Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Music as a Muse, Part One

Anyone who knows me will tell you that music has inspired and driven me creatively from a very early age. My husband, who is a weird vault of all sorts of entertainment trivia, won't even challenge me to play any games that involve music questions. I've been known to cream his corn on more than one occasion, especially when it comes to 70s and 80s music. That was the era I lived by my stereo, was joined at the hip with my radio, and had a hard and fast Saturday commitment to listen in to Casey Kasem and America's Top 40. And don't even get me started on Solid Gold. That was Must See TV from 1979 on.



Basically if it had to do with pop music I generally knew about it, and almost all my childhood/teen memories are tied to what song came out when.

As virtually an only child (all my half-siblings much older than I was and out of the house by the time I was 6,) music was my constant companion from as far back as I can remember. I would sing in the middle of my living room along with Donny and Marie or Sonny and Cher. I also made one of my Barbies a singing sensation because, well, she was a superstar.



She constantly performed to all my sister's castoff 45s, courtesy of an equally castoff super groovy 1970s portable record player.

THIS was how I discovered the wonder that is Barry Manilow, making this the first album I ever requested for my own.



I still have that vinyl LP, btw. It's scratched all to hell because I played that sucker OUT, like most records I owned in those days.

I became a full-fledged Fanilow by the age of 8, and I fully blame American Bandstand for completing my conversion. It was on right after Saturday morning cartoons, so I got a weekly front row seat to all the hits that Dick Clark could introduce me to from the mid-70s until the late 80s. This included the jaunty tune Barry wrote for the intro.



In 1978 I got a radio for Christmas, so my musical tastes diversified into rock and yes - disco. But I still had a special place in my heart for the former jingle-writer who sang all the songs that my hopelessly romantic pre-teen heart could wish to hear. "Mandy" was a personal favorite.

I understood the angst of love and heartache from a tender age.

Fast forward to the late summer before I had turned 13. I remember distinctly lying in my canopy bed in a pink paradise of a room, listening to my records play,and thinking (read: obsessing) about my first significant crush. It was unrequited love all the way. He was sixteen, I was twelve. And I had learned a bitter lesson that no matter how much you love someone, they don't always love you back. I escaped, as always, into music, and Barry's album "One Voice," was cued up on the record player.



Though I had heard the song "Ships" many times before, this particular day it struck me in a brand new way. Suddenly these familiar lyrics had wings, taking off with this amazing movie happening in my head. I saw an older man and a much younger man, trying to connect though years of absence had left them estranged despite being father and son. The father wanted to reconnect, the son was angry, and somewhere in the middle of it all was a story of redemption and forgiveness. As I followed along, I realized that this story was good enough to be a book... someone just needed to write it.



I was still relatively new to the idea of writing by this age. I had discovered this particular talent just the year before, in sixth grade, thanks to a fortuitous Halloween assignment. Since then, I hadn't tackled anything more ambitious than few poems and, of course, some very primitive song lyrics. I couldn't write actual music of course, these were just lyrics I'd hum to notes I had no idea how to compose.

But as I listened to this emotional song, I could feel the characters take root in my soul. Though this may sound crazy to all those who do not write, these characters wouldn't let me ignore them or forget them. They would whisper their nagging, incomplete stories to me until I was forced to ask questions of the muse just to unravel the mystery.

Now that she had awakened, my muse unexpectedly and readily responded, leading me eagerly down the rabbit hole for the first time in my life.

This is usually how a story possesses me. An idea sparks to life and I can't stop thinking about it until I hack it into something I can work with. This first time was no different. I mentally turned it over in my head until a story emerged.

Since I was already a voracious reader, I felt reasonably hopeful that I could write a book myself. I got one of my spiral notebooks and worked furiously on this story whenever I could fit it in. I wrote between classes, or after I completed my homework or classwork in class. I'd write at night before bed, when I normally would read. And when I wasn't writing it, I was thinking about it. I wore out my copy of "One Voice" within weeks, playing it over and over again until I basically filled that notebook cover to cover. It was a story that... if I'm being honest... was more a novella than a novel, and certainly wasn't very good. There were many things I dragged out or added in order to fill the spiral notebook, because, to my adolescent brain, many words were what you needed to write a book.

But finish it I did, and I offered it to my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Wiseman, to read and critique.

Actually, SHE offered to read it after I shyly admitted to her what I was trying to do.

God bless that sweet lady, she read that drivel from start to finish. Better yet, she gave me thoughtful and helpful advice that could build upon the rather impressive accomplishment of finishing a 70-page story in long-hand in the first place. I felt so empowered that I found an address on the back of one of Barry's albums and wrote to see if I could use his song in my dedication, because I was sure I was on the road to publication.

Before I had a chance to forget about it, I got a letter in response:



To say I was stoked was a bit of an understatement.

Unfortunately for both Barry and me, the book was every bit as awful as you'd imagine a spiral bound notebook full of clunky juvenile ramblings might be. If Barry's name was going to be on it, it had to be perfect. And it was light years away from that. I shelved it, and in fact lost it, without ever pursuing it further.

Maybe one day I will revisit that original story, my first real attempt as a "serious" writer, and bring it to life like I had wanted to do so long ago. (31 years ago... GACK) I already planted the seed by putting one of the lead characters, Ivy Cunningham, into the Groupie universe as Vanni's lawyer in Rock Star.

I often "Stephen King" my books with fun little Easter eggs like that, but that... my lovelies... is a blog for another day.

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