The Kingfisher by William Henry Davies
It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues;
And, as her mother’s name was Tears,
So runs it in my blood to choose
For haunts the lonely pools, and keep
In company with trees that weep.)
I can no longer memorise cello concertos at first playing, or poetry at first reading, but I always look and listen for the musicality in phrases as I write.
The Kingfisher by W.H. Davies was a poem I learned as a child that stuck with me, as the sort of words that sounded like music in my head, and drew pictures in my mind.
When I began writing again, after I retired from full-time work, I often wrote short stories based on a popular song, using the lines of the song like a refrain in the story.
By the time I got to Orkney that had developed into writing an entire very short story whilst listening to, say, a movement of an unaccompanied Bach cello suite, or a longer piece whilst listening to a sonata. My WordPress story Back to Bach, is of the first type. My Soundcloud story for the pandemic Lost, which I wrote whilst listening to a Portuguese cellist friend Mafalda’s recording of a Beethoven sonata for cello and piano is in the second category. I asked Mafalda and her Chinese pianist and Chinese recording studio friend to co-operate in this venture to raise funds for the WHO covid vaccination research programme.
Mafalda asked me, in turn, to write stories which she could read to her audience in educational cello, story and art concerts in the USA. It introduced me to several new very modern works, and I enjoyed working up short stories to be read when she played these.
I do go back and edit these stories for grammar or syntax errors or awkward phrases, after the music has finished, but almost all are written entirely whilst the music plays.
You might find it interesting to take a favourite piece of music, a short popular song track, an entire symphony, or anything in between, and write whilst listening to it.
Transcription of Gill’s story Lost: https://thetennants.wordpress.com/back-to-bach/
Credits
The Kingfisher by William Henry Davies (via Poem Hunter website)
Common kingfisher photo Joefrei, Wikipedia published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
