Writing & Thinking
About Music

When I write about music, I write about how music connects to memories, and about how music makes me feel. I don't talk about what works and what doesn't within a piece of music, because I'm not a critic. I'm a fan.
Music critics write to depict enthusiasm for a piece of music...either a passionate like or dislike.
It's an odd thing, using words to describe sound--something that is essentially wordless--but my focus is on using words to describe what music does within us. I'm concerned with describing how music moves the heart, stirs the mind, and anchors our memories, allowing long-buried feelings to surface within the echos of an old song.
I have sound synesthesia, which isn't that uncommon. I have read that between 5-15% of people have it. I believe it has helped me to enjoy music, because the visual input I receive from music, as well as from other sounds (a garbage can lid smashing on the ground, hydraulic brakes, a telephone ringing, the sound of a crowd, or of waves at the beach), adds a dimension that makes the experience a little deeper.
I think that my synesthesia created an early and deep love of music, and much of my childhood activities were structured around music, either listening to it, or making it. I got my first record player at age five. Started teaching myself to read music at seven, on a plastic, one-octave organ, then started school music lessons in fourth grade. I played clarinet, eventually developing enough competence to compete in solo and ensemble competitions with the Florida Bandmasters Association. Then I moved to alto sax and flugabone (yes! It's a real instrument, but seems to have fallen out of favor) in jazz and marching band, and electric bass in jazz band and beyond. I believe music has saved my life several times over, and certainly helped me to make it through my teen years.
I have written a series of poems about what I perceive when I listen to music. I wrote a time travel fantasy essay about the time I met Jaco Pastorius when I was a teenager. I also wrote an essay about dying written with a symbolic soundtrack of music I have loved. All are published and can be found on my Publications page.
My latest essay is an essay about discovering that my dad was not my biological father, but it's told through the prog-rock lens of the band Yes.
Here are a few resources if you are interested in writing about music yourself.
How-Tos:
https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/ai_24_guide_to_print.pdf
How to Write About Music: Excerpts from 33 1/3 by Marc Woodworth and Ally-Jane Grossan
Music/Lit Web Resources:
Print Journals:
Radio Silence (back issues only)
Ten Science Fiction & Fantasy Stories About Music
Novels
Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta
Doxology by Nell Zink
The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan
Wonderland Stacey D’Erasmo
Nocturnes Kazuo Ishiguro
History
Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner
Music and the Mind
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music by Steve Lopez
Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation by Panos A. Panay and Michael Hendrix
Music Biographies/Memoirs That I Like
Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes
Is This the Real Life: The Untold Story of Queen by Mark Blake
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Ghost Rider by Neil Peart
The Reign of Love by Jan Swafford
Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen by Brad Tolinski
White Bicycles by Joe Boyd (a producer's memoir!)
Runnin' with the Devil by Noel Monk with Joe Layden
Led Zeppelin: The Biography by Bob Spitz
Music Is My Mistress by Duke Ellington
Face It by Debbie Harry
Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz
No One Here Gets Out Alive by Danny Sugarman
Black Postcards by Dean Wareham