The first time I remembered hearing science music was, naturally enough, at the Seattle Science Center Planetarium. In a darkened amphitheater, the constellations were shown on the domed ceiling while a narrator described what we were seeing. It’s the only time I’ve seen the Southern Cross and I didn’t have to board a freighter to Antarctica.
Before the show began, they played a background orchestral track of what I loathingly call ‘science music.’ It could as easily be called computer music, but it seems to be a favorite of the incurably Spok-like.
I can imagine the two hopelessly nerdy “composers” who first produced this stuff.
“Why can’t we just play a song from the Buddy Holly LP again?”
“The boss says we’d have to pay the licensing fees. And we can’t even afford the popcorn maker we installed last Tuesday.”
“No problem. My TRS-80 can play different frequencies. If we alternate through three of them fast enough, it sounds like a chord. Let me show you.”
“Hey, that sounds pretty good. That means we have everything we need to make music. We’ll just play different chords all strung together.”
“Right. I’ll go tell the boss. Maybe we can keep the popcorn maker.”
Science music is synthesized chord progressions meandering through endless transitions without a detectable melody.
Science music doesn’t appreciate the art of the musical phrase, the larger story being told musically. It reminds me of a scene from the movie “Soylent Green.” In that movie, citizens who are deemed unfit or too old were rendered down to their basic nutrients for the benefit of the collective. Before the prospective hors douvres were euthanized, they were shown a series of beautiful images and scenes from nature. The works of famous composers were piped into the room to lull the hopeless into submission. While they listened to Mozart or Brahms, they were on their way to the happy pastry parlor.
Science music actually has the opposite effect on me. I find myself growing more tense with every non-concluding, undirected musical non-phrase.
A famous composer – musicologists will hopefully forgive me for not remembering who – could be roused from sleep in the mornings by his mother’s musical trick. She played a series of chords on the harpsichord or piano and omitted the final resolving chord. The young musical prodigy was so distressed by the omission that he was forced to get up and play the ideal musical dénouement. By then, he was too awake to return to bed.
Lacking a message, science music is just so many constructive vibrational frequencies strewn together. People need content; they need a meaning to grasp.
My writing may sound intimate and warm. My words may flow with poise and grace. But without a reason to read it, it’s just science music on paper.
What do you think of science music or science music on paper?
Writing
Weight Loss
You might be a writer if your idea of weight loss is to go through your backpack and discard all your old drafts and rejection letters.
Why Did I Bother?
Why did I bother?
You know the question if you’ve attended enough critique group meetings.
On rare- oh so rare- occasions, your writing soars and transports. Your critique partners sigh or laugh or scowl at all the right places.
Other times nothing works. The piece you brought might as well have been written in Sanskrit.
None of them ever actually voice the ‘Why did you bother?’ question. It’s something a frightened and cowering part of our own psyches ask. If this is all I can squeeze out after a month or a week away, why do I even show up?
But I’m starting to see the reasons now. Without the prototyping, without the scrutiny, without the prove-every-rivet stress testing, my writing would never improve.
Then one day, you have something worth saying and the words come when they’re called. You swing your axe and find the words sharp and the writing solid. You yank it out and swing again and it bites deep and true into the mind, into the heart.
Then you know why you endured a thousand nights of ‘Why did I bother?’
Marring the Pottery
I was editing a piece of writing the other night. I was happily marking up the paper draft, content to cut and move and erase and deface. But then I opened the actual document on my computer and felt myself hesitating. This was real now. The changes I made now, though not carved in stone, would take it that much closer to the finished product. But it would also be a different product. I was reminded of the passage in Jeremiah where the prophet is directed to the potter’s house.
Jeremiah 18:3-4
3So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
In my writing, I have to surrender my text so it can become something new. I have to risk the passage through the tunnel of change. I have to risk marring the work to reach the final product.
Selling the Coin
I’m excited to announce the release of my short story Selling the Coin. Described by one reader as fun and Twilight Zone-esque, Selling the Coin is the story of Terry Bowman, the bar owner who fails to see the value of a treasured coin.
B
elow is a link to the story on Amazon.com:
Jumping the Shark
The phrase ‘jumping the shark’ was coined by Jon Hein to describe a television series or a celebrity that does something far enough out of their brand to damage their future prospects. It came from an episode of the television show Happy Days in which the character Fonzi water ski-jumped over an aquarium tank with a shark in it. (I happened to see the episode, not realizing it would become a byword for bread-and-circuses desperation. I remember thinking that hitting a piling or the wharf with all those spectators posed a greater risk than a half-minute (or less) swim with a startled shark.) Anyway, the ridiculous act was so far out of character and setting that is sounded the death knell for the series.
I bring this up because some novelists seem to outgrow their editors. I say ‘outgrow’ in the sense of “too big for their britches.” There comes a time when authors, gravid with self-significance, believe their advertising copy to the extent that they become impervious to editorial advice.
Traditionally, the editor served a gatekeeper role to control what comes to the publishing house and what goes out to the public. Even before e-publishing, writers could amass a strong enough platform that they could ditch their publishing house. That reduced the editor’s ability to have a heart-to-heart with their colleagues. This is even more likely now when people can push several buttons and make their musings available to the world.
The editor still serves a necessary pressure-cooker role in the publishing process, keeping undercooked or unpalatable dishes away from the consumer.
[I considered calling this blog post ‘Jumping the Editor,’ but didn’t want to be misunderstood.]