Divermarv

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” – Charlie Parker

“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid” – Frank Zappa

“Playing the flute is like writing a book. You’re telling what’s in your heart…It’s easier to play if it’s right from your heart. You get the tone, and the fingers will follow.” – Eddie Cahill

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley

I love music. I listen to music every day, and I can’t imagine not having some form of music in my life. I think it’s genetic. My grandfather, a farmer back in the day, would relax in the evenings by picking out tunes on the banjo; a banjo he traded a pig for by the way. He didn’t have Pandora, or iTunes, or MP3 players, but he still got his music fix. I read somewhere once that some paleontologists think that human speech developed first through group singing. I think I can picture that, actually it is highly reminiscent of a hipster concert. (Although the hipster concert would most certainly be hairier.)

My choices of music vary as to what task I’m performing. As a software designer by trade, I tend to listen to ambient, or other sorts of music whilst coding. If I listen to something like Nine Inch Nails, I tend to write mean code. None of us want mean code. If I’m cleaning the house… No honest I do. Sometimes. But if I’m cleaning the house, I like to listen to something a little more upbeat. For a long trip I love putting on a huge playlist of my most favorite songs, or maybe listen to a couple of comedy albums. Nothing like some Mitch Hedberg to get me through the doldrums of interstate whatever.

Now that I’m trying to write more, writing fiction or essays that is, I tend to be quite selective in the music to accompany the type of story I’m writing. For instance I’m writing a short story about a young man from a place in the south, who is on a bus ride back home to attend a funeral. I can’t listen to Bebel Gilberto, she’s much too worldly. No I choose something to put me in just that right mood. Maybe the soundtrack to True Blood, or maybe the Legendary Shack Shakers. I want something that gets me into that gritty ‘70s Burt Reynolds southern exploitation frame of mind. Shakey puddin’ anyone? Now when the  protagonists mother calls him an “ungrateful little shit”, I can really feel it. I hope all of you do too. Well, when you read it that is. And I hope it’ll be published sooner rather than later, I have a few thoughts for publishing, and I’ll keep you all in formed. (Had I been listening to some southern grit music: I’ll keep all y’all informed.)

Peace and love.

Marv