Saturday, July 07, 2007

Jazz Writer

I havent read anything by the Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, though some friends keep recommending his works to me. Since I am not into a 'fiction-reading' mindset these days, I haven't even bothered to pick up anything by him. But after reading a beautifully written essay by him, I am surely going to buy one his works for the times when I am in that 'fiction-reading' mindset. In this essay, he writes about how he has learnt everything about writing from music. Despite its length (my apologies to Mouse!), I am putting it on this space...enjoy!

Jazz Messenger By HARUKI MURAKAMI

I never had any intention of becoming a novelist — at least not until I turned 29. This is absolutely true.
I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us. And so, at an early age, I simply gave up any hope of writing fiction. I would continue to read books as a hobby, I decided, and look elsewhere for a way to make a living.
The professional area I settled on was music. I worked hard, saved my money, borrowed a lot from friends and relatives, and shortly after leaving the university I opened a little jazz club in Tokyo. We served coffee in the daytime and drinks at night. We also served a few simple dishes. We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.
I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers performed in Kobe in January that year, and I got a ticket for a birthday present. This was the first time I really listened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thunderstruck. The band was just great: Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone and Art Blakey in the lead with his solid, imaginative drumming. I think it was one of the strongest units in jazz history. I had never heard such amazing music, and I was hooked.
A year ago in Boston I had dinner with the Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo PĂ©rez, and when I told him this story, he pulled out his cellphone and asked me, “Would you like to talk to Wayne, Haruki?” “Of course,” I said, practically at a loss for words. He called Wayne Shorter in Florida and handed me the phone. Basically what I said to him was that I had never heard such amazing music before or since. Life is so strange, you never know what’s going to happen. Here I was, 42 years later, writing novels, living in Boston and talking to Wayne Shorter on a cellphone. I never could have imagined it.
When I turned 29, all of a sudden out of nowhere I got this feeling that I wanted to write a novel — that I could do it. I couldn’t write anything that measured up to Dostoyevsky or Balzac, of course, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to become a literary giant. Still, I had no idea how to go about writing a novel or what to write about. I had absolutely no experience, after all, and no ready-made style at my disposal. I didn’t know anyone who could teach me how to do it, or even friends I could talk with about literature. My only thought at that point was how wonderful it would be if I could write like playing an instrument.
I had practiced the piano as a kid, and I could read enough music to pick out a simple melody, but I didn’t have the kind of technique it takes to become a professional musician. Inside my head, though, I did often feel as though something like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I wondered if it might be possible for me to transfer that music into writing. That was how my style got started.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.
Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but if I had not been so obsessed with music, I might not have become a novelist. Even now, almost 30 years later, I continue to learn a great deal about writing from good music. My style is as deeply influenced by Charlie Parker’s repeated freewheeling riffs, say, as by
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegantly flowing prose. And I still take the quality of continual self-renewal in Miles Davis’s music as a literary model.
One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!”
I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.


I am sure you would have appreciated the essay, the way i did. Mr Murakami has connected 2 of the best creations of the civilized world so beautifully.

Terrible travel schedules coming up for me, hence I will be sporadically present on this space for some time. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

11 comments:

phish said...

i so understand what you mean. when people start recommending a book i run away from it. call me a plastic rebel, if you may but i have my reasons. and i strongly suspect you agree.

but this one i implore you to try. start with 'kafka on the shore' if you have to. and yes it is fiction. and white.

meraj said...

will surely pick it up. interesting title, 'kafka on the shore'

Smiling Dolphin said...

Sorry I just looked but couldn't find the Sting article. Will try later. TT, mouth organs and scrabble - bit indoorsy for someone who wants a house on a hill by the river! But I understand now why you liked the Jack Nicholson Nokia ad so much! I always cheat at scrabble, that game was invented for the inner cheat. As for the music I like, anything with a tune and a lilt and some harmony I go for even it comes from the blowhole of a whale! Rock,jazz, new age, folk, country, mostly western I guess. My favorites - Sting, Sting, Sting (have you heard "Songs from the Labyrinth) check this post http://lynnisms.blogsource.com/post.mhtml?post_id=401313. (Which reminds me to post one of the songs on Phish's blog, he's still pining:-)
And on a rainy day, Shine on you crazy diamond in my Honda CRV still works for me. Phew that was long, enough of blogging, back to work, got three ppts to get together!

Smiling Dolphin said...

also do post one of your compositions here, that would be great.

meraj said...

mr sumners is such an accomplished musician...am a big fan too!
and floyd was big too at one point of time...we all go through a floyd phase, dont we?
will surely post one of my compositions here.

meraj said...

I have just heard about the album...let me also try to hear it. Sting is a master craftsman of musical notes and elicits a lot of respect from my minimal musical abilities.

Anonymous said...

I like the last 2 paras very much and the whole article is great. Kind of like u either know what he's trying to say or u don't. i just read somewhere that 'jazz is an intesified feeling of nonchalance' - thought u might enjoy the line.

meraj said...

yeah, the last 2 paras just sum up the whole thing beautifully.

'nonchalance' and 'intensity'...interesting contrast there.

btw, do i know you, meghna?

Anonymous said...

no.. just wandered by here from a friend's blog.

meraj said...

okay...i hope that you continue enjoying the posts. havent put up a new one in a while, though. will do so, soon!

Pooja Nair said...

i had never read this one before.

And when i did read Kafka On the Shore, i think i remember thinking (and saying to you) that his story is like jazz music....there's no clear beginning and no clear end, no big message... just pleasant, fascinating reading..

now, i see that this was exactly intentional!! :)

beautiful write-up! thanks for re-posting...