Music I Write To


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Thursday, June 18, 2009

I ♥ NPR

I can't believe how fast the time has passed since I last wrote here! I've been planning everything around the week-long vacation I'll be leaving for in 3 days, and my work and personal lives have been busy!

I've spent a lot of time listening to NPR, largely because of two things: 1.) The CD player in the truck is possibly possessed, and therefore completely unreliable and mostly unusable, and 2.) There aren't a large variety of radio stations available that suit my...eclectic music tastes. While I can pick up about 15 different stations, they all revolve around the same 4 genres: rap, country, talk/religion/Braves games commentaries, and Spanish. No joke, there's at least 4 different Spanish radio stations I pick up. While I do enjoy a little of all of those genres occasionally, it just doesn't suit my day-to-day listening needs. So I started listening to NPR, and got completely sucked into this whole other side of story telling.

For those of you who are unaware, NPR is National Public Radio. And while they do have a lot of interviews with different people, they also play a TON of classical music and opera. I understand that neither of those appeals to the general masses, but let me tell you...I LOVE IT!

I've always loved classical music; it's been a constant part of my life, starting with the movie Fantasia, a childhood obsession of mine, to someone always playing on the piano at my granparents house, to the couple years I spent playing the violin.

Now that I'm concsiously thinking about it, I think I could probably blame, or thank, Fantasia for my current state of semi-maddness when it comes to classical music. Seeing the stories told without words gave me the palette to draw from I guess. Because any time I hear classical music, a story forms in my head. It doesn't matter that I don't know anything about the actual story the composer had in mind; that the beauty of it - IT DOESN'T MATTER!

I love the fact that the music is so strong that it tells it's own story. And believe me, strong is the right word. I've actually missed my turn after work because I get so wrapped up in the story in my head, whether it be a mad horseback chase through the forrest at midnight, rain pouring down, flickers of incandescent lightening showing you brief glimpses of the hunter chasing you, or if it's that first moment when he sees her, and the crowd disappears around them, until it's just him watching her, and her wrapped up in her own little world, unaware of anything but the music and the way her body moves as she dances...when she finally looks up, she sees him and something happens between them, across a dark room full of other people...each recognizes the shock, and as he takes a step towards her, and she unthinkingly takes one towards him, a big man with a scar on his face appears at her elbow and wrenches her out through a side door - her boyfriend. The man is frozen in place by the monumental shift in his life when he saw her, and before he could take more than one step, she's gone, taken...by a man he now recognizes as the leader of a street gang he believes is responsible for the death of his father at a gas station hold up years ago, never proven, but always believed none-the-less. First his father and now this girl, this girl he doesn't know but is suddenly aware that he'd lay his life on the line for her, taken from him by some street thug? No. Never. As he turns away, his brain is already planning, already discarding and sifting through different courses of action...because he's going to end it, once and for all.

Um, yeah.

That last one is the one I saw in my head last night when I was listening to a Japanese piece I'd never heard before. As you can see, I get pretty wrapped up in it, hence missing the turn to my house.

But it's just so amazing to me that music, unseen, only heard, can produce these amazing movies in my head, ever crescendo and pause telling me the next thing that happens, each poignant violin solo proclaiming it's love or death or tears or joy...seriously awesome.

After so much mad ramblings, I have to get back to reality, because I have a feeling while I was lost in my action/romance flick my son has probably gotten into something he's not supposed to...it's reeeeeaaaaally quiet out there.....

So until I get back from vacation (yay!), if you get bored, check out 89.5 fm, and see what kind of stories you see. :)

1 comment:

Sweet Caroline said...

Driving home from my vacation and on my laptop. I was THRILLED to see that you posted.

I love the music examples. I noticed when I was young that Saturday morning cartoons would have classical music playing....

How pathetically blond I am cause as you were telling the story of the guy and the girl on the dance floor...I was anxious to here what the name of the book was so I can buy it for the remainder of this vacation.

And, realized...it was YOU. It was YOU???!! Please...I was so wrapped into the guy and girl's energies coming together so methodically. It was making my body lean into the story.. and then it...left?

Will the guy go out and beat some Ass and get the girl? I turned the page...and there was nothing there!