Music

I was in the car the other day (on my way back from court, but that's a whole other issue and does not really belong here, at least not in this post) and was listening to some music on my drive. I had the good fortune of having three songs play in a row that had a kind of theme to them. They were "angry" songs, not necessarily bleeding heart songs about lost loves or blood vengeances, but hard rock/heavy metal songs that got my heart pumping and psyched me up. If I wasn't in a car, but rather in a bar, I'd have been tempted to smash a bottle on the counter and start a fight (a testament to my mental state, I'm sure).

But the point is this: it made me want to write. It made me want to be angry, to be out for blood, to be able to punch through walls and not even blink when I take on twenty opponents. In short, it made me want to be the protagonist of an action/comic book script I had worked on earlier, and not thought about revisiting up until that very moment.

(Interestingly, I knew that I would probably never be that guy who could walk into a bar filled with huge guys and hold his own in a fight. I never expect to be in the middle of a firefight or battling for my life. That is why I write. I find every day life to be rather dull and uneventful. The things that I worry about are rather banal and unimportant in the long run. I know that I am very privileged to think of life that way. I am not living in a war-torn country where militias raid my town daily. I am not dying of starvation. I have the luxury of watching movies and fantasizing about what it would be like to live those lives, to be that guy. And for that, I am grateful. But I am also restless. That is why I write, and why, I believe, most writers do. We have our demons, and many of those come from our comfort.)

It is amazing what music can do. The right songs, no matter the subject, can put me (and many other writers) in the optimum mindset for writing the very kind of scene or movie they want to do. I've often found that it's best to listen to soundtrack for pre-existing movies, because those films that I own soundtracks to are generally well made, award winning films -not because I'm a snob, but because those are the films that have moved me so much that I wanted to own the music, as well as the films themselves. It is amazing what music can do, and when you're not in the mood to write, don't be surprised if you find yourself heading for your desk after listening to a few relevant songs.