Thursday 9 January 2014

Day Nine - Fantasia on a Theme

So do we listen to music while we work?

Does it inspire us to work harder, or faster, or do we sit there and conduct things in the air while we should be typing?

I fear in the matter of The Dodd versus Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (as conducted by Vaughn Williams), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxdOYgTXtH8 there is only the conducting to be done...

But it brings the question with it, does any writing hold you in the way in the way that music can hold you.  In the above example, anything from about a minute in to three minutes in has me unable to write for the goosebumps on my arms, but there are very few pieces of writing that hold my conscious mind in the way that this music does.

This is the thought that occupies me today, is your writing the soundtrack to your life?

Does what you listen to affect what or how you write, do you need silence to clear your head of things, cheerful music for bright scenes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ7UPiGtvns (Although I understand some people don't find it cheerful, I do) , for crawling horror the darkness of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST2H8FWDvEA (or anything by Britney for that matter...).

Do you find that in a certain mood, you write some things better?  If you're down, do you find it difficult to write happy things, or in contrast, do you find it easier to write happy things because you want them in your head?

For myself, it's quite divorced of connection, if i'm enjoying something enough to be moved by it, chances are I'm concentrating on it to the exclusion of everything else, which includes what my fingers are typing.  There may come a time when I still type through such things, but I think that then it will be because it no longer moves me in the way it once did...

and that would be a shame...

This is John Dodd, in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, and Good Night England, wherever you are...