At the risk of flogging a dead horse I haven’t ridden, I’ll relay some recent news. Beyond how bad or boring (or potentially great) Fifty Shades of Grey is, inside one will find myriad references to classical composers. Or so I’ve heard. Also, I’ve read that EMI Classics, in an obviously gluttonous but altogether wise move, is releasing a reading soundtrack. Something to enjoy sonically while you relish E L James’s Twilight fan-fiction adapted book. This all got me thinking, what music do we listen to while we read? What do we hear when reading? Does it make any difference?
When I asked my sister what she listens to while reading she responded, “I listen to the Wicked soundtrack while I’m reading Wicked. And you should listen to classical music while you’re doing the Sunday crossword puzzle because you need to listen to smarty-pants stuff for that.”
She’s a voracious e-reader. She tore through the Dragon Tattoo series in a week of lunch breaks. The Hunger Games series she finished in a weekend. All this reading in silence.
Despite her jokes, she admitted she listened to nothing while reading. I was and am baffled. Silence is nosy and distracting. But on it went. Many friends, to my surprise, read in that non-place with nothing to keep pace, no friends but the characters. Many said they didn’t read. Only some were joking.
I’m sure there are plenty of studies about children engaging their latent genius via Beethoven or something. Whatever . . . All I know is there’s no way we’re going to make it as readers in this alleged silence–full of city sounds, buses and freeway traffic, garbage collectors and arguing neighbors. And if you happen to live in the country, don’t count yourself out. What of the crickets, the wind, the mental lists of things not yet accomplished, the fears that will probably soon be realized? No. Silence is not an option.
This morning I tried pairing the instrumental tracks from Trojan’s Reggae Chill-Out box set to William H. Gass’s In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. No dice. But also, no surprise. I bounced around: Erik Satie is too somber somehow, Yann Tiersen too lively. J Dilla, just silly. So, back to the Trojan collection. And it worked, they clicked: I read. Time and/or patience are sometimes all you need.
Forcing the union canwork. Sometimes a larger contrast can be best. Perhaps too appropriately I’d been listening to Ennio Morricone’s score to Once Upon a Time in the West while hobbling through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Only when I needed to define ocotillo or pyracanthra or any of the other hundreds of terms and words I’d never before encountered did I notice how funny it was, sitting pajama-clad in the sun, looking up what an ignis fatuus was while that haunting harmonica clashed with the manicured lawn, the mother persuading her children into her SUV, the city-allocated outsized bins of recycling, yard waste, trash. Loud city things that almost made me give up what I thought would be the perfect mixture of music and story.
I got through it, but the whole scene, day after day, felt silly. Like I was standing in the yard ready to draw a pistol on a passing Acura. So let’s mix it up, I thought. Henry Miller’s Sexus is the first of his books that has in it no French. How vaguely funny then that I’d chose Julie Doiron’s Desormais, tonally, a terribly sad album. Seeing as how I can comprehend but a handful of French words and phrases, and Doiron’s vocals, all in French on Desormais save one English track I omitted, the typically intrusive human voice is no bother. I’ve also found this to be true with much bossa nova and more occasionally tropicalia. The mood of Desormais isn’t the mood of Sexus. It took hours of listening to Doiron’s 2001 release while reading Miller’s 1962 novel for them to wed in a way that wasn’t catching me up. And when they finally did they were inseparable. Moments away from their partner were grueling, pointless. The paranormally calm sixth track from Doiron’s album does nothing for me now. It’s become inextricably fused with Miller’s description of the Bronx. I’m listening to it presently. As the especially staccato guitar intro plays I see nothing but Miller borrowing money from this or that person . . . and a man across the street whacking weeds with his weed-whacker.
This amalgamated, rhetorical relationship has both its benefits and its disadvantages. For instance, I doubt I’ll again be able to consider anything but Raskolnikov wishing his family would leave him the hell alone each time I hear “My Angel Rocks Back And Forth” from Four Tet’s 2003 album Rounds. At the same time, when I want to hear his multi-layered complaints for solitude, that’s the song I put on. I imagine the synesthetes have something to say about all this.
Pairings I have proven to work:
- William Gibson’s Burning Chrome and Nathan Johnson’s score to Brick
- Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen and Dirty Three’s Cinder
- Anne-Marie Kinney’s Radio Iris and Kazumasa Hashimoto’s score to Tokyo Sonata.
Some records do double duty. Cliff Martinez’s score for Drive pulled me through the cold worlds of J.G Ballard’s Crash as well as Don DeLillo’s Cosmoplis, the latter tempered with shuffled Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse albums, but only after a few drinks. Finally, as fun or funny as you think it might be to read Poe and listen to “Monster Mash” on repeat, it isn’t. It’s stupid and you feel stupid doing it.
To read a version of this discussion in practice, from the horses’ mouths if you will, I highly suggest checking out David Gutowski’s Largehearted Boy. There you’ll find, as is stated on the site: “Book Notes, which has authors create a mixtape relating to their latest book; Note Books, where musicians I admire explore their literary side; Soundtracked, where directors and composers discuss their film’s soundtrack; and The Largehearted Boy Cross-Cultural Media Exchange Program, where authors interview musicians (and vice-versa).”
Perhaps the most relevant of these features is “Book Notes,” with participants that include Ben Ehrenreich, Ben Lerner, Blake Butler, Aimee Bender, Eileen Myles, Jeff VanderMeer, Grace Krilanovich, Rosanne Cash, Sam Lipsyte, Matthew Specktor, Brian Evenson, Amelia Gray, Veronica Gonzalez, Bret Easton Ellis, Dana Spiotta, the list goes on.
Almost everyone I’ve mentioned this concern to says, in one way or another, I should shut up and try to get some work done. Well, to them I say: yes I will. I’m sorry to have wasted your time . . .
. . . but when in doubt always put on Chopin’s Nocturnes.
By Patrick Benjamin
an Associate Editor for Black Clock and an MFA Writing candidate at CalArts.
