Everybody’s hopak dancing!
I had to add a scene at the beginning of the book-in-progress – don’t make me explain – and it turns out they dance something very like the hopak in Ninys. WHO KNEW.
Music
Cacophony
[This post has a sister: Symphony. You may wish to read that one first, but it’s not strictly necessary.]
One of my favourite books is This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel J. Levitin. Levitin is a neuroscientist at McGill University; before that, he was a session musician and sound engineer. I have always been one to ask stupid questions about music — Why does it exist? How does it have the power to move me? Why do Rush songs always sound like noise to me the first time I hear them? It’s very exciting to see this guy asking the same questions (well, maybe not the one about Rush) and then running experiments to find out the answers.
(In some alternate universe, I became a neuroscientist instead of a fiction writer. Of course, there’s also a universe where I’m a plumber, so my mileage definitely varies.)
Back when I was reading this book for the first time, this passage in particular struck me:
There is nothing intrinsically catlike about the word cat or even any of its syllables. We have learned that this collection of sounds represents the feline house pet. Similarly, we have learned that certain sequences of tones go together, and we expect them to continue to do so. We expect certain pitches, rhythms, timbres, and so-on to co-occur based on a statistical analysis our brain has performed of how often they have gone together in the past (112).
He goes on to discuss how our brains form schemata of musical genres, how the most interesting music violates our schematic expectations a little bit, and how if something violates our schema a lot, it sounds weird (at best) or like indecipherable noise (at worst).
The interesting part, to me, was the idea that these things are learned, that there is nothing inherently happy about a major scale or sad about a minor one. I have two stories from my own life that illustrate exactly this point.
(Those of you who know me well have probably heard the first story, because I love telling it. You can go get yourself a snack now and come back later.)
I was raised on classical music, if you recall. My teenage rebellion – such as it was – consisted of listening to cheesy 80s music (in secret!) and The Beatles (openly). Neither of these musics were that alien to me; 80s pop isn’t that different from Vivaldi, all bright and bubbly, and early Beatles music is straightforward enough. When I went off to college my roommate had The White Album, which excited me greatly. Here was some Beatles I’d never heard before! Sweet! I blazed through disc 1 and found it everything I could have hoped for. Disc 2 was ok, but then, out of nowhere, I hit the Wall of Cacophony.
It was “Helter Skelter”. I could not make head or tail of it. It sounded like noise to me. I sheepishly put disc 2 away, and did not attempt it again.
Fast forward to many years later, my son (Beatles-mad at the age of 4) gets The White Album for Saturnalia. I put the second disc on eagerly because I can’t wait to hear this nightmarish mess of a song again. “Helter Skelter” comes on and… and there’s nothing to it. I find it perfectly tuneful, practically an ear-worm, in fact. Years spent slowly learning the language of rock have rendered the song perfectly comprehensible to me. “Helter Skelter” is easy.
A second anecdote, and then I’ll let you go (those of you with the snacks can come back now)…
When I was in college I took a class on Indian music, taught by surbahar master Ustad Imrat Khan. Surbahar is to sitar as cello is to violin. Anyway, he was teaching us about ragas – which are kind of like modes and kind of like scales – and how certain ragas pertained to specific seasons or times of day. Well, there was this skeptical grad student in the class who raised his hand and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. How can this arbitrary cluster of notes mean ‘evening’?”
And master Khan said nothing, but picked up his surbahar and started playing this smoky blues riff. When he’d finished, he looked up at the class – most of whom had their mouths hanging open by this point – and said, “Where were you, just then? What time of day was it? That’s how.”
Interesting stuff, music and brains. I think about this more than I should, probably.
Symphony
I have always written to music.
It started when I was eleven or twelve. I’d curl up on the old brown couch with a spiral notebook across my knees, put on the huge, archaic headphones, and shut out the world. I sometimes suspect the “writing*” was just an excuse to wrap myself in music and ignore everything else.
* Not that I wasn’t writing. My fantasy and SF novels comprised many spiral notebooks of vibrantly dreadful prose. Let it never be said I didn’t produce.
I listened to records in those days. My parents had an idiosyncratic collection — lots of classical mixed in with a few strange relics from the sixties (Smothers Brothers, Tijuana Brass), some kids’ stuff (Muppet Show Album, disco Star Wars), and a shocking amount of Barry Manilow. In a fit of uncharacteristic good taste, I went for the classical.
Romantic symphonies fit my needs best. They were bursting with drama and passion, alternately epic and intimate in scope, just like I hoped my writing might be. My favourites were Brahms’s 4th and Shostakovitch’s 5th, which was written in a later era but has a very Romantic feel to it, so I think it counts. Certainly my twelve-year-old self found a lot of commonality between the two works.
The first movement of the Brahms was unquestionably the ocean, restless and mighty; the beginning of the Shostakovitch was a storm gathering above waves of nodding prairie grasses. My head was already full of wilderness; I’d spent my childhood vacations staring out the car window at the moving landscapes. Those were the scenes these symphonies conjured up for me: red canyons, impenetrable forests, sand hills, clouds making high drama out of of sunlight. And always moving, traveling, questing. I had just read Tolkien at that age, and I think that got mashed together with the music also.
I still love that Brahms. In high school, our youth symphony performed it and I got to experience it from the cello section. Performing a piece almost always solidifies it in my esteem. The Shostakovitch I haven’t listened to in years, but writing this is making me nostalgic for it. In the first movement, if I recall, there was a call-and-response between solo flute and French horn, which struck me (at twelve) as the single most beautiful moment in all of music ever. I wonder how it would sound to me now.
One reason I wonder is that I was reading up on Shostakovitch’s 5th in preparation for writing this (because that’s how I roll, baby: nerdy), and it turns out the piece has an interesting and complicated history. In 1936, Shostakovitch was in hot water with Soviet leadership because his music didn’t conform to ideals of “socialist realism”. He came back with the 5th symphony, to great acclaim from the Party and the people. But one can’t escape the impression that parts of the piece are slyly subversive, that he’s thumbing his nose even as he appears to be capitulating. The extent of this slyness is still a matter for debate.
I’ve moved away from symphonic music over the years. One reason is that my tastes have broadened a lot; it turns out there’s a lot more music in the world than classical and disco Star Wars. Who knew? Another is that symphonies are complex and deep enough that they require a lot of attention. I’m not good at simply letting a symphony be background noise; I want to stop what I’m doing and let myself be carried off into the ever-shifting landscape of my mind.
You’d think that would still be useful for writing, but it’s not. My writing needs have evolved over time; it’s not just an elaborate escape into daydream anymore. It’s work.
Impromptu
Over the weekend I watched movie Impromptu, about George Sand and Chopin at the beginning of their celebrated 10-year relationship. A friend had been shoving me toward it for years, but I hadn’t felt particularly compelled to try it: I’ve never read any Sand, and I’m not that enamoured of Chopin’s music (piano music often leaves me cold, and I’m not sure why). However, recent discussions my friend and I have had – about being scary, being judged, genre and the idea of branding oneself – led me to think that ok, maybe it was time to watch this movie.
It was wonderful, and exactly what I needed to watch right now.
George Sand, in addition to taking a masculine pseudonym, used to dress in men’s clothing. It was utterly fascinating to see the people around her react with everything from amusement to envy to horror. Chopin, a timid, nervous sort, is utterly terrified of her at first. She falls in love with his music and decides she must also be in love with the man who created the music. She pursues him relentlessly (on the bad advice of an envious friend), which scares and intrigues him (but mostly scares). Only when she puts on a dress and uses her aristocratic title is he able to listen to her — and just barely, at that. She gives up and leaves Paris, but that brief moment of listening has planted a seed in his mind. It’s his turn to pursue her, which he does by looking for her books. They finally meet again, having connected with each other’s art, and it’s STILL difficult. She still scares him; he still shies away from her. There’s some painful fits and starts and negotiation that has to happen before they can meet in the middle, Sand finding a way to moderate her exuberance*, Chopin taking some halting steps toward boldness.
* She’s back in trousers by the end, never fear! And that’s the beauty of it: they’re not giving themselves up, but learning empathy and how to take each other into account.
It’s rare for me to be moved by movie romance (or book romance, alas), but I found this really lovely. And I’m leaving out all the funny parts! Emma Thompson is hilarious as a young noblewoman who fills her house with artists in hopes that some culture will rub off on her, Mandy Patinkin is present in full beardy glory, and then there’s Sand’s children, leading a scion of nobility astray. It was good fun all the way through.
No cover
I had hoped there would be cover art to show you this week, but alas the cover is undergoing another round of possible revision. This is actually good news: it means the book is already garnering enough positive attention that Random House wants to get the cover exactly right.
That doesn’t mean I’m not feeling impatient. Fortunately, I have plenty to keep me occupied.
You, on the other hand, look bored. Have some Hanggai. It’s on the house.
There! Isn’t that better? Don’t you reckon you could ride your pony across the steppe? Me too!
Someday I am going to learn throat singing and make everyone sorry.
Limelight
This is the post I had envisioned myself writing first, but it turns out I’m like a whippet: I have to sniff in a circle for a while before I lie down. Once I’m down, of course, I just flop right on top of you and stick my skinny legs in your face and look at you like, What? I’m a whippet. You are my sofa. I’m pretty sure the reverse isn’t true.
So. Here’s the comfy flop: I’m a big nerd, and I like Rush. I intend to talk about music on this blog, and they’ve got a song that’s been on my mind, the lucky lads, so here they are right up front.
The embed function has been disabled on the YouTube video of the song, which is just as well since maybe you’re eating breakfast and maybe you don’t want Geddy Lee staring at you from my blog while you eat. But if you’re not familiar with “Limelight”, here she be. Unless you live in Canada, where a certain percentage of “Canadian content” is required, it’s not on the radio very often.
If you are in a bit of a rush yourself, ha ha, or if you are already rolling your eyes and thinking, “I haven’t liked Rush since I was fourteen years old and male!” — no worries. Here’s the punchline: As I set off on this journey toward publication, as I launch this new blog and poke at the internet, trying to establish some kind of “web presence”, it is a relief to hear my own ambivalence reflected in someone else’s music.
If you’re nerd enough to read on, matey, step into this matter transporter, here: Continue reading
Rachel Hartman 