Imagining books and music in quirky and creative ways
“Songs for Every Book” is a series bringing you songs that could have been sung by (or about) your favorite book characters.
I’ve recently come to the fascinating and exciting discovery that Adele’s hit “When We Were Young” has a lot in common with The Great Gatsby. More specifically, it sounds like the singer could be Daisy Buchanan herself! But let’s go to the lyrics: Continue reading “Songs for Every Book: The Great Gatsby and Adele”
I read an article about a piece of music the other day where each section started with a direction, like “to be whispered like an incantation.” Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, it took me a while to figure out what these directions actually were. Continue reading “If Authors Told You How to Read Their Books…As Inspired by Music”
“The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!’ or `Off with her head!’ about once in a minute.” —Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
A man wearing a top hat in a crowded Continue reading “Hyperbole in Literature…and Classical Music!”
“There are no facts, only interpretations.” So said the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Each person sees the world from a slightly (or extremely) different point of view, so every time you read a story (or listen to music for that matter) it’s like you’re walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Continue reading “Different Perspectives in Books…and Music!”
I mean, surely they had favorite colors, but we’re never told what they are (as far as I can remember). Since people seem to believe that our favorite colors say something about us, I thought I’d try to enter into some characters’ minds and imagine what theirs might be… Continue reading “If The Great Gatsby Characters Had Favorite Colors”
A while back I posted a brief, 30 second piece and talked about how it reminded me of Tinker Bell (Classical Music Stories: Tinker Bell (Plus Flash Fiction Challenge!)). But little did you know I had more Peter Pan stories for the other bajillion movements in the piece! (Mwah ha ha!)
Here are just a couple of them: Continue reading “Classical Music Stories: Peter Pan”
When the Cheshire Cat fades to just a smile in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the reader is more or less nonplussed. Weird, abnormal stuff has been happening for the entire book, so a cat disappearing is accepted as part of the established universe of the book. But if you were Continue reading “How to Understand SuRprises in Classical Music”
What if books had hidden “Easter eggs” like in the movies?
Sometimes in movies the viewer will find hidden or bonus information that only someone who has seen all of the other related movies would understand. For example, in Disney’s Aladdin, when Jasmine’s father is Continue reading “What If Books Used “Easter Eggs?””
What better way to celebrate the release of the live action Beauty and the Beast movie than to share a piece that encompasses all of the magic of the story? This piece really brought to life certain scenes in the fairy tale for me Continue reading “Classical Music Stories: Beauty and the Beast”
I find it fascinating that the classical piano piece “Clair de Lune” is used so much in movies. I mean, what is it about that specific piece that makes it so popular and meaningful? And how does using it in different movies give a new, nuanced meaning to either the movie scene and/or the music itself? Continue reading “Clair de Lune in Two Popular Movies (What’s Up With That?)”
If Mermaids Wore Suspenders 