The Joys of Writing to Music

Just not Jazz. Never, ever, ever, Jazz.

Last year, when we were visiting our son, he asked me if I wanted to go to a record store in Toledo, some 30 miles from his house. I went along reluctantly, because of course I wanted to spend some time with him but—a record store? I don’t even have a turntable.

As he rifled through stacks of albums, pulling out one then another to slowly read the liner notes, I wandered the aisles, bored, my feet already aching, my legs warning me to find a damn chair, and then I saw it: The New Age section.

I found Windham Hill, I found George Winston, I found Enya and Eno. I found my old friends! On CDs!

When I was at the height of my writing in the 1980s and 90s I often wrote to Windham Hill and George Winston. I’ve written to Eno. I’ve written to Yanni. I’ve written to Zamfir.

I’ve written to Pavarotti and to Vivaldi, to Yo-Yo-Ma and to Bach. But New Age—how could I have forgotten?—is my musical muse. The sound is just right; a subtle rhythm that becomes motion washing across my right brain, making me at least think I’m more creative.

Yes, New Age. And, no, dear reader, I’m not ashamed. You will not take me there.

For a while, A Winter’s Solstice was my joy, my solace, my everything. And I wasn’t alone. I was introduced to it by other writers in my long-ago group who found the soothing brilliance of the Windham Hill artists the perfect background music for writing.

Then I found Kitaro. And Vangelis. And Pachelbel.

Many writers write with music in the background. Our music. To each of us it’s inspiration. The thing to inspire. The reason to aspire. It stirs us in those deep down places and, for those moments, makes us better than we think we can be.

The sounds charge the air around us and transport us to a new and different plane. We’ve removed ourselves from the everyday world and discovered magic. It transforms our work in ways we can’t explain, just as we can’t explain our tastes in music. What thrills and excites one person bores or ignites someone else. (You’ve seen my piece on jazz?)

Writing works that way, too. If we all liked the same thing and wrote about it, there would be no need for Amazon or Kindle or for thousands of bookstores across the country.

We separate authors because their differences mean something.

Margaret Atwood isn’t in the same space as Jane Austen.

Maya Angelou isn’t anywhere near David Sedaris.

Carl Sagan is far away from Stephen King’s neighborhood.

If we all liked the same thing, chances are those fine writers would have had to stick to their day jobs.

But we don’t all like the same thing. We’re blessedly diverse, each to our own selves in a world where like minds are encouraged and often rewarded.

Sometimes both of those things—diversity and like minds—work to our advantage. We need diversity to strengthen our outlooks and broaden our horizons. We need similarities to reinforce our beliefs and support our actions. And we need writers and artists and musicians who see the world we live in through their own art and their own imagination. They are our education and our inspiration.

The music I choose to write to is often far different from the music I like to listen to. My tastes are fairly eclectic — they range from classical to Willie Nelson to Beyonce to k.d. lang to Broadway show tunes to Twenty One Pilots (my grandson’s influence) — but they wouldn’t be my choices for background noise when I’m in my office writing.

I’ve found my musical muses again, after I tossed them away during those crazy years when I was writing almost exclusively about politics. I never should have erased them. I might have done things differently if I’d remembered to listen.

I have to believe it wasn’t just serendipity that put me in that particular aisle in that particular record store around this time last year. It was exactly where I needed to be.

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How about you? Do you write to music? What are your choices? If you say ‘jazz’, just know I may look down my nose a bit, but some of my best friends love jazz. And, yes, they laugh at New Age. It’s a sticky subject but we’ve somehow managed to overcome our differences. We’re big that way.