Brain music

Laurence Musgrove admits he’s one of those writers who needs a soundtrack for his mental labors:

My preferences for writing of course are situational, just like they should be for any good rhetorician. As I’m writing this essay, I’m listening to Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale, 1969-1974 by musician-arranger Mulatu Astatqe. My daughter sent it to me last year, and I ripped it immediately into my playlists. Other writing favorites in jazz include Consummation by the Thad Jones & Mel Lewis Orchestra, passed on to me by my neighbor Bill, Lionel Hampton’s Mostly Ballads and Mostly Blues, and some other favorites from the early 70’s: Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert, and The Colours of Chlöe by Eberhard Weber.

Here at my desk with the tangle of wires running from the scanner, printer, PDA cradle, and leftover Gateway 2000 speakers, I start off the day usually with something to get the blood moving, like Los Pregoneros Del Puerto and their traditional music of Veracruz, Paco de Lucia’s Anthologia Vol. 1, or that dobro-infused live double play by Alison Krauss and Union Station.

Or if I’m particularly stressed out and need to write and relax, I click on Union or Devotion by Rasa, R. Carlos Nakai’s Cycles. Vol. 2, or Clannad’s Landmarks.

But if I’m just chugging along during the day, I go to the old faithfuls: the soundtrack from Ken Burns’ Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Stones in the Road, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, some Puccini or Neil Young’s Comes a Time.

Given the slice and dice randomized nature of iTunes and Napster, I realize that speaking of music in terms of albums is very old school, but the extended play of the 50 to 60 minute tune after tune fits my writing rhythm pretty well. Once a playlist is over, I know it’s time to take a break, push away from my desk, stand up and lean back to stretch out my stiff back, wander out into the hallway of that other world, or walk downstairs and check my campus mailbox to see what junk I can toss into the recycling bins nearby.

When I was a longhaired college kid, I had Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Marvin Gaye, Cat Stevens, and Joni Mitchell in pretty much constant rotation on my scratchy stereo, one skewered vinyl dropping down on the next until it was time to flip the stack over again. In those days, I was listening for lyrics and rhyme as much as anything, thinking I was a writer in the company of writers who also happen to play music. These days I’m listening for melody and rhythm as much as anything, thinking I’m a writer in the company of musicians who also happen to keep me writing.

I’m interested in this subject — for one thing, I expect that the responses of other writers would be as idiosyncratic as the writers themselves.

Personally, I like music in the background while I write, but it can’t be vocal music. There’ll be an occasional exception when I need to jump-start my pulse rate, but even then I’ll avoid a full-length record and play something like Husker Du’s clamorous “Eight Miles High” ep disc. Otherwise, no songs — voices singing interesting lyrics distract me from the voice I’m trying to amplify on the page. Even lieder or songs in other languages are too distracting.

Very often I listen to jazz or orchestral music. Musgrove mentions Keith Jarrett’s The Koln Concert, which has been a favorite of mine for over a quarter-century (is it hip again to like Jarrett? I’ve lost track), but equally good for writing is the muscular group improvisation on The Survivors’ Suite. Very often I go for one of the Charles Mingus holy trinity: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown or The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. The astonishingly intense playing on “Mode D/E/F”really lends itself to tricky concentration, oddly enough.

There are shifts that have me wondering if I’m looking for novelty or I’m subconsciously picking music to match an unrecognized creative need. For a long stretch I listened only to solid blocks of composers whose works were varied enough to offer plenty of variety. Duke Ellington, for instance: I’d start with the tense, combative trio playing on Money Jungle, shift to the full orchestra on The Far East Suite (an unjustly neglected item in Duke’s later catalogue, if you ask me), go to the solo disc The Pianist, then return to the orchestra for And His Mother Called Him Bill, the unchallengeable masterpiece.

Musgrove is absolutely right about album-length music. Maybe it’s a generational thing. I grew up in the heyday of the 40-minute vinyl album, and that still forms the framework for my listening habits. Lou Reed once likened the old vinyl records to two-act plays — one of the shrewdest things he’s ever said. I love the way the format encouraged groups to think about pacing and drama, using the expected break in time to flip over the disc to set the stage for the next part of the program. To pick a completely random example, think of the way The Beatles used the between-side breaks on the White Album to set up interesting transitions: the freaky intensity of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” leading to the Victorian parlor piano of “Martha My Dear,” the dreamy beauty of “Julia” giving way to the raucous “Birthday,” the spooky dying fall of “Long, Long, Long” banished by the bluesy, plain-spoken “Revolution 1.”

The huge empty bins created by the CD format don’t impose that kind of creative pacing. In a funny way, digital music formats and ripping individual tunes onto iPods and PCs has brought music back to the pre-LP era, when forty-five singles ruled the roost. Everything new is old again.