Many of you know that I studied music at one point in my life. This is, perhaps, a reduction, because for a decade and a half a music-focused life was the pinnacle of all my hopes and dreams.
The short story is that after realizing how much I had wrapped my identity up in my musical abilities and dreams, I understood that I needed to take a break from it for the care of my soul and sanity. After a year or two adrift and desperately seeking to fit somewhere, God saw fit to urge me back into writing. As time passed, He gave me the grace of writing as a vocation.
There are moments now that I look back and think, what was the purpose of all of those years of education, work, and experiences?
On my best days, I know (mostly because, mind you, I’ve heard people say it A FREAKING LOT) that “nothing is a waste,” that “God works in mysterious ways and for our good,” and that if nothing else: “it built character.” Cliches aside, I’m at rest with this particular season in the same way you might be at rest on a dragon’s back. It’s uncomfortable and scaly, I’m clinging for dear life and it might bite me in the butt. But at least I’m warm and I can see pretty far on a clear day. Are there other ways to live with the past?
Apparently nothing but the sheer momentum of a selfish decade striving after dreams could have created enough force to propel me into His arms. If I hadn’t invested all of that blood, sweat, and tears into something, it wouldn’t have hurt sufficiently when the dream died. I wouldn’t have realized my desperate need.
But all of that doesn’t mean I haven’t applied some things in my current vocation from my focused time in the practice room, classroom, and concert hall. So in the interest of looking for light, here are a few things music taught me about writing:
Consistency in Practice
In any discipline, the fight to actually do it is the real war. Doing something a lot is the only way to actually get better, the only way to fulfill the heart burning within, to coax the young song or story out of yourself. You show up, and the story, like the song, will eventually get used to your presence and show itself. Don’t give up on the process – in it, you will find life.
Rhythm and Tone
Words have rhythmic and tonal qualities, just like musical phrases. I’m not sure that I’ll ever get close to mastering these qualities, but pushing and pulling through phrases by Chopin and hammering out the erratic driving forces of Prokofiev have given me a deep respect for them. I don’t rely on this enough, but I’ve taken to reading what I write out loud for the sole purpose of hearing how it sounds off the page. For poetry, this is essential. For fiction or non-fiction, it is also essential. I don’t know a better way of testing the flow of your language, except maybe asking someone else to read it out loud.
Voicing
My private professor in college was a master at both discerning inner melodies in relation to top-level melodies, and layering them intricately – and not just in the counterpoint of such masters as Bach. This sort of layering provides complexity and integrity to any piece of music, from the structural strength of a bass line to a mid-range turn in the alto line. As I began to listen to these more carefully, I also began to appreciate the simple nature of most inner melodies. It didn’t matter that it was only three notes. What mattered is that it played well with other melodies, making the sum greater than its parts.
Writing needs counterpoint and harmony as well. The architecture of a great story requires the basso profundo notes of plot, soaring tenor lines of theme radiating out as supports, and the interweaving of melodies between characters as each takes the fore. The concern is balance, strength, heart – and masterful layering of all of these melodies is what makes a story rich enough to resonate in our hearts far beyond its reading.
And one layer beyond this, even, is the fact that simple earthy things, those things that we might decry for their lack of nuance or complexity, for their apparent “crudity” – these are the through-lines that the rest of the story can rely upon. All art is, after all, some sort of communication of human experience, with all of its ups and downs. We can talk about the differences between high and low art until we’re Picasso’d in the face. But until we learn to let the transcendent walk within the pedestrian, we are missing something essential about the incarnational life found in Christ.
Attention to Detail
So you’ve finally mastered the notes of a piece? Now the real work begins.
My professor didn’t just bring intense care to voicing. He also brought it to artistry in phrasing, dynamics, articulation, and a million other tiny details. Caring for these details can be instinctual, but more often than not they must be rigorously gone over and over until the piece is so well-loved that it communicates.
Compare this to the editing process. A first draft is just that – a first draft. It’s raw material, like a lump of clay, or the scribbles of a long-dead composer. In order to breathe life into the tune, beauty and purpose to the clay, you have to work with it. This can be, if you let it, an act of love that transforms the raw material into something true and beautiful. But don’t forget that loving someone is hard, and circuitous, and it takes time and blood and sacrifice. It will change you as you change it. You will grow as it grows.
I know this and I still have to steel myself every time I edit the crap out of something. But that is my duty: to love my feeble words, by the grace of God, into something that sings. And while studying music didn’t teach me how to edit a first, second, or twentieth draft, it definitely taught me to stay the course.
Creating Is Mysterious, and That’s OK
Whatever I bring to the table, there is something I cannot hope to control about what happens in the end result. Perhaps its a crapfest (more likely if I shirked my duty), perhaps it soars way beyond what I thought was possible (more likely if I paid my dues). Either way, the very fact that notes played at a certain speed and velocity can evoke any feeling in a listener is astounding. May we forever wonder at it!
The same is true of writing, as in any artistic discipline.
Our purpose as creators is to steward the work, to care while it is in our keeping, to give it over and over again to our Creator freely, to submit to His guiding and the needs of the work. This is a holistic process; it takes sleeping and eating well, attending to my soul and my body and my spirit. But in the end – the Spirit is the wind that fills it, and carries it to ears and eyes and hearts and souls.
Friends, what a gift it is to create! How can we not give thanks in the midst of such a process? It is right and good that we do. May God except our humble efforts and transform them as He sees fit.
P. S. But wait, there’s more…
This Friday, February 7th at 9 PM EST, I’ll be hosting the second episode of Behind the Broken Season LIVE on Facebook. This is your new favorite live show, wherein you get the nitty-gritty details of how I came about writing the poetry in my new book, SOLACE: POEMS FOR THE BROKEN SEASON (hint: mostly lots of coffee). I’ll be reading some poetry to you, answering questions, and enjoying talking about creative work and life in general. Would love to “see” you there!
If you want to nab yourself a copy of SOLACE prior to Friday’s shindig, you can get an ebook here, or a snazzy hardback version here or here.