I was reading a story the other day, and I thought I would share it with you:
“I thought my songs were okay. Kind of Sonic Youth meets the Dirty Projectors. Nathan did not think they were okay.
‘Abominable,’ he’d told me, ‘A noisy mismash. You must learn to do more with less.’
‘Thanks, Nathan, thanks a lot,’ I said, really ticked off. ‘Care to tell me how?’
His great advice was to listen to the guitar phrase about four minutes in on the song ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond.’ He says David Gilmour wrote it and it’s only four notes long, but it sounds exactly how sadness feels. I told him I didn’t need an old stoner to tell me how sadness feels. I knew.
‘That’s not enough,’ he said. ‘My schnauzer, too, knows what sadness feels. What matters is this: Can you express that knowing? That feeling? That is what separates you.’
‘Separates who? Me from a schnauzer?’
‘Separates an artist from a schmuck.’
‘So I’m a schmuck now? That is the last time I give you anything of mine to listen to.’
Nathan’s reply was this: ‘One day in 1974, a man named David Gimour was sad. So what? Who cares? I do. Why? Because of that one incredible phrase. Because it endures. When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.’” – Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
When I read this passage, I began to think about why we should care about stories. I get asked this question almost daily by my students. Why does it matter? When all this other stuff is going on in the world, why do we need books and plays and movies? Why does Peter Pan or Moby Dick or Lizzy Bennett matter when we have people like terrorists and gangsters and divorced deadbeat fathers in the world? Because it’s through those little measures of music we become human. We find our souls lifted above any other species in the world because we have enduring and beautiful dialogue on things we can’t see. Through music, through themes in our books, through characters and stories we’ve known since we were kids, we have an unspoken language to talk about the things we never came up with words to describe. The stories that mean something … that really stick around forever … are those who found just those four notes to describe not only what the character and author were feeling … but what thousands of millions of other people have felt before. We look to these notes to see that we are in fact not alone in the universe. That there is a rhyme and rhythm to the everyday struggles we go through. There is a sort of beauty in a breakdown, as Frou Frou puts it. There is a sort of music to a rainy thunderstorm. There is someone out there who ripped their heart out and splashed it on the page for us to nod our heads in agreement when we see it painted there in front of us.
We need stories. Even in the worst days, we need those four notes.
Have a good night.
