NOT YOUR USUAL SUSPECTS

A group blog featuring an international array of killer mystery, suspense, and romantic suspense writers. With premises and story lines different from your run-of-the-mill whodunits, we tend to write outside the box. We blog several times a week on all topics relating to romantic suspense and mystery, our writing, and our readers. We welcome all comments and often have guest bloggers. All our authors can be contacted separately, too, using their own social media links.

We find our genre delightfully, dangerously, and deliciously exciting - join us here, if you do too!

NOTE: the blog is currently dormant but please enjoy the posts we're keeping online.


Julie Moffet . Cathy Perkins . Jean Harrington . Daryl Anderson . Nico Rosso . Maureen A Miller . Sandy Parks . Lisa Q Mathews . Sharon Calvin . Lynne Connolly . Janis Patterson . Vanessa Keir . Tonya Kappes . Julie Rowe . Joni M Fisher . Leslie Langtry

Friday, February 17, 2017

Vinyl Memories


The ancient Greeks, who knew more than a little about the creative process, claimed Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, as the mother of the nine Muses. While all of the arts depend on memory, it is most vital for writers.
Mnemosyne by Rossetti
Writers are in the business of resurrecting memory. Those bits and pieces of the past are the raw material for our stories. But a writer's memory is not just a recollection of facts, but the emotions and reality of a lost place and time.

In my experience, memory, especially early memory, exists as a half-remembered dream, just beyond the reach of consciousness. However, there are moments when the past returns with the force of typhoon. That's how it was with Proust's narrator when his madeleine dipped in tea brought forth a deluge of memory that resulted in his weighty tome Remembrance of Things Past:
“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.”
Which brings me to last December and my own Proustian moment.

It started when I suggested--not for the first time--that my husband "do something about your records." I'd just read Marie Kondo’s book about tidying up and was eager to start throwing crap away, beginning with the cache of mildewed LPs that had been moldering in our closet for decades. Every year or so I suggest that I could take them to the Goodwill or Salvation Army, but to no avail. This time was no different.

"It's good music," he said.

"Sure, but they're just taking up space." No reaction, so I added. "It'd be different if you could play them,"

"That's not a bad idea. I was thinking about getting a turntable."

Oh, great, I thought and forgot about it until a few weeks later when a package arrived.

"Looks like your record player," I said.

"It's a turntable," my husband corrected.

"Whatever," I said as my husband lovingly extract the machine. I grudgingly admitted to myself that there was something to be said for simplicity and in no time at all the record player--sorry, turntable--was set up and ready to go.

"Which record are you going to play first?" I felt a frisson of excitement, trying to remember the last time I'd heard an actual record.

"I have to clean the records first."

"Shouldn't you at least try it out, just to make sure the thing works?" I'm not the patient one in the family.

My husband returned with  an album by Bach. I recognized the cover--it had been a big hit back in the seventies--or was it the sixties? At any rate, the record hadn't been played since the eighties when compact discs took over the world, seemingly overnight. However, when the stylus touched the vinyl, there was a startlingly loud pop, then a hiss. I deflated. The music was obscured by decades of dust and benign neglect, which in the end was just as destructive as outright malice.

"Well, everything works," my husband said, quickly pulling back the needle. "Once the records are cleaned, you'll see the difference."

"Whatever."

Cleaning the records proved to be a bit of a project and so I'd forgotten about my husband's new toy until a night in late January when he pulled another record from the stack, a tribute album to the amazing composer Kurt Weill.
Lost in the Stars:
The Music of Kurt Weill

This time there were no pops or hisses, just Weill's haunting music, at turns melancholic and ebullient, and sounding as clear  as the day the vinyl was pressed. There was a open and full resonance, a richness that--at least to my ear--was lacking in digital music.

 Sort of like the difference between cream and skim milk.

It was then that I remembered how much records had meant to me, all of coming back in glorious Technicolor and surround sound. I recalled the lazy afternoons spinning my collection of 45s in my bedroom with my best friend; the Christmas I found the Beatles' White Album under the tree and drove my mother crazy by playing it 24-7; or my senior year in high school when I discovered Beethoven. So many memories . . .

The Beatles' White Album
So how does this relate to my writing?

For some years, I've kicked around the idea for a mystery set in 1960's Baltimore, with the protagonist being a girl of twelve or maybe thirteen years of ago. But I've kept this idea on the back burner because I wasn't sure if I could recreate enough of that era to make it believable. Now I think I can do a fair job of it, and just might give a go.

After all, Proust was inspired to write seven volumes from a cookie and a cup of tea. Surely I can wring one novel from an old record or two.

Anyhow, that's the plan.

I'd love to hear about any Proustian moments of  your own!

2 comments:

Anne Marie Becker said...

Daryl, I enjoyed this so much! It reminded me of my childhood bedroom, and the record player I had that was kind of part jukebox and lit up. LOL Whenever certain songs come on the radio that I had on record, it takes me back.

And BTW, I got kind of caught up picturing the Goddess of Memory with NINE children, all muses...can you imagine raising them? LOL A lot of creativity in that family. ;)

Marcelle Dubé said...

Interesting post, Daryl. It brought me back to my youth, when my family came back from a camping trip to find we had been robbed. The most striking part of the experience for me was the fact that the thieves had taken our sound system, which was a behemoth piece of furniture that included a stereo and turntable but took up half the wall. I couldn't stop trying to figure out how they could possibly have snuck it out the house...

More Popular Posts