Writing to the music

I'm leaning back in my sofa, watching and listening to an episode of Austin City Limits on our local PBS HD channel here in Minneapolis, and the band--if you can define them as such, or at all--is Polyphonic Spree.  They must have fifty people on stage, all in various brightly colored smocks. They have a horn section, a large chorus, wind instruments scattered throughout, a harpist, and a handsome lead singer.  Their music has a distinct 60's flavor with a large-scale optimism hard to find in popular music these days. They don't have "dancers", but every musician on the stage is constantly moving around, some to loose choreography. At one point a French Horn player desperately dodges the lead singer and several others in an attempt to just find a spot to play his part--which he does, beautifully.  The music is inspirational in feel, and you can see the entiire Spree getting onboard that feeling. With some bands, such intensity feels contrived, but these guys do it right.

Just watching this performance makes me feel like writing, makes my mind wander off into the last place I left a certain character, staring across a river from the bare lot of her former home.  The music contains strong emotional hooks, and those hooks awakened the experience of the character, Rachael, in my head. I scribble down some notes and get into the "mood" that will take me through Rachaels next trial and certain rebellion against the forces that have taken her home. 

A couple of years ago I watched Hiyao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away"--one of my favorite movies that inspires me to write--and on the DVD they had a special feature of The Making Of, as DVDs often do. Miyazaki talked about how he and his animators at Studio Ghibli had spent the ENTIRE production--years--listening, over and over, to only one song, by a Japanese singer and included in the credits on the film. It's a haunting, sad song,  and the film has a very similar tone.  As to me that film is Miyazki's greatest so far, the role played by that song intrigues me.  Music can certainly elicit emotion, but it seems that this song, repeated endlessly, was able to contain the emotional spectrum of the art being created around it.