I have a tendency towards fetishism, but it's not what you think. This one time I lived in a building that looked like a castle -- collegiate gothic that made me want to listen to Nick Drake and read big, leather-bound books and wear spectacles.
These days, I live in a small town. And there's something about the dry, snowless November/December that we've had (usually for this part of the world) with its trees and grass of brown. Something about this little city awash with mid-century browns, its criss-crossing freight rails, its grain silos, its shabby houses on the bad side of town (is there a good side?) and the mix of classic rock and lo-fi indie that they play on the radio. It all adds up to make me feel like I'm a character in a movie about being broke in the eighties. Pretty in Pink, you know, that type of thing.
But isn't that just the thing about being inspired by a setting? In a book or movie, settings always have specific characteristics that help us become familiar with the strange by using touchstones that we may already be familiar with. And for me, one of those touchstones is music. It seems to me that my brain is hardwired to connect genres or songs with specific times and places in the world and in my life. And so now classic rock and indie makes me inspired to write a story about a small town in November. :)
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