Striking a Universal Note

I apologize, dear readers (of which there are more than four, I am pleased to note) for not providing you with fodder for procrastination this week, but I was otherwise engaged. It was a busy week here in New York; Fashion Week has started which, thankfully, this year it means very little to me. I attended a Fashion’s Night Out event at my friend’s lovely Park Slope shop Eponymy and that is my entire involvement in the events of this week, praise Jesus. My friends visited from the Left Coast and last night I found myself at a rooftop bar that wanted so badly to be exclusive. I felt like I was at the bar where the rejects from The Boom Boom Room (I think this link explains all you need to know) go to make some sort of decent night pan out. Well, at least the drinks were strong and I was with good friends.

However, what really took up most of my time was reading a Romance novel. Well, first I finished the Daphne DuMaurier I was reading called Castle Dor that has a Nineteenth Century town relive the events of the Tristan and Iseult myth. I mention it because I may bring it up later on, I have not decided. So, I finished Castle Dor and then decided to read the new Julia Quinn. You see, I only read Historical Romance, which, to the uninitiated, is a subgenre of the whole. Why, then, am I writing in a contemporary setting? Because I decided to start out with writing what I know. I have to establish myself first before I write my WWI novel because I am pretty sure there isn’t much of a market for that yet.

Anyhoo, I don’t think I have read a Romance since the last Julia Quinn came out this winter. Between work, writing, and reading Brideshead Revisited I just haven’t picked one up in a while. If you are familiar with Quinn you will recall the notoriously dreadful Smythe-Smith musicales and with Just Like Heaven she finally introduces her readership to the Smythe-Smiths and their lack of musical talent and love of exhibitionism. The book’s plot is focused on two main events, but despite one of them being the musicale, music seems strangely absent. Even when the characters are supposed to be practicing they argue, and the event itself is described after the fact. In Castle Dor, the Tristan character breaks his violin when he decides to begin his affaire with the Iseult character and music becomes absent there too.

Now though, music is far more ubiquitous than in the Nineteenth Century. If we walk in to a shop music will be playing. The subway platforms and cars are often makeshift stages, and almost everyone has a mp3 player, and not everyone has the courtesy to use theirs’ with headphones. This has all been rather difficult for me this summer as I have some compulsive issues concerning music. I believe that certain types of music/songs will affect the immediate future or have particular significance. Yes, it is crazy and no, I can’t logic my way out of this one. Recently, someone was agonizing to me about being in the card store and all the songs on the radio station playing in the shop seemed to relate specifically to his life at that time. I pointed out quite logically that pop songs are generic for that very reason. The writers and performers want you to believe that that song was written for you. “Killing Me Softly” and “You’re So Vain” spell it out almost. See, I can logic it, but if I don’t hear classical music once a day (and write to it) or listen to particular bands SOMETHING WILL GO VERY, VERY WRONG.

What all this really causes me to realize (above and beyond some possible obsessive/compulsive tendencies) is how universal the big things, like love and loss, truly are. What makes Romance so appealing is the triumph of those things that people almost universally desire, such as trust, love, and being the first priority for the same person who comes first for one’s self. Pop songs function on the same level. They tap in to those feelings that are so forceful yet so common, that the expression of them creates an automatic bond between the music and the listener. I have "known" this for forever, but I am a little emotionally closed off, so it took some upheaval in my life to embrace this part of the human existence instead of rolling my eyes and seeing pop music as trite. Tonight I wallowed in this bond with a little Heart, Adele, Iron and Wine, Mumford and Sons, and Prince. Oh, feelings.