Author Adrienne Morris

The Writing Life at Middlemay Farm

Do You Have Theme Songs For Your Life?

Today feels like a day to listen more than to talk. I’ve noticed when writing novels that random music will stop me in my tracks —  as if the characters in the books are begging me to listen to another layer of who they are. I write about BROKEN HEARTS so I don’t think it will surprise you that the music that acts as the soundtrack to my novels has a certain poignancy.

Do you have a soundtrack? How does beauty play a role in your life? in your creative endeavors? I’d love to know what piece of music most matches who you are or what you create. Let me know in the comments.

 THE HOUSE ON TENAFLY ROAD is a book of broken hearts for sure, but Aaron Copland’s beautiful Saturday Night Waltz captures the fledgling love between John Weldon and Katherine McCullough:

Buck Crenshaw spends a lot of time in the books being an aloof and mixed-up mess, but when he meets the girl who becomes his wife in FORGET ME NOT, a new side of him appears:

This is the song I played every time before writing about the troubled William Weldon in WEARY OF RUNNING and his big time crush on Thankful Crenshaw:

LINKS:

WHAT’S ON YOUR PLAYLIST?

WHAT IS THE SOUNDTRACK TO YOUR LIFE?

MUSIC TO WRITE BY

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27 responses to “Do You Have Theme Songs For Your Life?”

  2. I love these choices! There’s only one for me–and the funny part is, I don’t love the song. But the words resonate every time I hear it–John Cougar Mellancamp’s “Your Life is Now.”

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    • I totally get your pick! Sometimes it’s hard to keep that at the front of our minds! It’s funny that it’s stuck with you–oh what art can do! At the moment I have a dumb pop song stuck in my head because my foster kid insisted we listen: Issues. Basically it just says that the singer and her boyfriend have issues. LOL.

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  3. Great picks, Adrienne. I particularly enjoyed the last song. When I get stuck in my stories, I’ll listen to John Denver or The Carpenters…corny maybe, but the lyrics always get me writing again. 🙂

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    • I love John Denver. My kids make fun of me for listening to Rocky Mountain High on road trips. There’s something so optimistic and inspiring about that song.

      The Carpenters were too depressing for me (I think because I knew growing up that Karen had an eating disorder and so did I–and then she died. 😦

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      • That’s one of my favorite John Denver songs, Adrienne. Yes, the Carpenters can be a little depressing, but I use it to get in certain characters frame of mind. Many of their songs strike an emotional chord with me. Karen had such a beautiful voice…it’s sad she died so young. I’m happy to know you’ve gotten your disorder under control. xo

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  4. The “old” singers, though I don’t think of them or me as old – we’re all around the same ages though. Especially the old folk-ballad-soft rock-acid rock heroes of my youth: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jackson Brown, The Who, The Mamas and The Papas, Fleetwood Mac, The Grateful Dead, Elton John, The Association, The Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Pink Floyd, Eagles, U2, Crosby-Stills-Nash and Young, Chris Isaak – I am truly a child of the 60s and 70s.

    And the wonderful women of music: Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Carole King, Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, Carol Bayer Sager, Dionne Warwick, Donna Summers, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Bette Midler, Aretha Franklin, Katie Mellua.

    Favorite songs include Fire and Rain, You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling, I Will Always Love You, Both Sides Now, What a Wonderful World (especially Louis Armstrong’s version,) Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Unchained Melody, You Were on my Mind, the Disturbed version of Sounds of Silence played to NASA’s views of Earth from space, Israel Kamakawiwo’oles version of Over the Rainbow, Kashmir, and Mi Shebeirach, a Hebrew blessing for those who are ill.

    Lately I’ve fallen for Joe Bonamassa, an incredibly talented guitarist and blues musician. I love all his music and watch his concerts on the PBS-type channels. Some day to see him in person? Oh my love!

    Plus dozens of classical music compositions from Beethoven’s Fur Elise to Dvorak’s New World Symphony to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue to Respighi’s Church Windows to Rachmaninoff to anything by Jett Hitt.

    Well, you got me started – yes, I love music. I’ll listen to any of these and more while I write.

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    • I love this answer! Can you believe some people don’t care about art and music? LOL.

      I LOVE Dvorak’s Humoresque so much, Copland’s Rodeo and movie theme music to Our Town (heartbreaking), Beethoven’s everything and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Did you see Immortal Beloved? Loved that movie.

      Love English, American and Irish folk songs (also Civil War era songs).

      Was a really big fan of the doors (by the time were were into them JM had been dead for years but we still thought he was to die for handsome in the early years–that hair and that mouth–oh and the leather pants!)

      My father used to play Both Sides Now by Collins almost every Sunday night when I was a kid and it almost hurt to listen to it it was so hauntingly beautiful.

      I’ve seen U2 in concert a number of times but at one concert while they were raking in millions of American dollars Bono started trashing America and I was kind of done–it was really classless–and while I love Ireland it’s not as if the country doesn’t have a host of it’s own problems. I’m that person who feels it’s okay to bash your own family but I don’t want to hear other people doing it. 😉

      I could go on too. Music is one of the joys of life for me too, Shari!

      xxoo

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  7. Cave Woman Blues

    I got the cave woman blues, baby
    Don’t wanna roast this haunch no more
    My man, he’s chawin’ on a strip of jerky
    While my back is bent and I’m achin’ sore

    So you sit around and wonder, lil chile
    Why yo mama done up and gone
    Well, she’s off to hike a wilderness mile
    And left you nothing but this stinking song

    Sung with eyes closed, to the sound of two bones beating on a rock

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  8. i think the civil wars are no longer together. have you listened to johnnyswim? george winston? some years back robert plant and (???) did an album called “raising sand” meatlaof? see i have a mixed taste in music. john denver of course the beatles. there are two songs of john denver’s that are “me” more than anything else….poems, prayers and promises….and the only instrumental he put on an album, late winter, early spring when everyone goes to mexico .

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About
My aim is to keep you turning pages well past bedtime with historical family sagas. Complex characters are my thing. I want to draw you into the lives of people you will love, hate and cry over. My goal is for history to come alive for you whether it be in a Civil War field hospital, an experimental Utopian society or in the dark-paneled rooms of Gilded Age socialites. If you like Gone with the Wind, Cold Mountain and Age of Innocence you may enjoy The Tenafly Road Series.
When not writing novels, you can find me knee-deep in farm muck.
 

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