[New-Poetry] Music While Writing?

[Halvard Johnson]

Glenn Gould used to like having four radios on at the same
time, all tuned to different stations. John Cage preferred
traffic sounds and the hum of the fridge. I'll take anything:
classical, jazz (sometimes), palaver, church bells (we've got
a lot of those down here in San Miguel), rockets and fireworks
(lots of those too), stone workers chipping away from 7:30
to 5 (with an hour or two off for siesta/dinner/etc.), Latino
(found a good radio station at iTunes), even, as John C. Lilly
discovered, the beat of the heart and the whine of the central
nervous system (mostly covered by almost anything else going
on: Lou Dobbs fulminations, barking dogs, yowling cats,
twittering birds--and machines).

Hal

"The secret of managing is to keep the guys
  who hate you away from the guys who are
  undecided."
                       --Casey Stengel

Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html


On Mar 1, 2008, at 9:43 AM, Bob Marcacci wrote:

> Interesting question, Jeff...
>
> For many years, I had two televisions in my bedroom (don't ask...)  
> and would
> routinely have them turned on to different programs... a sporting  
> event on
> one, perhaps, and a series or a movie on the other... at the same  
> time i
> would listen to the radio, the sounds of all three simultaneously  
> bombarding
> me... made for a nice mix of noise which tended to create an easel for
> composition wherein many different words/sounds were colliding...  
> sometimes,
> it was just too much incomprehesible sound and simply became  
> background
> noise allowing me to focus on whatever i was doing...
>
> I didn't want to fall into what i thought a trap of listening to the  
> same
> thing all the time, although every method has its own sameness after  
> a turn,
> i suppose... really, listening to music is just like reading, which  
> tends to
> rear itself in the work at any given time...
>
> I've done the complete opposite, as well, listening to nothing at  
> all...
> and, of course, the raw sounds of the world are plentiful enough in  
> their
> mumurous suggestions...
>
> When you drift away from the writing and into the musical composition,
> wondering at the scale and chord progression or whatever, how does  
> that
> manifest in your work? Does it?
>
> -- 
> Bob Marcacci
>
> You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never
> know how soon it will be too late.
> - Ralph Waldo Emerson
>
>
>
>> From: Jeff Newberry <jeff.newberry at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &amp; Views"
>> <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:59:31 -0500
>> To: NewPoetry <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> Subject: [New-Poetry] Music While Writing?
>>
>> Any of you poets out there listen to music while you compose?  I  
>> don't
>> usually, though I've tried.  I have found that certain music can be  
>> rather
>> generative if I listen to it *before* I write:  Miles Davis, Bill  
>> Evans,
>> certain Hendrix songs, certain brands of acoustic blues.
>>
>> My problem in listening to music while I write is this:  I'm  
>> sitting here,
>> typing away, and suddenly I'm wondering, "Is that an Amaj7 or a  
>> A13?"  Or
>> "What mode is that solo in?  Mixolydian?"  Then, I'm lost in the  
>> composition
>> of the tune & lose touch with the poem.
>>
>> What about you all?  Do you listen to music while you compose?  If  
>> so, what?
>>
>> Jeff Newberry
>>
>> -- 
>> "Memory believes before knowing remembers.  Believes longer than  
>> recollects,
>> longer than knowing even wonders."
>> —William Faulkner, Light in August
>>
>>
>> http://museoffireblog.blogspot.com
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>
>
>
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