Life's Poetry

I heard today about Dan Fogelberg's passing. Now, before someone screams at me for being from the 70s--guilty as charged.

This guy's tunes inhabited my heart, and still do. He was that rarest of people, an artist who was a musician who was a poet. He celebrated life--can you get much more connected than that?

In a way his tunes informed my writing. I sit here listening to my iPod with every DF tune I can load, loaded on it, and playing. I celebrate his genius, his gentle way of telling the truth, his life. Too young--I daresay there was music in him yet to be strummed on the 4700 instruments he played. I'd be ready to bet there were still stories to tell, life to be explored, poetry to set to the notes of a score.

Farewell for a while, Dan. You'll be missed here.

Inevitability

Weird title? I suppose. It's because I'm writing this afternoon on TOUCH AND GO, my mystery/suspense work-in-progress. As I write, the soundtrack to "Rob Roy" is playing on the CD player (breathes there a soul who doesn't write to music?). The music naturally reminds me of the movie. In it, the title character makes certain choices, based on his best instincts--some of them work out well, some of them lead to disaster. But once he's made his choices, events progress that are out of his control. There's a slow buildup of the consequences and his subsequent actions/reactions to them, creating a sense of destiny. Was Rob doomed? What other choices could he have made, and remain himself?

That's what I'm aiming for in this next book--that linkage of action/situation building on action, leading to that same sense of inevitability in the storyline and particularly in the resolution of the story problem(s).

You find it in the best-written books, the most immortal of music. Can you think of any piece by Beethovn in which the progression of theme and note can possibly result any other way than it does?

Aim high, they say. I'm aiming high with this one.