I recently read Alexandra, and Voyager, and the parts that I read were so satisfying that I feel I could never write that well again, and I am so frustrated at feeling that such a few have read these books. Actually, Smashwords kept statistics of how many readers downloaded the books. But now they (the company) has been acquired by Draft 2 Digital, and I don't know where to look for statistics, and I don't even know whether any statistics they keep would include the older downloads.
I can hardly believe I had been capable of such great concentration at one time, as to put myself into the heads of these interesting characters, male and female, and put such convincing words into their mouths. As much as they are real to me now, because of how authentic their voices are, they must have been more real when I was writing, a decade ago.
Now to a different topic completely.
When I wrote the Helen stories, I had her playing my favorite pieces, naturally. I had listened to recordings of these pieces for years and years, but I hadn't seen them being played! I recently watched a famous violinist play one of these pieces, and I was startled at how different her playing style was. And now that I think of it, many of the violinists play that way; that is, they sway to the music, as though they were dancing.
I'm not sure whether this is a modern thing; pop singers, of course, use their entire bodies to make their performance more exciting, so it could be that classical musicians follow suit. Come to think of it, the musicians I used to watch on YouTube were usually foreign: German, or Japanese, and they kept their bodies relatively still.
When I described Helen playing, I described her as being relatively still. I don't think I really like this dancing about, though it is the expected thing these days.
Well, I'm no violinist, I want to make that perfectly clear, so my descriptions of musical performances are from the point of view of an outsider!
I wish you all a wonderful new year!
Kay Hemlock Brown
No comments:
Post a Comment