Note: none of any of this is meant to imply that writers who do it other ways are doing anything incorrect. As mentioned, everyone has their something when it comes to these preferences.)
The question then morphs and becomes something far more interesting: which music is the optimum wellspring of comfort and workability for you? What is the music that gives the mind and ideas a place from which to wake up, stretch out the stiffness, and fire up the shoesaw on a crop of new analyses and examinations?
As surprising as it isn’t, I don’t narrow this down very far. What I tend to stick to when writing, and I make to claim to uniqueness or novelty here, is music that is instrumental or close to it. Rather than a stable of ten or fifteen artists that I gravitate toward, what I have are a few genres and moods that find themselves gracing the turntable when it’s time to sling words. So at long last we come to the answer to the question, presented as a small list with some examples by type.
- As stated, non-lyrical music is best for me. I tend to get hung up on words (um, duh) and someone else’s words attending the open house at the top of my mind can impede my own from finding the address. Of course not every instrumental or semi-instrumental track is created equal. Over the years the following types have risen to the top of the list.
- Ambient/Ambient-pop : This can be anything from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works releases to Brian Eno’s dizzying range of pioneering work from the 20th Century. Respect here given to Sigur Ros (some of it lyrical but not in a way I can understand), Kelly Moran’s altered piano sound journeys, and Volcano Choir’s first LP, all of which bring a touch of pop structure into their ambient leanings and all of which are worth getting familiar with.
- Jazz : Ahhh, yes. Obvious, right? Well yes, and no. I have developed a love for jazz over time that has given it a strong foothold in my collection. The thing about jazz though is that not any jazz will do for this use. Take Miles Davis as an example: I love playing Birth Of The Cool or Sketches Of Spain while writing, but Tutu will challenge me so much that I have trouble getting around it. The secret is that dissonance and lack of structure, as effectively as they can be used in the form, turn into a liability when I’m trying to write. For this reason I tend to stay with more easy listening selections: Coltrane Plays The Blues, Szabo’s More Sorcery, Chet Baker’s and Bill Evans’ The Complete Legendary Sessions. By no means is this music non-vital for its less confrontational nature, but the silken ease of its delivery has the benefit of not distracting from the thoughts in my own head. Shouts to the more contemporary jazz I have been enamored with in recent years, the following artists and others have led me through many word-forsaken valleys: BadBadNotGood, The Watery Graves of Portland’s Caracas, Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel (separately or together), Onyx Collective, GoGo Penguin, and others.
- Film Scores : This is a relatively new foray for me, but it’s turned into a whole new avenue down which to stroll for atmospheric soundscapes. I don’t pretend to be extremely knowledgeable about scores, but I know what I like and I know what works for me. The Dust Brothers’ groundbreaking score for Fight Club is a perennial favorite, especially when I want my writing to have a little edge; Jon Brion’s Magnolia score is a Fabergé egg almost as sublime as the film itself, made even more precious with the inclusion of Aimee Mann’s contributions; Bryce Dessner’s and Johnny Greenwood’s joint effort including originals by each with Greenwood’s being his score for There Will Be Blood is a parallax that glides between tactile and near-claustrophobic to gloomily transcendent, making for an invaluable listen.
- Post-Rock and Neo-/Classical : This could strike as an odd pairing of genres, these two work very similarly for me within the scope of background for writing. Both musical terrains are ones that have similar topographies: thoughtful and persuasive arguments for the power of a small group of musicians dedicated to one mood over the course of time. I might veer from Philip Glass to Mogwai, or from Darkside’s Psychic to Erik Satie’s Early Pianoworks Vol. Two, and when I switch lanes between them I get a very similar satisfaction from each piece of music. I’d be silly to not mention Godspeed You Black Emperor! (my introduction into post-rock decades ago), Texas boys Explosions in the Sky, Dirty Three’s deft melding of technique and minimalism, and the evergreen Eluvium who can basically do no wrong by flitting between these and other styles.
What’s fascinating about this question is that it’s not the first-date, getting-to-know-you chit-chat it seems like it is on its face. If feels like fluff, like something you ask another person at a professional convention to pass time (“…oh, why exclusively Rodgers and Hammerstein, of course. And you?”). But in reality it’s not a question about preference, or at least it’s not only that. It is about the transience of contentment, as in when does one feel it and what does that allow for when it’s present? It addresses the existence and unmistakable bliss of true mental comfort, when all things are allowed and none are held back by the artifices of rule and pageantry.
It is a question that can showcase a building block of who we truly are as artists in our own right. Our primary goal may often be to shine lights on other art and artists, it’s true. As noble as that goal is, it never hurts to remember that our skill set is not one devoid of artistry. We translate thoughts from the artistic sphere in ways that can be readily understood by our audiences with various understandings and predilections. We decode the cave paintings of music’s past to weave our own interpretations of its history. We give a lighted torch to our readers/listeners/what-have-you, and we encourage them to shine it for themselves so that they may catch the same glints of the golden penumbra that we see in the very corners of the frame.
The best thing about a question that can uncover a part of our artistic DNA is its simplicity: when it comes to how we set ourselves up to get to the promised land of the end product, there’s no wrong answer.
*But sometimes.
