Stella_Omega
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reading them now, anywaySophiaY said:
... not bad, and you can do a snapshot justice! - every time I try to write a single, isolated incident like that, I end up with... subtext. Words fail
- Thread starter SophiaY
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... not bad, and you can do a snapshot justice! - every time I try to write a single, isolated incident like that, I end up with... subtext. 
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
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SophiaY said:
Yes, but flamenco means something different to me. I first heard it played by gypsies in an Andalusian cave and it was raw, earthy and sexual. The location was so dangerous that visitors had to be escorted by armed guards even when attending by the gypsies' invitation.
The overall impression I had was almost like that when I first heard Little Richard and Chuck Berry - this was something new, something real: music could never be the same. I would never think of saying 'a flamenco song'. It doesn't sound right to me. Flamenco is not a song. Flamenco is an experience of music, dance and singing. A 'flamenco song' is a pale commercialised imitation of the real flamenco that bears as much relation to flamenco as piped music in a shopping mall does to a Rolling Stones concert.
Og
Stella_Omega
No Gentleman
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nay not so- each of the snapshots, for instance, have one little subcurrent, that makes them not merely stroke.SophiaY said:
... The troll that hates you so much for #03 is too funny, and too sad!
3113
Hello Summer!
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Small Rant Warning!
First, your petantic and obscure point would be more apt if you were talking about asome odd instrument like the basson, but a guitar? There are a lot of people out there that have taken elementry music lessons--and most especially in something like guitar where everyone and their brother has been in a garage band. At the very least, we've all see someone rift their way down a guitar neck--even if we didn't know exactly what they were doing.
So you can take a chance that a lot of readers will know what C-to-D means.
Next, you're thinking more about the readers than the story. You're so anxious to make them hear the music that you're willing to undercut something very important to the story. Allow me to explain: when you use that C to D description, you do something WONDERFUL. First, you tell us about the character who is speaking. We KNOW from that description that this character knows music. And you don't have to have that character elsewhere in the story say, "I knew a lot about music" or "I loved guitar music." It beautifully self evident! And it IS what they would think if they did, indeed, love guitar music. Second, you make the readers see and feel the movement of the fingers, the movement on the strings, the vibrations.
Tell us someone is playing the guitar and we might see it. Tell us the fingers are moving, and we DO see it. Maybe we even feel it under our own fingers. Putting it another way: Leave it general/vague, and you MAY have a wider appeal, but you also have one that is flatter. That doesn't have as much character. The first example is very general--it says NOTHING about the character who's being strummed. "Reaches deep with in me" WTF does that mean??? Blah. In the second we feel the touch on nipples. AND THAT is what gets our attention whether or not we know anything about guitar playing--because we know that touch on our nipples. We are with the character in that moment...not trying to figure out how Flemenco music reaches deep within us.
C-to-D description is better writing IMHO. Of course, I wouldn't leave out that the woman was playing a Flemenco...I would simply have no worries of putting in that C-to-D line. Readers likely to read a story about a Flemenco guitarist seducing a music lover...they'll get it, and love it. Better to give them a story they can really appreciate, then to water it down so that "everyone" can like it. That way lies...dullness.
I disagree. Permit me to go on a small rant:SophiaY said:
First, your petantic and obscure point would be more apt if you were talking about asome odd instrument like the basson, but a guitar? There are a lot of people out there that have taken elementry music lessons--and most especially in something like guitar where everyone and their brother has been in a garage band. At the very least, we've all see someone rift their way down a guitar neck--even if we didn't know exactly what they were doing.
So you can take a chance that a lot of readers will know what C-to-D means.
Next, you're thinking more about the readers than the story. You're so anxious to make them hear the music that you're willing to undercut something very important to the story. Allow me to explain: when you use that C to D description, you do something WONDERFUL. First, you tell us about the character who is speaking. We KNOW from that description that this character knows music. And you don't have to have that character elsewhere in the story say, "I knew a lot about music" or "I loved guitar music." It beautifully self evident! And it IS what they would think if they did, indeed, love guitar music. Second, you make the readers see and feel the movement of the fingers, the movement on the strings, the vibrations.
Tell us someone is playing the guitar and we might see it. Tell us the fingers are moving, and we DO see it. Maybe we even feel it under our own fingers. Putting it another way: Leave it general/vague, and you MAY have a wider appeal, but you also have one that is flatter. That doesn't have as much character. The first example is very general--it says NOTHING about the character who's being strummed. "Reaches deep with in me" WTF does that mean??? Blah. In the second we feel the touch on nipples. AND THAT is what gets our attention whether or not we know anything about guitar playing--because we know that touch on our nipples. We are with the character in that moment...not trying to figure out how Flemenco music reaches deep within us.
C-to-D description is better writing IMHO. Of course, I wouldn't leave out that the woman was playing a Flemenco...I would simply have no worries of putting in that C-to-D line. Readers likely to read a story about a Flemenco guitarist seducing a music lover...they'll get it, and love it. Better to give them a story they can really appreciate, then to water it down so that "everyone" can like it. That way lies...dullness.
Last edited:
M-Y-Erotica
Really Experienced
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thank you for this thread
Thanks so much for this thread. I've been carrying around an idea in my head for several months now where one of the main characters is a concert pianist, but the idea of expressing her abilities in words seemed so difficult that I keep putting it off.
I have really liked some of the thoughts here. One was to remember that a particular person is hearing the music and that will change the way it is described. People can have radically different impressions of the same music. I remember a class years ago where someone mentioned the beauty and power of Beethoven's 9th. A class member spoke up and told of how she most often heard it played by neo-Nazis in East Germany, and how that experience had forever changed the music for her.
I agree with 3113 as well in the rant that it is OK to be specific even on matters about which not all readers are knowledgable. I think one key is to find special details that are not overwhelmingly technical. I think most people know what chords are in general and that they have letter names. They may not know what it means to modulate from C major to A minor, but they will have some idea what is going on. You might also express some details that are more easily imagined, especially physical ones. Perhaps the movement up the fretboard for a guitarist. Don't say they moved from the low A# on the fifth string to G on the second while in standard tuning. Only a guitarist knows that is a long way, but you can talk about their hands leaping from place to place with some accuracy, I think. You can express the feel of the steel strings on their hands. The pressure on the thumb. Etc.
Or let's take a bassoon, since it was mentioned once. Lots of readers don't know what this instrument even is, but here we are trying to write about the opening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (which opens with bassoon if I remember and I probably don't). We can talk about how she placed her thin lips on the double reed of her instrument. She lightly moistens the tender wood with her tongue. She focuses her breath, controlling the flow outward into the instrument. A low E arises from the other end, resonating in the wood in her hands and floats across the hall. In the back of her mind she hears violin section 1 raise their instruments and at measure 22, join in with...
OK, I don't know Rite of Spring very well, so I'm making a lot of this up. But the point is that you can express very specific knowledge of music without pulling out Schenkerian music analysis and the Dorian mode. (For the record, I don't know what those actually are either; I just can throw out the lingo). By focusing on what we share (breath, moisture, the feel of the metal keys on the finger tip) you can go a long way. The reader still may never have seen a bassoon, but they can follow the writing. And if she sucks the reed in just the right way, they might get a little aroused as well.
But I am still scared to write my scene with a piano performance of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
Thanks so much for this thread. I've been carrying around an idea in my head for several months now where one of the main characters is a concert pianist, but the idea of expressing her abilities in words seemed so difficult that I keep putting it off.
I have really liked some of the thoughts here. One was to remember that a particular person is hearing the music and that will change the way it is described. People can have radically different impressions of the same music. I remember a class years ago where someone mentioned the beauty and power of Beethoven's 9th. A class member spoke up and told of how she most often heard it played by neo-Nazis in East Germany, and how that experience had forever changed the music for her.
I agree with 3113 as well in the rant that it is OK to be specific even on matters about which not all readers are knowledgable. I think one key is to find special details that are not overwhelmingly technical. I think most people know what chords are in general and that they have letter names. They may not know what it means to modulate from C major to A minor, but they will have some idea what is going on. You might also express some details that are more easily imagined, especially physical ones. Perhaps the movement up the fretboard for a guitarist. Don't say they moved from the low A# on the fifth string to G on the second while in standard tuning. Only a guitarist knows that is a long way, but you can talk about their hands leaping from place to place with some accuracy, I think. You can express the feel of the steel strings on their hands. The pressure on the thumb. Etc.
Or let's take a bassoon, since it was mentioned once. Lots of readers don't know what this instrument even is, but here we are trying to write about the opening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (which opens with bassoon if I remember and I probably don't). We can talk about how she placed her thin lips on the double reed of her instrument. She lightly moistens the tender wood with her tongue. She focuses her breath, controlling the flow outward into the instrument. A low E arises from the other end, resonating in the wood in her hands and floats across the hall. In the back of her mind she hears violin section 1 raise their instruments and at measure 22, join in with...
OK, I don't know Rite of Spring very well, so I'm making a lot of this up. But the point is that you can express very specific knowledge of music without pulling out Schenkerian music analysis and the Dorian mode. (For the record, I don't know what those actually are either; I just can throw out the lingo). By focusing on what we share (breath, moisture, the feel of the metal keys on the finger tip) you can go a long way. The reader still may never have seen a bassoon, but they can follow the writing. And if she sucks the reed in just the right way, they might get a little aroused as well.
But I am still scared to write my scene with a piano performance of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
elsol
I'm still sleeepy!
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- Jan 16, 2005
- Posts
- 3,964
I tried to stay deleted... but I guess not.
http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=186867
I would like to offer a different perspective from Dr_Mab and others. I personally believe the greatest joy of literature (for a writer and a reader) is when the reader is moved.
Not to 'describe the emotion', but to make the reader feel it.
I feel something when I hear certain songs. I want my story to make the reader feel the SAME thing. At worst, I want the reader to understand what I feel or to understand why sometimes I need to hear that song.
Think about erotica; realistically, what's the goal? A perfectly accurate kinesthetic description of two people fucking or to make the reader sweat. (Granted a perfectly accurate kinesthetic description may make some readers sweat, but again, was the description the goal?)
Why settle for just describing music? It's so much less than you're capable of doing in a story.
Sincerely,
ElSol
http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=186867
I would like to offer a different perspective from Dr_Mab and others. I personally believe the greatest joy of literature (for a writer and a reader) is when the reader is moved.
Not to 'describe the emotion', but to make the reader feel it.
I feel something when I hear certain songs. I want my story to make the reader feel the SAME thing. At worst, I want the reader to understand what I feel or to understand why sometimes I need to hear that song.
Think about erotica; realistically, what's the goal? A perfectly accurate kinesthetic description of two people fucking or to make the reader sweat. (Granted a perfectly accurate kinesthetic description may make some readers sweat, but again, was the description the goal?)
Why settle for just describing music? It's so much less than you're capable of doing in a story.
Sincerely,
ElSol
Last edited:
Nirvanadragones
Literotica Guru
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- Sep 9, 2005
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When we offer the reader something they are not familiar with, we offer them the possibility of their consciousness being cultivated and we cannot help but co-create meaning. I see it as a relationship with my reader. I offer images as part of my creative process – and they have the choice whether or not they choose to accept, explore and / or add their own subjective meaning or not. Therefore when I create, I often ask myself - What am I holding back? What don’t I want to write or paint or explore? What am I refusing to risk? And why?
We can use the argument that it’s not only about writing images that might be misunderstood or not understood by the reader. With any form of art there is that possibility, which brings us back to the beauty of art – can it possibly be misinterpreted? If the observer sees something different from what the artist intended – is that not what art is all about?
Philosopher Martin Buber in his book I and Thou, describes art as the result of a relationship between the artist and what he calls the divine mystery. He refers to a shape of a particular potentiality that wants to be manifest in a creative work – a storm an image, a musical phrase. Buber says that we are changed by the experience (both as writer and reader) of touching and engaging with this force that is larger than us, even as we change it in the process of creating an actual material and tangible work.
When we want to be faithful to our subjective experience, we have to include our knowledge, skills and attitude in what we write and offer that to the world, without holding back parts of ourselves. In this way, something is created that offers receptive beholders their own experience of that form, their own encounter with a particular face of the great mystery. As an artist, holding back will result in being broken or in breaking the gift we have to offer.
With non fiction (yes, I think it absolutely depends on the purpose of the work) there is a bigger importance for me on the learner/ reader having to understand every word and every image. When something is defined, it limits the aspect being defined. Therefore, when I write non-fiction, I offer the reader more than one definition and invite the learner to explore what that means to them… request them to do research into the topic. With fiction – does it matter that the reader cannot relate to every image the writer offers? When you are done reading a story, what stays with you? Is it every powerful image the writer used, or is it the ones that particularly touched you for whichever reason?
Many times I have read a passage in a book and after observing the passion the writer offered, am enticed into researching the topic to get an idea of what the attraction for them is. The responsibility lies with the writer to put it out there truthfully. It’s up to the reader to make it theirs – the parts they choose to make theirs, and to decide what to do with the rest. I believe when reading an image or a medium that is not your forte means you are less likely to fall into grandiose expectations, cliché’s… unfruitful comparisons.
That’s what we do when we create: we take the world as it is offered to our imagination and we make something more of it, something particular that simply would not be without the addition of our subjective experiences and knowledge. One of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to become aware of your conditioned way of seeing, to open to new perceptions is to spend time with people who see things differently than we do. most of us spend time with people who share our worldview. People who think and see in similar ways. It gives us comfort to have the authority of our experience reinforced by another’s experience. Being with those who have had different experiences and so see differently not only opens us to new perceptions but also helps us become aware of our habitual blinkers.
Sometimes we have to bring to our consciousness the hidden assumptions we have about our world and our place in the world. Robert Bly’s poem “Things to Think” urges us to do both. With a light and yet penetrating touch, his words inspire me to learn to see, to think in new ways about the world
THINGS TO THINK
Think in ways you've never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.
When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
- Robert Bly
We can use the argument that it’s not only about writing images that might be misunderstood or not understood by the reader. With any form of art there is that possibility, which brings us back to the beauty of art – can it possibly be misinterpreted? If the observer sees something different from what the artist intended – is that not what art is all about?
Philosopher Martin Buber in his book I and Thou, describes art as the result of a relationship between the artist and what he calls the divine mystery. He refers to a shape of a particular potentiality that wants to be manifest in a creative work – a storm an image, a musical phrase. Buber says that we are changed by the experience (both as writer and reader) of touching and engaging with this force that is larger than us, even as we change it in the process of creating an actual material and tangible work.
When we want to be faithful to our subjective experience, we have to include our knowledge, skills and attitude in what we write and offer that to the world, without holding back parts of ourselves. In this way, something is created that offers receptive beholders their own experience of that form, their own encounter with a particular face of the great mystery. As an artist, holding back will result in being broken or in breaking the gift we have to offer.
With non fiction (yes, I think it absolutely depends on the purpose of the work) there is a bigger importance for me on the learner/ reader having to understand every word and every image. When something is defined, it limits the aspect being defined. Therefore, when I write non-fiction, I offer the reader more than one definition and invite the learner to explore what that means to them… request them to do research into the topic. With fiction – does it matter that the reader cannot relate to every image the writer offers? When you are done reading a story, what stays with you? Is it every powerful image the writer used, or is it the ones that particularly touched you for whichever reason?
Many times I have read a passage in a book and after observing the passion the writer offered, am enticed into researching the topic to get an idea of what the attraction for them is. The responsibility lies with the writer to put it out there truthfully. It’s up to the reader to make it theirs – the parts they choose to make theirs, and to decide what to do with the rest. I believe when reading an image or a medium that is not your forte means you are less likely to fall into grandiose expectations, cliché’s… unfruitful comparisons.
That’s what we do when we create: we take the world as it is offered to our imagination and we make something more of it, something particular that simply would not be without the addition of our subjective experiences and knowledge. One of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to become aware of your conditioned way of seeing, to open to new perceptions is to spend time with people who see things differently than we do. most of us spend time with people who share our worldview. People who think and see in similar ways. It gives us comfort to have the authority of our experience reinforced by another’s experience. Being with those who have had different experiences and so see differently not only opens us to new perceptions but also helps us become aware of our habitual blinkers.
Sometimes we have to bring to our consciousness the hidden assumptions we have about our world and our place in the world. Robert Bly’s poem “Things to Think” urges us to do both. With a light and yet penetrating touch, his words inspire me to learn to see, to think in new ways about the world
THINGS TO THINK
Think in ways you've never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.
When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
- Robert Bly
Samandiriel
Fallen Angel
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Bump for fun.
Samandiriel
Fallen Angel
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How hard and how far can you bump me???Belegon said:
Nirvanadragones
Literotica Guru
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Samandiriel said:
Let's find out anyway... Sophia had a good thread going and it seems like i killed it. Over-enthusiastic little me...
gauchecritic
When there are grey skies
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- Jul 25, 2002
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- 7,076
M-Y-Erotica said:
[applause] Bravo, bravo. Encore[/applause] That is seriously good stuff. I didn't get what the music was but I completely got with the musician.
On flamenco. My most cherished memory of a flamenco performance wasn't the guitar but when the whole ensemble stopped playing and stood in a line at the front of 'stage' and clapped and stamped out the rhythm. I wanted to stand and join in.
I can only think of one instance when I attempted to use music to underline a scene.
As the familiar opening melodies of 'Born Slippy' filled the interior of the car, Abigail slumped down in defiance of her posture-nazi parents, slowly bobbing on the water of the swelling refrain, anticipating the thud, thud, thud of the kick bass.
In this v. short piece you may notice (unless you know the piece or have seen 'Trainspotting') in order to get over what I was attempting to portray I resorted to metaphor and specific language to get the feel of the music.
Bobbing on the water of a swelling refrain. The fact that the melody filled the interior of the car. Using the american term 'kick-bass' rather than bass drum.
As with many descriptive things, we have to find a common ground with which the reader can identify so that they can more closely share what we, as authors, can see.
SophiaY
Leggy Lippie
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- May 5, 2005
- Posts
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Hyper-text future?
Passing along, and paraphrasing (and editing out some very personal asides -- laughing) a comment by my significant:
In a decade or less, writers are going to have to be multi-media artists -- the future of literature is filmic. XML and instant everywhere broadband and linked Ereaders will make linear text obsolete.
(yeah, she can sound like a geek -- but she's my valkryrie geek)
Playing around with a crude example of what she sees:
"Bailas como sos" She whispered in my ear as we took each into our arms. "You dance who you are..."
(Play the CD sample): http://tangofive.calabashmusic.com/
http://www.esto.es/tango/chicas/Chibn1.jpg
Passing along, and paraphrasing (and editing out some very personal asides -- laughing) a comment by my significant:
In a decade or less, writers are going to have to be multi-media artists -- the future of literature is filmic. XML and instant everywhere broadband and linked Ereaders will make linear text obsolete.
(yeah, she can sound like a geek -- but she's my valkryrie geek)
Playing around with a crude example of what she sees:
"Bailas como sos" She whispered in my ear as we took each into our arms. "You dance who you are..."
(Play the CD sample): http://tangofive.calabashmusic.com/
http://www.esto.es/tango/chicas/Chibn1.jpg
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