I\u00a0read somewhere that Stephen King puts on a head set and listens to heavy metal as he writes.<\/p>\n
With all due respect, that’s nothing.\u00a0 I used to write stories in the midst of heavy metal\u00a0concerts performed in in\u00a0my very own living room.\u00a0 (My sons, the\u00a0rock stars…)\u00a0\u00a0 The windows of the house rattled, you could feel the reverberation in your ribcage.\u00a0\u00a0Astounding!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Deafening, actually — but it kept them off the streets.\u00a0 What\u00a0wonderfully tolerant neighbors we had…\u00a0 And yes, I managed to write short stories, articles, essays and even poetry that close to the mosh pit.<\/p>\n
Then there was hospital music, at the other end of the spectrum.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Those years I worked nights in ICU in the basement of St. Luke’s in Denver.\u00a0 (That hospital has since been torn down and\u00a0replaced with trendy urban lofts —\u00a0but I’m sure a few ghosts still lurk about.)\u00a0 Once in a while I’d be blessed with a quiet night.\u00a0 Nobody coding, nobody\u00a0bleeding out, nobody needing a jumpstart.\u00a0 \u00a0A quiet night when I had only one patient and\u00a0s\/he was\u00a0deep in a drug induced dream with a heartbeat as dependable as Steve Chalker’s bass drum.\u00a0\u00a0On nights like that I’d\u00a0sit at a table\u00a0outside the glass cubicle,\u00a0watching the monitor and catching up on my charting.\u00a0 And writing my own stories, too.\u00a0 One of these days I’ll publish those memoirs, written to the electronic beeps and\u00a0drones of monitors and IV infusion pumps, the soft wheezing of ventilators and intra-aortic balloon pumps; oddly muscial and rhythmic.<\/p>\n
Yes, music has always been a big part of my life.\u00a0\u00a0My grandfather we called Bebop and he played piano by ear.\u00a0 Our family sang in the car.\u00a0 My parents were whistlers and to this day whistling the Tennessee Waltz <\/em>conjures my father.<\/p>\n I played clarinet and cello in school.\u00a0 I have married\u00a0musicians, given birth to musicians.\u00a0 I love to sing when I’m alone.\u00a0\u00a0I have a range of about five notes that I can nail!\u00a0 Certain songs, no matter how many times I hear them,\u00a0\u00a0sting my eyes.\u00a0 I prefer playing an actual\u00a0CD toa download.\u00a0 Don’t really like \u00a0my iPod.<\/p>\n Music is the universal language, the poetry we all understand.\u00a0 Live music is the best.<\/p>\n At sea the wind\u00a0in the\u00a0rigging sounds like a choir singing.\u00a0\u00a0 Aboard the HM Bark Endeavour replica, our foremast mates sang Sloop John B.\u00a0 Helen entertained us with a good old fashioned fiddle.\u00a0 Another time, aboard Topaz,<\/em> when Bob and I were becalmed\u00a0off Molokai during\u00a0Humpback migration, the\u00a0sound of whalesong\u00a0kept us awake all night.<\/p>\n Whatever the genre or delivery, music inspires me, transports me, puts me in touch with other lives and times.\u00a0 John Mock’s album<\/a> is particularly evocative of the era I’m writing about.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.fyddeye.com\/sea-music\/83-sea-songs-reviews\/722-review-john-mock-keepers-companion<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u00a0read somewhere that Stephen King puts on a head set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[16,386,7],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddsnends","tag-john-mock","tag-music","tag-writing-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1152,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}