Of Music and Melancholy

Prompt of the Day #12

Come up with a playlist that fits the plot of your story or poem. This could be based on the emotional aspects of the content, the diction that you use, descriptions, voice or characterisation. Or pick three songs and write a piece based on your response to them. Try and do this without it becoming a 'song-fic'.

This was meant to be posted on Valentines Day but when your computer gives up on the internet there's not a lot you can do to stop it. Instead, I spent a lot of time planning essays, thinking up interesting prompts for you all, drinking cup after cup of tea and catching up on my Joyce criticism. Sounds like an ideal Valentines. However, this prompt was lurking around in my head even before the technological gremlins vacationed. At first I was focused on the Melancholia but having watched Drive before heading home on Tuesday evening, I became incredible aware of how much effect music has on our interpretation of a scene. 

Of course this is no huge revelation to anyone. Would Jaws be scary with it's sinister two note theme circling our psyche? Or would Casablanca strike our hearts so deeply without the nostalgic notes struck when Elsa bids in her low, whispering voice "Play it, Sam." Indeed, I think it is safe to say that music in many ways communicates to us on a level that mere words cannot. Drive reminded me of the way music can move so much of the drama of play or a film, perhaps because so much of it relies on the cinematic framing of Ryan Gosling's face accompanied by eery, tension-building 80s tunes. Much of the 'peculiar stillness' of the movie,  is caused not by the lack of true script - much of the film goes without conversation, nor by the 'laconic', nameless protagonist; the music tells us where the film is headed, where our mind should move as our ears are reacquainted with eighties synth-pop. 

In 'Musicophilia', Oliver Sacks states that 'Music is part of being human'. He also alerts us to the fact that Darwin speculated:

"Music tones and rhythms were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph” and that speech arose, secondarily, from this primal music.

This could be true, or it could be mere 'speculation' as Sacks suggests. What is key is that music, for many, is a thread that binds them to emotion, ties them to humanity, reminds them of life or reflects the Beautiful. It inspires, moves, remedies, offers support or conjures a spectre of some dimly remembered history. It is no wonder then, that so much of art is inspired by music. 


Classical writers, for whom a poet was a 'bard',  saw their work integrally tied to music. This is partially to do with mythological gods such as Pan with his flute, particularly in madrigals and Georgic poems. Orpheus cannot be neglected, for who else appears so regularly in Miltonic verse, emphasising the mortal song and emphasising the problems of the incomplete. Phoebus (or Apollo) whose 'Aonian harp/lyre' was the sweetest, after whom English literature references the 'Doric lays' and who was also the 'prophetic god' is the symbol of ideas such as Vates, the poet-prophets and the figure that Socrates claims his destiny from. 


What is clear, though I wish I had more time to go into details: from Shakespeare whose famous line demands that 'if music be the food of love, play on!' or Stevie Wonder saying that 'music's a language we all understand', it is clear that music is one of those mutual loves of numerous great writers. It also cannot help but be connected to the art of writing because if you look at the geneology of literature it can always be traced in some way to the musical, the rhythmic.


In 'Il Penseroso' and 'L'Allegro', Milton accepts the connection between music and poetry - the titles of these paired poems are in themselves musical expressions - accentuating the idea that music both unifies a community (L'Allegro) but can equally 'dissolve' and individual 'into ecstasies' (Il Penseroso). These poems, whilst debating the benefit of Mirth or Melancholy, use music as a symbol of the relationship between external and internal worlds. 


When you're thinking about the future and your tenebrous, uncertain position as a writer, you may feel overwhelmed by the challenges ahead of you. In those times, it's time to figure out what inspires you, consider how you can connect with your characters or deepen a poem. Sometimes you have to turn over the struggle you're feeling and examine it, create what you can from what you're feeling - this is what Milton's doing, he's contemplating his future and examining the path he hopes to follow. Furthermore, he's relating to his dilemma through his relationship to music, using something that effects both sides  mutually, albeit differently, thus steeping his writing in something that appeals on a universal level as well as a personal one.