Creative Haunting: Art, Music, and Writing
Years ago I took a Middle Eastern dance class. I'm not hopelessly inept, but I'm not a physical person generally. However, a little ways into the class, my teacher told me something I had never known about myself: that I'm not that strong a dancer until the music starts playing, and then I do everything really well.
I've grown up with music. My parents still play classical music 24/7. I was raised on classical, opera, Broadway musicals, hymns, and British folk; later I discovered folk rock, rock, and pop (which in my day were pretty much the same thing), and even developed a limited liking for jazz. I'm a musician; I've done semi-professional singing, compose music, and play guitar, harp, and piano. Music is such a necessity in my life that I can't even imagine being without it. But it took me a while to realize how music drove a lot of my creativity, especially in writing.
I also love art. One of our favorite games was called "Masterpiece", which included small reproductions of some of the great works of art. I had a Mary Cassat picture in my bedroom when I was growing up, and looked at the beautiful Monet reproduction my parents had on the wall every day. I had a fairy tale book illustrated by Tasha Tudor. I'm a big fan of Impressionist paintings, but learned appreciation of other diverse styles such as Cubism and Pre-Rafaelite. In the last thirty years I have avidly collected science-fiction and fantasy art, and have some truly extraordinary works from science-fiction and fantasy literary fandom on the walls of my own home.
What I didn't realize was how much art and music informed my writing. That was, until I went back to working on writing in a serious way in the mid-90's. That was when I decided to see how well it would work if I started listening to music as I wrote. By that time I had discovered contemporary British folk; I also rediscovered old favorites such as Gordon Lightfoot and Jethro Tull. I turned on the music and like a kind of elemental magic, my creativity spiked.
I seem to do everything better to music; not only does it make me want to write, but it helps suggest directions for my writing. I have written two short stories inspired by folk songs ("Following Seas" and "Swan Song") but it doesn't stop there. The emotions evoked by various songs spill over into my writing in other ways, making it deeper and richer. I sometimes go on 'kicks' when I want to listen to the same things repeatedly, especially when I'm working with particular scenes (I listened to Richard Shindell's "Fishing" on a loop when writing a scene where my main character was being interrogated by her uncle. Look up the lyrics if you want to see what that's about!)
I didn't realize the influence art also had on my works until the year I got a particular piece of art for my husband as a gift. I asked what he thought was going on in the picture: He told me. That inspired one of my best short stories, and the third I ever sold. Later I wrote a short story about an art piece done by an artist friend.
However, the inspiration goes deeper than simply writing stories about the songs and art I surround myself with. There is a deeper interaction, one in which each creative exposure or endeavor sparks the others. I am impelled to write music about my stories, to draw or write about music I love, to create based on the upwelling of emotion and raw archetypal imagery from my unconscious. There is a sort of creative draught that comes from mixing different sorts of art, one which pulls up parts of my imagination I didn't even know were there.
It's not as if I can't incorporate anything into my writing; I do research for a lot of my scenes on everything from sword sharpening to knife combat. I have gotten inspiration from a television program on rogue waves, and another from a severe thunderstorm. Dreams can be a major source of invention, because ideas are everywhere. But my ideas are best evoked by those creative endeavors that are imprinted on my mind since before I could consciously understand them.