A Road Trip and Sense Memory

Two days road-tripping from NYC to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, have left me wondering how on earth I'm going to blog and tie everything back to something writerly. I didn't read or write anything, but I listened to A LOT of music, which brings me to tonight's topic: SENSE MEMORY.

In my acting days, Music served as a prop to get me into a certain emotional state of being. Music would help me "remember"; music was my madeleine, (the cookie that aroused Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past) and access the past to be used for the present.

Writing is no different. I am a fiction writer, and I have to put my heart and soul into my writing for there to be truth in it.

Our playlist and forward motion in the car opened an undulation of feeling: Glen's Danzig and Campbell, The White Stripes, Michelle Shocked, Prince, Lyle Lovett, the B52's, Everlast, Iggy Pop . . .

I thought about the other week when I was struggling to finish the first draft of WIP. I had been having such a hard time with the ending, and having my two protagonists realize their feelings for each other was like pulling teeth. On a beautiful sunny day in the city, I went for a walk with my I-POD and played LOVE SONG by The Cure, over and over again. I got into this state of first love. The song reminded me of my boyfriend in Italy when I was 19, and how intense it was. I felt like I was 19 again - the best part of 19. Over the next few days I finished my first draft. Which, as you know, will only be the first of many.

Here in South Carolina, I had fantasized about listening to LOVE SONG and dancing on the beach by myself, but the feeling of young, impassioned love has been replaced with the grounded joy I feel sharing a life with my husband and children: but I know that I have access to my adolescence with the click of a button.