For a long time now, I’ve wondered why it is that some writers prefer to write to instrumental music as opposed to music with lyrics, and why I’m the total opposite.
As much as I adore music, it’s written in a totally different language and my brain can’t interpret it or understand it. Now, music with lyrics, on the other hand, because there are words, written words, I can cling to them and understand them as if they’re a translation of the music. This is why instrumental music is often boring to me. There’s nothing to hold my interest and nothing to tell me what’s going on.
So while for some, music with lyrics is distracting because the lyrics distrupt their writing, for me it’s the opposite. Music with lyrics I find far easier to write to than instrumental music because it’s music I can understand. It’s like the difference between me watching a film in Cantonese (which I don’t speak), without subtitles, to watching the same film with subtitles. One I can understand, the other I can’t. Visuals aren’t enough for me to interpret what’s going on; I need the words to translate those visuals into something I can understand.
I always have a frustratingly awesome time writing musicians though, because in some ways, I can understand them and their relationship to music, but in other ways it’s an utterly foreign way of thinking and being. I am not a musician, I am a writer. I live, breathe and think in words. Not music, not pictures, not poetry. Straight prose. Words. Wordswordswords. That is how I understand the world. It’s difficult for me to grasp how a non-writer experiences the world. All I have to draw on are my own experiences, and that isn’t always helpful.
I often wonder if other creative people are like this too, that they can’t quite ‘get’ other ways of thinking/creating and in some way require a translator.
Apologies if I’m not being clear. I’m doing my best to explain something that’s not easy to explain. It’s like… writing, words, the urge to write, it’s instinctive, like breathing, living, everything. .It’s in every fibre of my being. I can’t comprehend not writing, or not being able to write. I’m somewhat more scared of losing my ability to write than of dying. Everyone dies. But if I lost the ability to write… It scares me. I need to be able to write. I think I would die if I didn’t or couldn’t write. It’s not something I can just switch on and off, some sort of hobby. It’s an impulsive urge that is difficult to ignore. When the muses strike, nothing else matters, just getting the stor down before the muses go away again.
Okay. I would like to admit to a little clandestine drawing on the side, which I indulge in occasionally. I don’t see myself as an artist, and most of the art I do is to complement my own writing. I do my own fanart, basically. XD So there are some areas of visual art I understand, and I’m good with abstract symbols, but it’s mostly an art form I do not understand and tend to have little interest in.
But I think I’ve written enough for the moment. I appear to have hit a dead end. I’ll probably write more on this later when I get a chance to think on it some more. I’m all out of thoughts now.