The Poetry in Playlists

My fiction writing is inspired by many things…places I’ve visited, people I’ve met, art (especially photography), history and ancestry, and most especially music. I can never imagine not having music playing as I write. It sets the mood…it puts me in the mood. Like a meditation, the songs pull me deeper and deeper into the world I am creating. I actually create playlists for all of my major characters. When a character starts telling me the music he/she likes (or dislikes), the world each inhabits opens up to me in a way I’m not sure it could otherwise.

My iPod contains a strange combination of playlists at this point. I just recently completed the first draft of a novella whose character’s came of age in the 1980’s. The playlist of one particular character—born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey—was heavy with Springsteen, Little Steven, Nils Lofgren, Southside Johnny and all things Jersey-boy rock, but was surprisingly devoid of Sinatra (and there’s a reason for that.) He was weaned on Louis Prima and Sam Butera, and discovered an early love of classic jazz. Another character preferred The Clash, The Smithereens, Fine Young Cannibals, Violent Femmes, Psychedelic Furs, and all things Elvis Costello. And still a third loved the Rolling Stones. That’s it, nothing but the Stones thank you very much. Future projects have me adding early 20th century banjo music, 1940’s Big Bands, and the works of Claude Debussy to these playlists.

Have you ever wondered what sort of music influenced your favorite artists? The Philadelphia Museum of Art produces these great CD’s that feature music popular at the time various artists created their masterpieces, such as Constantin Brancusi in Paris (think Edith Piaf) and Edward Hopper in New York (think Fats Waller, Al Jolson). They are great inspiration. I have my own ever-growing playlist which is decidedly heavy on singer-songwriter WXPN artists, but mostly contains songs that make me feel good. Bruno Mars if I want to dance, Amos Lee when I want to sing loud and off-key, and Eddie Vedder Ukulele songs for zoning out. Kronos Quartet has their own playlist because, well…I’m not sure how that happened.

Last night my husband asked me to add some new music to his iPod. When I went to update some of his favorite playlists, I found quite a bit of disorder…multiple songs on multiple lists, entire albums showing up in several locations. Not sure how it all happened, but I had no choice but to do some housecleaning and reorganizing. In the process, as I looked at alphabetized lists of songs, I found a bit of poetry in the making. Perhaps influenced by the spinal (book) poetry I’ve seen posted on Facebook of late, I discovered stories…new characters started peeking out from my playlists. Below is a listing of what I found. What poetry lies within your playlists? Take a look and see what you discover lurking there.

 (Note: my rule is that I must keep the song titles in alphabetical order, but I can skip a song in between…in most cases, the titles appear exactly as they do in my playlists.)