Kindergarten. My mom pulled out my kindergarten class songbook and I grabbed the reading pointer. Both items were made when I was in class; the songbook contained handwritten lyrics, and the pointer had a wooden star at the end, made golden by an excess of sparkles and Elmer’s glue. That day, we sang “You Are My Sunshine”. I took the lead, easily drawing the pointer across the familiar first stanza. Soon though it began to wobble, and my shooting star flickered and burnt out. Without pause, my mom leaned over and took my hand, singing louder and more brilliantly until we reached the end.
First grade. Middle C. As a child, that was my favorite note on the piano. Middle C connected the instrument’s deepest tones to its lightest airs. The letter “C” is the third letter of the alphabet—a solid prime number which reminded me of musketeers and the original Star Wars trilogy. When I practiced at home, I would use my right pointer finger to push the Middle C key for a full second. Then I’d pick it up, listen to the silence, and press again. When I got good at that, I went out of my comfort zone and used my thumb, middle, ring and even pinky finger to play the note as well. Each time I pushed down, I recited to myself, “Middle C, Middle C”.
Fourth grade. The first pop song I learned the lyrics to was Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi”. There was a blond girl named Sam in my after school program and it was her favorite song. I memorized all of the lyrics from listening to her singing, and home internet research. But Sam was a year older than me, and in elementary school that was a deal-breaker.
Fifth grade. One time, my piano teacher kicked me out of my lesson because she could tell that I hadn’t practiced. Another time, she took a picture of my feet wrapped around the legs of the piano stool and showed it to me. Practicing piano had become a chore and my mom and I fought about it almost daily. The first standoff I ever had with her was about practicing. She wanted me to play a piece perfectly three times before I could eat dinner. I don’t remember wanting to eat that night, only to stop playing. So I quit.
Summer before freshman year. I was practicing Rose Etude no. 10 for clarinet in my dad’s living room. From upstairs, my step-mom yelled at my dad to make me stop playing. And he listened.
Freshman year. Jeffrey and I were marching backwards during our halftime performance of “Phantom of the Opera”. During a difficult section, he forgot the notes and starting playing an audition piece. Instead of eighth notes of darkness that would pound horror and awe into the listener’s skull, a whimsical arpeggio flew out of Jeffrey’s clarinet. The clash of tempos and keys was only audible to me though, and I chipped my reed from laughing.
Senior year. Oliver and I took the stage for “Memories of You”. He sat down behind the piano, and I stood with my clarinet in front and to the left of him. The piece was a swing ballad—the type of song you imagine your grandparents slow-dancing to during a Doris Day movie. When it ended, I gave my bow, looked at the girl in the middle-left section of the audience, smiled, and returned to my seat. After the concert, she and I walked through Central Park. I was still in my tuxedo and she didn’t want to get it dirty from sitting down, so we strolled from West 72nd St. to the East Side. When we reached the Alice in Wonderland sculpture, I got a kiss.
Dear Reader,
In my final project, I want to write about and highlight several important events in my life that are tied together by the theme of music. This idea was inspired by the first section of King’s On Writing and Braner’s “Soundtrack”. Like “Soundtrack”, my piece focuses on music and how conscious we can be of it during what we later come to define as “life moments”. However, the vignettes in my essay contain more description, drawing on King, and my relationship with music is different from Braner’s; whereas Braner mostly recalls listening to and singing songs, my experiences also include practicing and performing music. I hope that these types of vignettes will appeal to an additional audience and make the reader think of his or her own experiences performing any sort of art. I chose to write about this topic because my career as a musical artist has more or less come to an end in the past few months. Although not everything in the essay revolves around performance, I wanted to reflect on the musical moments that have stood out to me, decipher why they were so important, and find a way to hold onto them as I invest myself in new projects.
One of my main concerns is how I’m going to frame the piece. At the beginning of each vignette, I currently have what grade I was in when it occurred. This is similar to what Braner did with the years, but I prefer grade level because the reader doesn’t need to constantly do math to figure out how old I was. Furthermore, each grade level contains different connotations, and I think that makes it easier for the reader to compare his or her experiences to my own. Still, I’m not in love with framing things this way and I’ll play around with it. My other concern is that the piece is too short. If I think long enough, I could probably find other meaningful experiences with music, but these were the ones that came to me immediately so I feel like they’re of a different caliber.
The tool that I was most conscious of applying in this piece was vivid descriptions. I tried to include language that would provide a better sense to the reader of my settings, actions and feelings. At lot of this was geared towards “show don’t tell”, and I tried to use more metaphors in this piece than I had previously. I feel like I have improved on this tool since the beginning of the semester, but I still have a long ways to go. Sometimes it’s hard to decide where to use descriptive language and how much to apply. Other times I can’t figure out how to capture exactly what I want to say without straight out saying it.
“Both items were made when I was in class; the songbook contained handwritten lyrics, and the pointer had a wooden star at the end, made golden by an excess of sparkles and Elmer’s glue.” I chose this sentence because I like the structure (I really hope it has proper punctuation) and the descriptiveness. I felt like it was enough detail to paint a picture, but not so much that it distracted from the rest of the paragraph.
My questions are: 1. Is the piece too short for your liking?; 2. If yes, what would you like to hear more of?; and 3. Is the ending too corny for you?
Sincerely,
Michael
Hi Michael, There is definitely some vivid writing here. I like the Freshman year scene, for instance. The lightness of the wrong tune contrasted with the dark, heavy tune. I’d like to consider ways to make this piece even more vivid, to bring out that vividness you’re striving for.
I think you could sit with that scene I mention above–and indeed pretty much every scene here–a bit more. There seems to be undeveloped potential here. Now, each scene might not stand up to further development; you don’t want to milk things too much. But I wonder if more characters could come across, maybe through dialogue, for instance. I’m thinking (because I read it recently), Of Matt G’s piece as a model for a kind of development that might work well for you here. Matt’s working with separate vignette, like you, but there are fewer and they’re more developed, and they happen to be developed around character, which I’m thinking might be useful for you. You have some interesting characters here: your mother, piano teacher, father, friend, the mysterious object of affection in the last bit. To me, they bring out an important quality of music: the interpersonal one. Music is a directly communicative art–it’s about emotion and story-telling, just like speaking, and it’s about talking to the listener, in a way. I feel like the characters, and your interactions with them through music, could be brought out more to good effect.
My primary suggestion to you, however, is to think of theme(s). Remember what King says about theme. I have a hard time identifying the central themes. There are relationships, but they’re all different, and the feelings (conflict, connection, love, resistance) are all so different. It’s hard to find a solid through-line here. Did you have one in mind? If so, can you bring it out more? And if not, identify the one(s) you want to take charge and bring them out in the revision. It could be that all your scenes might not find a place in the revised, more focused version of this essay, and that’s alright. Or it could be that you’ll add a new one (or two). REgardless, it feels important to have a stronger, tighter center, which I believe some clearly articulated themes would provide. Once you’ve determined those themes, think which images/symbols will best communicate them. It might be a type of music, or position for playing, some repeated image that will help you get your point across.
I wonder if you could evoke more senses here. I’d like to hear the music even more, for instance. This would go a long way toward making the piece even more vivid. Let us hear the clink, clink of the middle C key played by a 6-year old. Maybe you don’t hear it as a clink. What’s the sound?
The first section reads a little clunkily to me. Maybe you hadn’t yet found your flow when you were writing it. Revisit it? I’d start by getting rid of the passive voice in “both items were made.” For me, passive doesn’t work there.
Thanks for your work on this draft! I quite enjoyed reading it an dI look forward to the revision.
Hey Michael,
As someone who played the trumpet, I definitely appreciate your piece. I associate some of my best times with the music I played and when I played it. I like the diversity of experiences that you use, and I like the imagery.
For me, each paragraph has its own appeal, its own treasure. I personally am not too fond of the way the short sentence in the beginning each paragraph indicating the stage of your life, though. I understand the concept behind it, to create a timeline, but I think I would rather the specific time in your life be hidden, instead of outright. For example, with the last paragraph I think you could give the reader clues like “I was graduating high school…” or something like that (sorry that’s not a good example, at all). Or we don’t even have to know the exact grade, we only have to get a general sense that you are growing (which you do well anyway in your paragraphs by highlighting your thought at that age), are going through these experiences, and are not commenting about one particular point in your life.
I like the language that you use to describe the musical aspect of your experiences. For example, when you say “Middle C connected the instrument’s deepest tones to its lightest airs”, I can totally imagine the appeal the C-note had for you as a bridge to the high’s and low’s of sound. And also when you say “Instead of eighth notes of darkness that would pound horror and awe into the listener’s skull”—although I strongly suggest that you change the word “skull”, I just think it has too much of a brutal, violent connotation and I don’t think it fits what you’re trying to get at. My favorite clause is “a whimsical arpeggio flew out of Jeffrey’s clarinet.” This sentence immediately hit me as soon as I read it. When I read that sentence I totally pictured the sound, which is really hard to do, and I think it’s an epic win because it helps the reader envision the sound that you want to show.
With all this said, I think you should experiment with the lyrical portion of this piece I bit more. I notice that you have some stunning instances of alliteration, and I think you should add some more, along with assonance, and rhyme to make it more “musical” (but not in a corny way, though). Also I think that the pacing of the piece is a bit slow. In addition to the using the passive voice in the first paragraph (“Both items were made when I was in class”, instead of “I made both” and then going on to list), there is a little bit too much fragmentation at times. For example when you talk about the Middle-C, you start off, “Middle C. As a child that was my favorite note on the piano.” I don’t think you need that you could just say “as a child my favorite note was the middle C”.
Aside from that I think the piece is timed perfectly and ends at just the right time, not too soon and not too late, and definitely not corny. At the end I would write “…Alice and Wonderland Sculpture, and I got a kiss”, because I think it has better pacing. Nice piece, though, Michael!
Michael,
I could definitely feel the theme of music playing a big role in many various ways through the piece. I especially liked that you linked your development of musical skills and appreciation with exact time spans in your life, you should keep this as is in my opinion. I was also once a musician and quit, it’s definitely a struggle. I feel like you could maybe incorporate more of that struggle into the piece, maybe use an analogy or metaphor here? There’s also a nice transition between piano and clarinet that’s very subtle, definitely like that. My favorite part of the piece is Kindergarten. It’s definitely made clear the tension between you and your mom and music from the onset and it sets the tempo for the rest of the piece. I can’t wait to see the finished piece.
When I was a kid, my mom and I often did separate things when we were at home. She would lie on the couch and read boring scientific journals about test tubes, or write detailed reports about her experiments with a spinning machine thingy. I would assemble vast empires of Lego and K’NEX, and wage war between the competing brands on a battleground of off-white carpet, while watching Arthur and Rugrats. Both busy with important work (me especially), my mom and I didn’t always do spend time together. But that changed when I brought home my kindergarten class songbook.
Each page of the book contained the lyrics and drawings to a different children’s song, such as “Eensy, Weensy Spider” and “Old McDonald”. The drawings were colored in the lines perfectly, and the lyrics were handwritten and often misspelled. There was also a reading pointer to go along with the book. It had a wooden star as its tip, made golden by an excess of sparkles and Elmer’s glue. My favorite song in the book was “You Are My Sunshine”, and singing it with my mom is one of my earliest memories.
That day, I climbed onto the sofa one leg at a time and rested an arm on her lap as she held the book between us. At first I took the lead, easily drawing the pointer across the first chorus.
You are my sunshine / My only sunshine / You make me happy / When skies are grey…
I showed-off what I had learned in class by singing loudly and enunciating clearly. Soon though, the pointer began to wobble. Struggling with the words “dreamed” and “mistaken” in the next stanza, my shooting star flickered, and then burnt out.
I stopped and looked up at my mom. But instead of giving me the attention I desired and waiting, she kept her eyes on the page and slowly continued to sing. Then, leaning over, she took my hand and brought the star back up. I watched as she guided it across the page, and ignoring the written lyrics, I allowed her to draw the melody out of me.
You’ll never know dear / How much I love you / Please don’t take / My sunshine / Away…
After the song ended, I was glad that my mom hadn’t stopped. I had gotten to hear her voice in a new way. It was gentler than the one that told me to go to bed, and calmer than the one that argued with my dad.
Underneath the miss conforms the running carriage. The parent steams within the proverb! Our mouse hashes the cleaned disco into the newcomer. When will a sacrifice stear clear? The kernel hosting companies the companion.
Hi Michael!
Sorry for being so late – I was absent when the group assignments were handed down. I especially might be a little redundant since we workshopped you yesterday.
I agree with Professor Smith that the wording could be a little more musical. I know that’s kind of cliched considering it’s about music and all that. But I really liked what you said about your revisions in class yesterday. I think tightening the narrative to make it more about how music has brought you closer to people is a great way to revise this piece. You could even bring in more lyrics that relate to the different sections.
In terms of structure, if you’re going to stick with the short sentence openers to each paragraph, you should make them more symmetrical. Meaning that the third to last (summer before freshman year) doesn’t fit with the others, that are even shorter and say a certain grade. That one doesn’t really go with that theme and breaks it up.
You use some qualifiers from time to time like “One time” or “I don’t remember” that I think are a little unnecessary. It’s a form of passive voice (that happens other times in the piece too, like Professor Smith pointed out). I think if you eliminated those little instances it would make your voice more confident.
Dear Michael,
Very lovely description of how you grow up, you seems awesome at those tiniest details, yet essential on your paper, and how you puzzle your little stories into one theme, so it can all fit under one title, wonderful
Hi!
Would you mind sharing which blog platform you’re using? I’m going to start my own blog in the near
future but I’m having a tough time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your layout seems different then most blogs and I’m looking
for something unique.
P.S. Apologies for getting off-topic but I had
to ask!
To be continued on my site Extra Resources