Wednesday 22 July 2009

Learning to write if you hate words

I watched a fascinating programme on Saturday evening. Paul Morley a music critic decided he wanted to learn to compose. The fundamental challenge he had was in not reading music.

Crotchets, quavers and semi-breves and the like were foreign to him and scary. He went through a year at the Royal Academy to come out with his own composition.

I've only watched the first part yet so don't know what he ended up with. But what fascinated me as a writer and teacher was the way they were teaching him to read music and understand the building blocks of what he had to use.

They turned what was a one dimensional scary concept into a three dimensional concrete process that had resulted by the end of the first programme in a very sketchy recreation of his ideas and thoughts and his music.

It sparked off ideas for me because often I talk to people who though they love the idea of writing a book, have a positive aversion to words which are the building blocks.

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