Writing as Jazz, Jazz as Writing: Part 3
Words of writing wisdom gleaned from some jazz greats.
Words of writing wisdom gleaned from some jazz greats.
Because I have a musical background, I often think about writing through a variety of musical lenses.
Writing as classical music with its sonata form and three act structure.
Writing as rock music with its raw power of emotion.
Writing as country music with its love of character-driven stories.
Writing as hip hop with its embrace of the poetry of storytelling.
But if I had to choose one musical genre which best fits what we do as writers, it would be jazz.
Why? Because every time we sit down to write, we have to do two fundamental things:
- Write in the moment
- Improvise
Every scene exists in our present tense. We have to be right there with our characters to experience the story unfolding in ‘The Now’.
Every time a jazz musician performs live, they exist in the moment. They find the spark of creativity by playing off each other and giving themselves over to every second of the songs they perform.
Likewise whenever we sit down to write, no matter how much of the story we’ve figured out, we have to give room for spontaneity and to improvise when our characters veer over here or there.
So, too, jazz musicians whose lifeblood is improvisation, making it up as they go along, pushing the envelope, and testing each song in nightly performance.
That inspired me to do a series this week featuring quotes from some of the all-time great jazz players.
Today: Charlie Parker.
If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.
At first pass, we can look at this observation by Parker — “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn” — as pointing out a truism about the craft of writing or any creative endeavor: You’ve got to live life, have lots of experiences in order to feed your imagination, your inspiration, your soul.
And that’s true. But there’s another way we can interpret Parker’s observation. “If you don’t live IT…”
What else could “IT” be?
How about the song itself? Or for writers, the story. If you want to create a living, breathing world with authentic, multidimensional characters, you can’t just write ABOUT it. No, you have have to LIVE it. You need to…
Go into the story and find the animals.
If you LIVE it, live the STORY, that’s when it will “come out of your horn”… your paper and pen… your typewriter… your keyboard…
And be worthy of creative expression.
For inspiration, here is an amazing piece of video. From a 1952 TV appearance, Charlie Parker on sax and Dizzy Gillespie on horn performing “Hot House” with the great Dick Hyman on piano, Sandy Block on bass, and Charlie Smith on drums. They all just kill it.
Tomorrow more writing wisdom from a jazz great.