Tiffany Crystal's Forecast for the day:

#BatFiles : Tell me where the trigger is.
What is something that never fails to make your hands itch for pen and paper? Is it people watching? Driving around town? Taking pictures? What just really grabs your muse and says “WRITE ME”?#blogging #amwriting #WriteFightGifClub pic.twitter.com/8xEjxMnlDu

— Tiffany Crystal (@mishilen) March 19, 2018

For as long as I can remember, music has grabbed me by the imagination and dragged me along for whatever ride the tune decided to take us on. I blame Michael Jackson’s music videos, honestly (looking at you, Thriller, Remember the Time, Moonwalker, etc. ), but the fault wasn’t his alone.

The Kingston Trio must also take some of the blame. Songs like Dorie and They Call The Wind Mariah still take me from this world, and into another where people dance with flashing eyes and wicked smiles around burning campfires. Gue Gue sends me drifting through the bayou, falling asleep to the sounds of frogs and singing crocodiles. I used to listen to Shady Grove/Lonesome Traveler, and think up stories of why the man left Shady Grove and became the Lonesome Traveler.

 

One song of theirs in particular, has always stayed with me, but not because of the music or even the voices, which is usually the case. No, it stayed with me, because it was the first song I could remember listening to that told an actual story. All of the other songs were about love, or losing a love. Little snapshots of time, captured in a tune. South Coast is different. Give it a listen sometime, and you’ll see what I mean (if I try to write about it here, I’ll end up writing a short story to go with it, and…let’s just not do that right now, okay?).

This fascination with music and writing still continues. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gotten more lost in a story I’ve created from the movie’s soundtrack than the movie itself. Even now, I find myself writing to music more often than not, though I have to be careful with what I listen to. If the lyrics are in English, then I get too distracted with the words to pay attention to what I’m writing.

I’ve tried listening to classical/orchestra, but all that did was either make me sleepy or just tune everything out. A couple writing friends tried suggesting electronica, but yeah. That turned into a big pile of nope for me, too. Some of the music wasn’t bad, mind you, it just didn’t do anything for me, inspiration wise.

So far, the best music I’ve found for me to write to is basically anything non-English. Luckily, I listen to a lot of music from overseas – mostly older J-rock and K-pop, so I still have plenty of music for my playlist. Also, the J-rock singer I prefer tends to be a bit…dramatic…with his music videos. Often, they tell a story (or at least part of one), and that makes me itch to tell one, too. The only problem I’m having with this strategy is that I actually studied Japanese for a good couple of years, so I’ll be listening to one of the songs and I’ll start picking apart the lyrics I can understand. I don’t understand Korean, so the K-pop songs are still safe, but it’s hard to write zombie fiction to songs like “Ring Ding Dong” and “Bubble Pop,” you know? Especially with the death of ShinEE member Jonghyun back in December.

So, for all you TL;DR people: Music gives my stories life, and RIP Jonghyun.