It’s all very well saying that the best writing makes use of our senses. I’ve never been really sure what that means, though. Or, more precisely, how it applies to me. I’ve never been one of those writers who is heavy on the description. I mostly hone in on the emotional notes of what I’m working with. It’s how what I see or hear or smell or taste makes me–or a character I’m writing about–feel that I want to focus on.
Yes, I know that describing, say, that sensory moment so that my readers experience it too is supposed to be what I’m wanting to achieve. But really, I don’t. I don’t think that any amount of perfectly delineated description can transpose you to a moment in my time–unless, that is, that you’ve been there yourself. Even if you have, though, I don’t believe your experience and mine are interchangable.
Perhaps this is a fault in my sensory intelligence. Or in my ability to pin down and describe experience. Either way, my writing is short on sensory input. That doesn’t mean I don’t use my senses in my writing. I do, but I use them as prompts. I wrote about this with a smell a couple of weeks ago. Today, I’m listening to music.
Today, I’m listening to the Kingston Trio’s perfect harmony on Scotch and Soda:
Scotch and soda/Mud in your eye/Baby I feel high/Oh me oh my/ Do I feel high.
Dry martini/jigger of gin/ what a state you’ve got me in /oh my, do I feel high
People won’t believe me/They think that I’m just braggin’,
But I can feel/The way I do/And still be on the wagon.
All I need is/One of your smiles/
Sunshine of your eyes/Oh me oh my/Do I feel higher than a kite can fly?
Give me lovin’, baby/I feel high.
Those are just words to you, perhaps, but to me they’re the sound track of my teenage years. Specifically, of my nightly stint washing the family dishes. I am standing at the sink, which is piled high because my mother manages to use every pot she has (not really, but it sure seemed that way). I’m wearing madras plaid bermudas and Weejun loafers without socks, and I’m warbling away to the Kingston Trio playing in my mind. I have an actual playlist for this chore: Scotch and Soda, Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Lemon Tree, and, of course, Jane, Jane, Jane.
What I’m feeling depends on the current state of my love life. Do I have a boyfriend–not usually, so my Scotch and Soda is sung to that future man–man! not boy–who will love me so much that my smiles make him high. Am I mourning a love gone wrong–in which case, my Lemon Tree is particularly acidic. Or am I feeling the angst of my adolescence, which is perfectly portrayed in Where Have All The Flowers Gone. I can put myself right back into that teenaged me just by listening the these songs, and that enables me to think and write about it as if it was today.
Do you have music that can do that for you? Listen to a song and write for 15-20 minutes about where it takes you.
Jane Gassner
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