How important is music to your poetry?
Right now, it’s the trope, par excellence. The mythology of this book centers on the ideas of ‘Harmony’ and ‘Melody’, and then musical metaphors abound. It makes sense since poetry is musical, but it’s also funny because music isn’t really that important to me in life, in that, I don’t actually spend a lot of time listening to music. Only when I’m driving. Even at the gym I’ll just listen to whatever is playing over the speakers but don’t listen to my own music. I prefer silence to music when I’m working or even just sitting around, and I can’t read with music playing at all. I just can’t seem to push it to the background; it’s always drifting too far forward. I’m probably pretty unsophisticated musically, even. A real plebian. Try as I might, classical music eludes me. It sounds beautiful, sure, but I can’t sustain listening for long periods. Same with jazz. I’m still trying to get into jazz because I like everything about jazz when I read about jazz, but I can never sit down and listen to jazz. Dylan, Springsteen, Costello, The Gaslight Anthem, those are my staples. The Clash. Artists like that. But even them, they’re for driving or when I’m doing something in my classroom, like decorating it or doing the end of the year chores that need to be signed off on. All that’s to say that music is more important to me as a trope than an actual source of joy in life. I guess like most things, I enjoy them idealistically above enjoying them sensually.
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