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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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A Flash (or Two) of Musical Inspiration

21/7/2014

13 Comments

 
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I had an encouraging response to the musical link I included in my recent post on water-themed fiction. I used to provide a musical accompaniment to my posts quite frequently – up until the beginning of this year I was actively populating my Google+ page with a YouTube link to each blog post  – but somehow I'd lost the habit. The latest flash fiction challenge from Charli Mills seems a timely reminder to re-establish the link between music and words.

I’ve published a couple of short stories on a musical theme: there’s my flash Getting It Together with Elvis; my short stories Melanie’s Last Tune about a narcissistic music teacher and The Invention of Harmony about a mediaeval nun’s fear of her own creativity. So it didn’t take me long to come up with an idea for the required 99 words. I’m pairing this with the march from Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges, although anything that sparks different reactions would do:

She thought she’d found her soulmate: a handsome man who shared her passion for surfing, sushi and Shakespeare. In and out of bed, he made her feel whole. When he brandished the concert tickets, she prepared herself for a treat.
The music was by some Russian guy. Thump thump thump and plinketty plonk. As soon as she caught the rhythm it would flip to something else. The thrum of a headache in her temples, she turned his way. Yet, instead of the anticipated shrug of apology, he appeared enraptured, his expression the one he usually wore straight after sex.

Okay? But somewhere along the line it struck me that I’d misinterpreted the prompt: it wasn’t to write about music but to write a story influenced by a musical score. In other words, a flash that tells the same story as the music.

Now, much as I enjoy music, and take whatever opportunity I can find to prattle about how thrilled I am to sing with a choir despite my imperfect pitch, I’m not aware of it inspiring my writing. Fiction and music seem to be located in separate parts of my brain. I like to be in as quiet an environment as possible when I’m writing, or when I’m reading for that matter. Even if it weren’t for the extraneous sound confusing my voice-activated software – and, boy, it’s confused enough with just my voice to contend with – I’d find it distracting. Yet lots of writers, as testified on Roz Morris’s blog the undercover soundtrack, use music as their muse. So I pushed myself to step out of my writerly comfort zone to see if I could squeeze a story out of one of my favourite choral pieces: In Paradisum from Faure’s Requiem. Click on the link and listen as you read. (Although there are words in this, which is slightly against the rules, when you’re hitting those high notes the human voice could be just another musical instrument.)

The pain dissolved in an instant, his agonised frown flipping to a smile. His smile grew wider as gentle hands attached helium balloons to his wrists, his waist, his ankles and his shoulders and he felt himself lifted up, up and up, until he was floating just below the ceiling, looking down in triumph on the narrow hospital bed. Angelic voices sang of how they’d make him whole again, or help him shed his battered body and live among the clouds. And he believed them, oh how much he believed them, until the morphine stopped coursing through his veins.

Feedback time: do my words fit with the music and which piece of flash you prefer?

Don’t miss your chance to take part in the first ever Annecdotal poll.

More wordy feedback is also welcome in the comments section below.



Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
13 Comments
Charli Mills
22/7/2014 08:04:22 am

A wealth of music in this entire post! I'm going to come back and read your short stories, too. While I voted that In Paradisum fits the story better--I felt like the character, floating--I think the first is actually more complex of a story and the music becomes a character in of itself as if it were another woman. Both shall be included! Great responses, Anne!

Reply
Annecdotist
22/7/2014 10:53:40 am

Thanks for that feedback, Charli, and you're so generous letting me put both into the compilation. Everyone's really extended themselves this week. Thanks for the wonderful prompt.

Reply
geoff link
22/7/2014 03:57:38 pm

First thank you or introducing me to In Paradisum. What an incredible sound! And it does work fabulously with the flash, the soaring and then the settling back down. If I had a small suggestion it is the flash suggests a bullet moment when the morphine wears off whereas the music suggests a subsiding back gradually to the hard painful state of silence that follow the end of the piece.
The first piece of flash is excellent too. And here there is a hard moment of realisation, a point where she realises he has feet of clay. By voting for In Paradisum I'm not choosing the flash because I agree with Charli that the first flash has such a depth. Music becomes your work, Ms G...

Reply
Annecdotist
24/7/2014 04:12:52 am

Thank you, Geoff. Glad to introduce you to some new music – the whole of Faure's Requiem is beautiful, not as dramatic as Verdi's perhaps (and, of course, I've had the pleasure of singing both although only the latter with a full orchestra).
Thanks for the feedback on the sudden ending: you're right, I think I was just so relieved to have come up with something that fitted the body of the music I didn't think much further. And I think the morphine effect would tail off gradually just like the music. I have written on this theme before, but you've inspired me to think further.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
22/7/2014 09:34:09 pm

What a full post, Anne. So much to read and listen to. Like all your posts it is abundant in what it offers. I chose your second flash and In Paradisum as they were timely for me still thinking about your recent post on the right to die. I hope when the morphine wears off this fellow will be just as happy to return to this world and his suffering is short lived.
I also enjoyed the first story and felt that the accompanying music fitted the story perfectly. I turned it off very quickly, just as it turned the heroine off.
I re-read two of your short stories - laughed so much at the cleverness of "Elvis" and saddened by the injustice of the nun's story; but was very touched by Melanie's story, which I read for the first time. What a hauntingly beautiful story. Thank you for linking back to these, reminding of past reads and opening the door to others.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/7/2014 04:18:23 am

Thank you, Norah, you're such a great reader and generous with your feedback. In a perverse kind of way I'm glad you didn't like Three Oranges. I actually quite like it and wasn't going to use it – I was looking for something else but couldn't remember the name or composer. Turns out it's Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin (as in important person rather than fruit, so it really made me smile when I discovered the association) – I doubt you'll want to hear it but here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyvFDdYM-rU).

Reply
Norah Colvin link
25/7/2014 06:18:39 am

You are right, Anne. It is a very noisy jarring piece - perfectly fits your story! Your story is not noisy and jarring though, just the music! Amusing: oranges and Mandarins! Reminds me of a childhood rhyme: oranges and lemons and the bells of St Clements. Maybe the bells ('the bells, the bells) would be more musical. Perhaps with your fruit influence you were also preempting Charli's prompt!

Irene Waters link
23/7/2014 02:07:44 am

Hi Anne, I agree music becomes your posts and I too plan on reading the links to your stories. I think the music really suited the second flash and for a minute I thought that he had died and entered heaven. Then your twist was great. Although I liked the other it did not have the same impact for me that the second did and I know which will stay with me longer.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/7/2014 04:19:18 am

Thanks for your feedback, Irene, and hope you do find time to look at these other stories.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
25/7/2014 06:20:35 am

Forgot to say, Anne - love the inclusion of the poll. I've tried one a few times myself and wanted to use it in my current post but couldn't get it to work unfortunately - not sure why this time refused to cooperate!

Reply
Annecdotist
26/7/2014 11:32:23 am

Yeah, I think I surprised myself getting this in. I'm always up for new innovations if they're not too complex for my brain.

Reply
Charli Mills
27/7/2014 04:54:18 pm

Had to listen to the Miraculous Mandarin out of curiosity. The sound is that of a dramatic traffic jam!

Reply
Annecdotist
28/7/2014 04:15:20 am

Good analogy, Charli, and that would have made an interesting flash. I think a lot of modern classical music is like this, and lots of people like it but not me. Heard it first played at a concert last summer, they projected slides on the screen behind ostensibly to tell the story, but it didn't work for me, I think compounding my sense that music and stories exist for me in different modalities.

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