The Origin Story

So I was initially going to put this on an 'About' page that I had plans to create for this blog. But I think the story actually deserves to have a post of its own, before it gets relegated to surrounding copy. And so I'll begin: the story of how I was first inspired by music.

Once Upon a Time...

There was a young seven year old girl -- me -- going to school in a suburban neighborhood east of the capital city of Canada. As was tradition for the schools in that part of the world (and still is, probably) one day a high school band came to visit my school. The teachers all rounded us up and brought us into the gym. We had to sit on the achingly cold floor with our legs crossed. It was torture. Or at least it was until the band began to play.

One can learn a lot from hindsight. For instance, later I joined my high school's band. And we were horrible musicians -- muddling through mostly pops, Broadway or jazz arrangements. But to my child's undeveloped ear, I felt as though I had never heard anything so beautiful. I remember that I closed my eyes and listened to the whole concert sitting still. And that's when it first happened. That's when I could picture -- I thought because of the music -- a story take place before my mind's eye. Characters came to life that I'd never heard of and had conflicts with each other that perhaps were not original but were still thrilling for a seven year old.

Later, when I was older, my high school band did the same thing as that one had -- we went on a tour of the "feeder schools" as the teachers called them and played for the little kids of the neighborhood. I remember looking out across the masses of children and seeing them bobbing around in places to the music -- dancing with abandon as only children can while the teachers attempted to keep them in one place. It struck me then as now how odd I must have looked to other seven year olds and teachers alike: this tiny kid sitting still with her eyes closed. But then that's just the sort of child I was. Sometimes, while I was in elementary school, I used to have contests with myself to see how long I could sit without moving a muscle. I never told anyone -- I'd just watch the clock on the classroom wall and keep track of how long I could be motionless. Just to know.

At any rate, it wasn't until a couple years later that I put pen to paper in an attempt to record a story for the first time. By that time, the infamous concert how grown into legend in my mind and I remembered it as being a symphony of the highest caliber. This idea was exaggerated by the fact that for Christmas that year I received a two volume set of "Classical Essentials" or some such other title. Did I forget to mention it was two tapes? Yes, I am that old!

That's when things really took off, in terms of imagining to music. And it's also why even now, some of my most inspiring tracks are classical ones. But that's not where it ended. I started to imagine things when I looked out the window of the car on those long drives to Grandma's house. On those occasions, the car radio was usually take over by my parents, who had a penchant for hits of the '60s and Leonard Cohen:

It strikes me that early exposure to a poet/songwriter might be behind the fact that lyrics are probably the most important aspects of pop songs for me. Whatever it was, it wasn't a far jump from imagining stories to those types of songs to transferring that skill to all songs with words. And so a habit was formed that would last my entire life: the habit of listening to music as a way of avoiding writer's block. Like they say, music can soothe the savage beast -- which I interpret to mean that music has a way of coaxing the (sometimes) savage muse to come out and play! :)

How about you? Is listening to music a habit that you have in your writing or creating?