By: Anushree Nande
Stories and sounds are part of my earliest memories after growing up in a house and an extended family full of both. Nobody knew then that I’d one day be a writer, but my interest in books and music were encouraged from the start, cultivated even, which isn’t always a given in Indian families, certainly not, years later, when careers are concerned.
Music has always been close to my heart, but it never felt like where I was meant to be beyond a keen hobby. Words, now they felt, feel, like home, even when I can’t find the right ones or feel bereft of them.
However, even I didn’t anticipate how, when I did become a writer, music would factor into my writing, serve as inspiration in many ways other than the obvious, and impact my language in ways I couldn’t have predicted.
Adventures in Ormskirk
At 19, I moved from Mumbai, India where I’d been born and brought up to a market-town in Lancashire, England, to study Creative Writing. In Freshers Week, music helped me break the ice (and overcome fears about myself, my place, and my path) when I won the Bandeoke contest.
In my second year, I started to find my feet, and the beginnings of my voice, which is when I realised that I wanted to explore the relationship between words and music.
The very first story we were asked to analyse in my first year was Colm Toibin’s ‘A Song’. The story stayed with me not only for the way it was structured like a piece of music, but for its lyrical prose that used both music and silence for unspoken communication.
At its narrative focal point is a song sung by a mother in the same pub that at that moment features her estranged son, only the latter aware of the former’s presence. Yet, the song doesn’t become a gimmick; it stays as the subtle glue holding together the rest of the narrative.
I was hooked and fascinated by the potential.
Grace Notes
I then read Bernard MacLaverty’s Grace Notes, where the protagonist is a pianist struggling to find her place and purpose. The title refers to what the character calls “the notes between the notes,” which I thought was a wonderful way of describing the silences between the sounds.
The book has a muted but effective use of music interwoven with the narrative, whether through the different ways in which the characters interact with each other through music or otherwise.
Later, it was Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, a short story collection revolving around music, musicians, the varied effects music has on our lives, and how it can mean different things to different people. Then Eric Siblin’s The Cello Suites, Sophia Coppola’s movie Lost in Translation, and so many others.
Also discovered, as I started to plan what my final third-year project was going to be (which I continued working on as my master’s thesis the year after), was An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, which with its similar setting (London) and premise (music, love, second chances) felt very kindred.
But there, I made a conscious choice that I wanted to use music in my stories with my unique purpose. To show a link between emotions, music, and my characters. It is hence not necessarily a universal, real-world fact that I’m claiming to explain, but the workings of the world I have created in the book.
For this I chose the vehicle of Western classical music instead of the more familiar (to me) Hindustani Raag music in which I’ve had some training. Why? Because I wanted a challenge, but, more importantly, it just felt like the more liberating choice at the time, a space where I was free to learn and experiment.
Summer Melody, a novelette
At its narrative core, Summer Melody, which has undergone numerous interpretations since the years at university before it took the form it was published in earlier this year, is about how music runs through the lives of characters that might not be connected otherwise.
This is a story about complicated people who try, in their imperfect ways, to process emotion and the fears that come from simply being human. This is about identity, about how music runs through their lives in different ways, how it offers them comfort, helps them to create the most personal of expressions, and, in turn, make sense of their feelings, the world around, and the people in them, even when it doesn’t immediately surrender the answers.
Summer Melody is, most importantly, about the hope that it’s never too late to find your way.
Research, research, research!
I have experimented with different ways to seamlessly complement music with the main narrative. Most musical description in the narrative stems from my own personal experiences. In order to come up with unique, non-clichéd ways of description, I listened to my favourite songs and compositions multiple times and jotted down exactly how I felt at every stage, trying to create a visual representation of the actual melody as well as my feelings and emotions as a listener.
My writing is an attempt to verbalise and concretise the “sound” of feelings and emotions within the world of the story, without resorting to structuring it based on any form of music.
In this, I have been influenced by the music that I love—rhythm, flow, cadence, poetry, and emotion all creeping into my language and writing style, into the way I visualise abstract and concrete details and interact with the world.
However, with the actual technicalities, I had to undertake extensive research. I have always loved listening to Western classical music, but my knowledge and understanding is amateurish at best.
Books like The Shape of Music (Wade, 1981), Listening to Music (Kramer, 1991), and A History of Western Music (Burkholder, 2006) were great sources of reference material, as well as my research into famous violinists, their art and craft, approach, mentality, and vision of music.
While I have tried to stay as true to my research as I could, I have also been lucky to receive advice from someone with first-hand experience of a string instrument and of existing in a routinely misogynistic field—my aunt, who is one of the very few women sarangi players in the world (and who has been my musical guru since childhood).
Art, artist, audience
It’s such an intricate relationship. Does music evoke emotions and thoughts, or are they already present and the reason why we can relate and bring meaning to it?
Similarly for the written word, is the writer capable of making the reader feel and think in a certain way, or does the reader connect to the world because of previously existing feelings?
This personal view has been a major factor in deciding the musical themes and hence character and narrative perspectives and beliefs. There is a distinct focus on Romantic and Pre-Modern music. I have focused on the aesthetic side of music, one that I relate to the most.
Ron Silliman has said that the mind is the shortest distance between two sentences, and I suspect that it is similar with music, at least for the untrained ears. So, the relationship ultimately works both ways between audience, medium, content and effect, and they play off each other. The workings of the mind and brain are complex, and so is this relationship. It’s one I look forward to continue exploring in my future work.
In Summer Melody, I hope to have presented the verbal representation of this interest and discussion without it interfering with the emotional nuance or the narrative journeys of my characters.
About Anushree Nande
Hope is Anushree “Anu” Nande’s superpower. Arsenal Football Club, perhaps irrationally, dominates many of her waking (and sleeping) hours; the rest she spends reading, writing, editing hoarding books, working through creative demons with sport and art, and asking herself what Coach Taylor would do.
She is a Mumbai-born writer who has studied and worked in the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States, and is currently a senior team member at Football Paradise, an award-winning website for longform articles about football, and a freelance editor and publishing professional.
Her microfiction collection, 55 Words, was published by Underground Voices in 2015 and her other work (fiction, essays, football pieces, poetry) can be found in a range of online and print platforms. Anushree’s writing, in whatever form, tends to explore how we navigate the emotional landscape of our lives, and is always hopeful.
Author links
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A digital edition (PDF) can be purchased directly from the publisher by emailing abuddhapress@yahoo.com with “Summer Melody by Anushree Nande” in the subject line.
First five pages of the story.
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