Music as Muse

I'm often asked what kind of music I listen to while writing, or less frequently, does music ever inspire a work.

To address the first question, I generally like instrumental music as my ear tends to follow the lyrics and pull me away from the thought/storytelling process. Dependent on the scene, time period and mood of the tale, I will choose a certain soundtrack, a bit of jazz or often plug into one of the many ambient stations on the Net that offer a steady but sensual accompaniment to the written word.

The latter however is the more pertinent question for yours truly. From time to time a piece of music will touch me to such an extent that the wheels are put in motion and a storyline will emerge strictly from my emotional reaction to the song.
One such case occurred recently with a song I became familiar with a couple of years ago.

I was and am a big fan of the now defunct series Queer As Folk - not only for its superior razor-sharp writing, acting, and let's face it, plenty of voyeuristic peeps at some of the hottest guys on the tube (BTW - Where is Gale Harold these days??? :( - but also for the terrific way the closing credits each week were accompanied by just the right (albeit uncredited) song to sum up that particular episode. I own all of the season soundtracks, but collectively they only contain maybe half of the music used and the majority of the cuts are the uptempo tunes used in Babylon (the nightclub the guys in the show frequent).

However one show (for QAF fans - the one where post-bashing, Justin's Mom pleas with Brian to stay out of her son's life)a slow, haunting and sad song really caught my attention. My own plea to my disc-jockeying niece Katie produced the songtitle and name of the group that recorded it.

I listened to it over and over again on my computer at work, just relishing the sound and unbeknownst to me at the time, a story was starting to percolate. When my computer crashed, I lost the download of the song but the seed was already planted.

A few weeks back I started thinking about a new book. As I was formulating some very loose and potential plot points in my mind, the story took a turn and poof! the song came into my mind. Without rhyme or reason, it perfectly embodied the mood of my new work.

All I had to do was find it again.

Locating it on the Net was easy but I wanted to own it. Who knows? Maybe the music on the rest of the album would be great too. After some initial research however, I unfortunately discovered that the group broke up back in the 90s and the album in question is discontinued.

But refusing to take no for an answer, I have since located the CD in question at both my local library and through Amazon and Ebay. Long story short? It will be mine one day soon!

Until then, I play it over and over and over again on YouTube as I work on my current novel.

See? Where there's a will, there's a way. ;)

If you have ever been really moved by a piece of music, do tell...