Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Write On: Write to the Music



There was a writing exercise my favorite teacher in high school would occasionally have us do (this was back in the pre-Common Core [TM] days, when teachers had some freedom with their curriculum). He would play a piece of instrumental music and have us write to the music. I don’t mean write to the beat – though I suppose one could have done that. And I don’t mean listening to music to help capture a tone, as I described the other week. I mean we would listen to a piece of music and write in a stream of consciousness. You could write in prose or fragments, a narrative or just a scene, where ever the music took you.

This exercise was something I’d all but forgotten about until it came time to write a particular sequence in my story. I don’t know how it came to mind, and I don’t know how this particular song came to mind (I don’t get the Led out much these days), but for the particular scene I had in mind, it was perfect. 




Have you ever done any stream of consciousness writing to a piece of music? Where does your mind go when listening to this song? Let me know in the comments below.
 




 

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