OK, so it IS a list but it's not exactly a list. And I'm not just talking songs that bring a little tear - I am, after all, one of the world's great blubberbuses, so that'd be a pretty long list. No, these are the gushers!
So why such an unseasonal list? And why sixteen? Well, the latter question is easy, and it has to do neither with Harry Christophers nor John Hughes, but simply the sonorousness of the words (mwah, dahling). Why? Well, I love lists, and this is the list time of year, but most of all beacuse of my next novel. I've always liked the idea of writing a novel that genuinely makes people cry. Songs from the Other Side of the Wall does it to me, the ending has me blubbing like a blubby thing but I get the impression it leaves most people a little confused.
Why do I want to write a novel that makes people cry? Well, for me that's the point of connection we were talking about in the "pain" debate - the moment when a writer's words and my life intersect, when she speaks to me and only me, when she unlocks me with her words, and the tears are what she releases as the door opens. It's an intimate, beautiful, very special moment between reader and writer. I would love to speak in that way - even if only once, to one reader.
So why songs instead of books? Two reasons - first, I came up with the idea whilst listening to music - so it seemed obvious. Second, thinking it over, I actually found it easier to put my finger on what it was about songs that drove me to gushing than I did books - so it's more instructional to me as a writer.
Finally, for info - Life Drawn Freehand will go into production over the next few days, with a summer 2010 release date. It's the story of 50-something art teacher Ella, who realises, when her son dies on a gap year, that she has had her life on hold for 30 years. In order to win an audience for her art, she decides to give everything she does for a whole year away free. EVERYTHING. She gets recognition, but it brings more than she bargained for, in the shape of two intense affairs, with alcoholic ex-model and musician Sabrina, and her 16 year-old pupil Matthew. As the year draws to a close, Matthew takes Ella and Sabrina on a journey to the place where Ella's son died. It's a journey from which all know only one of them will return. It's a love story that examines every single connotation we put on the word "free".
OK, so here's The Sixteen, the songs most likely to flood the room with sentimental saline. As an authorial aide, I've put them into categories, according to why they make me cry. With apologies to Polly Harvey and Janis Joplin - I have no reason why you aren't on this list. Possibly because just the mention of your names can make me gush.
The words
All the songs on this list are, musically, constructed a certain way. I'm not enough of a musician to put my finger on it but it's something to do with rise and fall, a soaring, fragile voice slightlyu at odds with a melody that does a certain somethnig. BUT some songs have words that just pile on that effect.
Black Balloon - The Kills - OK, I'm gonna try really hard to avoid the copyright police. A line like "I've starred in a thousand street scenes just around the corner form you, on the edge of your dreams" - if that were a poem with no muisc it would have me in tears - it's a situation we all know - looking on but not being able to touch. Knowing we will come so close but no closer.
E-Bow the Letter R.E.M. "These corrosives work their magic slowly" and above all else "dreaming of Maria Callas, whoever she is" - it's blankness - teh kind of blank despair that's beyond despair Daisy Anne Gree writes. Oh, and the deep, deep sliding melody, and the howling Patti Smith solo doesn't make it less tearjerking.
Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinnead O'Connor Yes, I know it's kitsch and uncool, but it's my age. And if it needs to be explained why the words make you cry, you're probably a cyborg.
The music
Very hard for me to say what it is about these, although I intend to analyse them at length. The first two are, in my non-musical opinion, the most perfectly-crafted rock songs ever written. I should also note that I limited myself to one song a band. When I drew up an original top 10, 6 were Radiohead. Thom Yorke has a LOT to do with it - his voice, and his stage persona, are in themselves enough to reduce me to tears. If I'd chosen High & Dry or Fake Plastic Trees I may have put the song in the "delivery" category for that reason. lucky could, after a magical set at Reading, belong in the personal association category. Oh, and it's one of my tests of character whether people prefer Jealous Guy or Imagine; up there with the great Notting Hill v Four Weddings/ Unbearable Lightness of Being v Book fo Laughter and Forgetting debates
Lucky - Radiohead
Jealous Guy - John Lennon
Don't Look Back into the Sun - Libertines - I CAN say what it is about this - it's in the guitar sound - the way the tone of the sound somehow makes you feel as though something beautiful has been lost forever
The delivery
These are songs that make me cry largely because of the persona/unique voice of the singer (if I'd picked a different Skunk Anansie song it would have gone here)
End of the Century - Blur - Damon sounds like he's about to cry at any moment throughout - and especially when he says "there's ants on the carpet" - and it works by sympathy. He also sounds like a man who's realising for the first time that everything he loved has turned out to be crap.
She's a Star - James - because the voice seems to hit resonance with something in my brain and they enter this feedback loop of melancholy
Saturday Night - Suede - no one does fragile and broken but with a lilting beauty that keeps its dignity (that's the real thing - the defiance you know is futile - think the guy in Tiannenmen) like Brett Anderson.
The artist
Not a lot I can do with this. There are some songs that, whilst they would always pull the heartstrings, bring out the monsoon because we know what happened next. Because we are actually crying for the artist. With apologies to anyone who ever thought I had any taste. Yes, that IS Karen Carpenter. But, com eon - it's Karen Carpenter! Piaff is part because it's her, part the dignity in teh voice - the defiance (that's something, like the Suede above, I CAN learn from)
Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Nirvana Unplugged version
Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Karen Carpenter version
La Vie en Rose - Edith Piaff
Personal association
Interestingly, I think it is nostalgia rather than heartbreak that does it here - a perfect moment never to be recaptured. That would be true of Lucky.
Secretly - Skunk Anansie - has to do with a rather unpleasant ex, and most of it is actually about the song itself - it's about as manipulative as you can get with it's quiet-loud-quiet. Not nearly so good a song as Smells Like Teen Spirit or anything by the Pixies that uses the form better, but definitely the queintessence of heartbreaking. It's all to do with the sudden changes and the fact that you never quite, even in the moments of exhilaration, escape the underlying melancholy.
Other associations
Songs that make you cry because of what went with them - most often with me a film. Something one can learn from by remembering taht we need to engage the whole reader, and not just the bit of the brain that takes in the words on the page - why a live performance will always work better.
California Dreaming - Mamas and Papas -because I saw Chungking Express at an impressionable age
Anthem from Three Colours: Blue - Zbigniew Priesner - because it's the saddest film ever made (the defiance, fragility and everything to do with the tragedy of Kieslowski's early death and the fact it's got Juliette Binoche in doing that kind of "thousand emotions with one movement of the eyebrow" thing), and this tune is an integral part of that.
OK, so now you know my 2010 playlist. What I hope more than anythnig is that in some way, however small, I can make Life Drawn Freehand speak to one of you enough to draw a tear. Just one would do!
Showing posts with label A Life Drawn Freehand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Life Drawn Freehand. Show all posts
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
All in the Past: Why I'm Getting Tense about my New Project
“You’ve gotta come see it, Szandi,” says Yang. I slam the phone down but it misses the base. I hit the clock instead, which flashes 03.00.
I put the handset on the pillow and turn over so I’m looking at it. The white plastic appears faintly red in the clock’s LCD glow. “Szandi?” I hear. The black dots of the speaker seem to wink in the dark as she talks.
Those are the opening words of my last novel, Songs From the Other Side of the Wall. So what? They’re OK – apparently it’s unfashionable to mention time in the opening paragraph, but as it’s a reference to the KLF’s 3 a.m. Eternal, I figured why not. So, perfectly passable and uneventful, right?
Well no. These two brief paragraphs turned my writing world upside down. You see, they just came out like that, natural as anything, and it was only much later – pages later, in fact that I noticed: THEY’RE IN THE PRESENT TENSE.
Half of you are probably still saying so what? But the other half probably winced the moment you read “says”. And when I wrote the words, I was one of them. I hated present tense. With a vengeance. So much so that I stopped reading Patricia Cornwell’s The Last precinct after 5 pages, and haven’t picked up a Scarpetta novel since. It feels contrived, showy (exactly the reasons outlined when I held a straw poll on twitter yesterday) – as though it’s there to keep the reader guessing what’s going to happen. We’re always aware of the author, and never quite lose ourselves in the story.
Furthermore, my favourite agent’s reader, Jodi Meadows, made the very good point that it is very hard to maintain the present tense without letting the POV slip. And as Miss Pitch pointed out, the incessant battering of first person present tense can actually get rather dull (and, I would add, a little bit shouty).
So imagine my horror when I found I was writing in the present tense. Only then the horror started to subside. I found myself reading a whole slew of books where the present tense seemed not to get in the way of the narrative but to enhance it. After Dark by Murakami and Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis are the two that stick most in the mind. They just couldn’t be written any other way.
So why does it work so well for these authors, and so badly for Cornwell? It might seem at first glance that it’s a question of first person against third person, which would in itself be strange because the objections I encountered (single POV, maintenance of a sustained character, claustrophobia) all seemed to apply to the first person. But I have a feeling it may be more to do with genre. I think in a thriller (I have the same issue with Simon Kernick) it feels as though you’re using it as a trick – a “will the character pull through?” or “keep the reader in the moment” kind of thing.
What Ellis does – and this sounds arty nonsense, the very opposite of everything I mean to convey – is perfectly reflect the throwaway lives and casual violence of teenage rich kids in The Valley. The tense is part of that “yeah, so what” voice he has, and that makes it work.
With Murakami, it’s something different, something specific to that kind of literary fiction that I can only describe as poetry. The other day I tried to analyse it, just why the present tense used well sounds so exquisite, and all I could come up with is that the sound “d” is ugly and “s” is elegant. Which is rubbish. Only it isn’t because we so often forget as prose-writers the absolute importance of the way words sound – and poets so often remember.
So I became happier in my present tense. It suits the loose, liquid style I like to write in, where sound matters more than strict meaning – no, where sound often IS the meaning (I write magical realism so I can get away with saying nonsense like that!). AND I write about teenagers.
Now I can’t imagine writing in anything BUT the present tense. It just seems so natural, so flowing, so loose and easy (not, I hope, floppy, stream of consciousness, but it’s not my place to say). Indeed my current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes, is written in the present tense from three separate POVs, one third person, and two first person (one of them plural).
NOW imagine my horror as I sit at the keyboard, tingling with excitement to begin tapping out the opening of my new novel, “Life Drawn Freehand”:
I remember the phone was cold in my hand when they called to tell me Simon was dead. I thought, it’s summer and I’m holding slick, plastic ice, and it’s talking.
The voice was Andrew’s. He said “Mrs Hart?” and I said yes, once, and his voice kept saying “Mrs Hart?” and I thought isn’t it strange this cold thing in my hand keeps repeating my name. Then there was another voice, not Andrew’s, not anyone’s I knew, and it said “Mrs Hart I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident” and I said “Oh” and for a few seconds I thought the frozen thing in my fingers was Simon’s skin.
Then I put it down while it was still repeating “Mrs Hart” in the other voice, the one I didn’t know, and it was just a hot summer day, and I was staring at the telephone, and my son was dead.
My deepest thanks to @jodimeadows @pitchparlour @pattyjansen @brennig @triplecherry @tommyjaybooks @George9writer @remittancegirl and @vpynchon for their helpful input on twitter
I put the handset on the pillow and turn over so I’m looking at it. The white plastic appears faintly red in the clock’s LCD glow. “Szandi?” I hear. The black dots of the speaker seem to wink in the dark as she talks.
Those are the opening words of my last novel, Songs From the Other Side of the Wall. So what? They’re OK – apparently it’s unfashionable to mention time in the opening paragraph, but as it’s a reference to the KLF’s 3 a.m. Eternal, I figured why not. So, perfectly passable and uneventful, right?
Well no. These two brief paragraphs turned my writing world upside down. You see, they just came out like that, natural as anything, and it was only much later – pages later, in fact that I noticed: THEY’RE IN THE PRESENT TENSE.
Half of you are probably still saying so what? But the other half probably winced the moment you read “says”. And when I wrote the words, I was one of them. I hated present tense. With a vengeance. So much so that I stopped reading Patricia Cornwell’s The Last precinct after 5 pages, and haven’t picked up a Scarpetta novel since. It feels contrived, showy (exactly the reasons outlined when I held a straw poll on twitter yesterday) – as though it’s there to keep the reader guessing what’s going to happen. We’re always aware of the author, and never quite lose ourselves in the story.
Furthermore, my favourite agent’s reader, Jodi Meadows, made the very good point that it is very hard to maintain the present tense without letting the POV slip. And as Miss Pitch pointed out, the incessant battering of first person present tense can actually get rather dull (and, I would add, a little bit shouty).
So imagine my horror when I found I was writing in the present tense. Only then the horror started to subside. I found myself reading a whole slew of books where the present tense seemed not to get in the way of the narrative but to enhance it. After Dark by Murakami and Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis are the two that stick most in the mind. They just couldn’t be written any other way.
So why does it work so well for these authors, and so badly for Cornwell? It might seem at first glance that it’s a question of first person against third person, which would in itself be strange because the objections I encountered (single POV, maintenance of a sustained character, claustrophobia) all seemed to apply to the first person. But I have a feeling it may be more to do with genre. I think in a thriller (I have the same issue with Simon Kernick) it feels as though you’re using it as a trick – a “will the character pull through?” or “keep the reader in the moment” kind of thing.
What Ellis does – and this sounds arty nonsense, the very opposite of everything I mean to convey – is perfectly reflect the throwaway lives and casual violence of teenage rich kids in The Valley. The tense is part of that “yeah, so what” voice he has, and that makes it work.
With Murakami, it’s something different, something specific to that kind of literary fiction that I can only describe as poetry. The other day I tried to analyse it, just why the present tense used well sounds so exquisite, and all I could come up with is that the sound “d” is ugly and “s” is elegant. Which is rubbish. Only it isn’t because we so often forget as prose-writers the absolute importance of the way words sound – and poets so often remember.
So I became happier in my present tense. It suits the loose, liquid style I like to write in, where sound matters more than strict meaning – no, where sound often IS the meaning (I write magical realism so I can get away with saying nonsense like that!). AND I write about teenagers.
Now I can’t imagine writing in anything BUT the present tense. It just seems so natural, so flowing, so loose and easy (not, I hope, floppy, stream of consciousness, but it’s not my place to say). Indeed my current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes, is written in the present tense from three separate POVs, one third person, and two first person (one of them plural).
NOW imagine my horror as I sit at the keyboard, tingling with excitement to begin tapping out the opening of my new novel, “Life Drawn Freehand”:
I remember the phone was cold in my hand when they called to tell me Simon was dead. I thought, it’s summer and I’m holding slick, plastic ice, and it’s talking.
The voice was Andrew’s. He said “Mrs Hart?” and I said yes, once, and his voice kept saying “Mrs Hart?” and I thought isn’t it strange this cold thing in my hand keeps repeating my name. Then there was another voice, not Andrew’s, not anyone’s I knew, and it said “Mrs Hart I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident” and I said “Oh” and for a few seconds I thought the frozen thing in my fingers was Simon’s skin.
Then I put it down while it was still repeating “Mrs Hart” in the other voice, the one I didn’t know, and it was just a hot summer day, and I was staring at the telephone, and my son was dead.
My deepest thanks to @jodimeadows @pitchparlour @pattyjansen @brennig @triplecherry @tommyjaybooks @George9writer @remittancegirl and @vpynchon for their helpful input on twitter
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Not Writing
This week I am too busy to write. I even sent a message round to the wonderful members of The Man Who Painted Agineszka's Shoes to explain. This is, after all, the week that I have to get Songs From the OtherSide of the Wall finally ready so I can start selling physical books on September 1st. And I need to help my fellow Year Zeros, Larry and Oli do the same so they can also get their books on sale for then. Oh, and my wife's textbook has a final deadline of Jly 31st, so I really should help her proof it.
In other words, for a week, the fiction needs to go on hold. So I set up what I believe to be an important debate over at Aggie's Shoes, on the question of whether culture should be free, as part of giving participators an all around experience.
but then - rather like what happens in Marie Darrieussecq's biting Pig Tales that I've just finished, something started happening.
I went out in the pouring rain yesterday to deliver a form to the finance office (yes I DO lead an interesting life), and came back to find a fully developed pitch for my next novel written out longhand in my head. And no matter how much I thought about gutters and margins and formatting page numbers, all that was going round my head was the scene of Dan (my protagnist, not me), sitting in a chair in Gdansk with Agnieszka's parents, as it slowly dawns on him there is soemthing very very wrong and they may, after all, be totally mad.
I was almost feeling feverish (perhaps Pig Tales had put the H1N1 in me?). My fingers were twitching. My skin started aching and itching. I sat down at my computer and, lo and behold, come this morning an 1100 word chapter had appeared on the Aggie wall. My skin went calm, my temperature subsided, and all was calm.
Now, though, I feel that itch that urge all over again. I have some notes and before very long I have a terrible feeling the opening of my new novel will have emerged, squirming and squeezing itself through my pores until it hits the screen.
A simple message, then. If you're considering it might be better not to write: don't. The words will find their own way out. Far better to let them do it on your terms.
Oh, and I believe those of you who wish may be able to purchase a copy of Songs From the Other Side of the Wall now by clicking here. But I'm not 100% sure. I do know it will be on Amazon in plenty of time for September 1st, though. Which, if I hadn't given in and written, may well not have been the case.
In other words, for a week, the fiction needs to go on hold. So I set up what I believe to be an important debate over at Aggie's Shoes, on the question of whether culture should be free, as part of giving participators an all around experience.
but then - rather like what happens in Marie Darrieussecq's biting Pig Tales that I've just finished, something started happening.
I went out in the pouring rain yesterday to deliver a form to the finance office (yes I DO lead an interesting life), and came back to find a fully developed pitch for my next novel written out longhand in my head. And no matter how much I thought about gutters and margins and formatting page numbers, all that was going round my head was the scene of Dan (my protagnist, not me), sitting in a chair in Gdansk with Agnieszka's parents, as it slowly dawns on him there is soemthing very very wrong and they may, after all, be totally mad.
I was almost feeling feverish (perhaps Pig Tales had put the H1N1 in me?). My fingers were twitching. My skin started aching and itching. I sat down at my computer and, lo and behold, come this morning an 1100 word chapter had appeared on the Aggie wall. My skin went calm, my temperature subsided, and all was calm.
Now, though, I feel that itch that urge all over again. I have some notes and before very long I have a terrible feeling the opening of my new novel will have emerged, squirming and squeezing itself through my pores until it hits the screen.
A simple message, then. If you're considering it might be better not to write: don't. The words will find their own way out. Far better to let them do it on your terms.
Oh, and I believe those of you who wish may be able to purchase a copy of Songs From the Other Side of the Wall now by clicking here. But I'm not 100% sure. I do know it will be on Amazon in plenty of time for September 1st, though. Which, if I hadn't given in and written, may well not have been the case.
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