This incredibly heavy box of music is sitting in the middle of my kitchen. It represents over a decade of choral music collected by one of our church accompanists. In the same way as I hoard books, she hoards music, and for the same reason – it speaks to her.
She needed to downsize and was returning a portion of her collection. While I sorted through the six hundred-or-so octavos and several music books, I couldn’t ignore other similarities.
Notes build phrases of melody that blend into harmony, creating music that sings in my heart.
Letters become words and sentences, and grow into stories that beguile my imagination.
Both transport me to a new place. The creativity required to produce the best form of both is art, and originates somewhere deep within. When it is well done, it impacts those who listen… and read.
The creativity represented by all this music staggers me. Each song is unique and represents hours, days, months or maybe even years of the composer’s time. More significant is the piece of its creator’s soul that is embedded in the reality of each.
Composing words and music are both forms of writing, totally different, and yet so very much the same.
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If you are a writer, do you find your creativity spills over into other forms of art?
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Graphics by digitalart
MUSINGS 
Carol, I love to compare the writing to music and the sounds that play in my head. I am one who hears that small cello, pick up every nuance of instruments and voices. I love the cadence, the feeling of my heart soaring with the sounds. Thanks so much for this post 🙂
Great question. When we moved, and as I’ve been resorting things I brought, I find that besides my boxes of books are the photographs – – boxes and bins of them. I’m not a great photographer, but I love to enlarge, crop, etc and use them in albums, scrapbooks and blog posts. They tell a story to me as much as words. As I’ve helped my mom downsize her thing was fabric… and she told beautiful stories with each piece. Lovely post, Carol.
My creativity spills over into music (but the result usually reminds me to stick to words, LOL). I commented somewhere once about how I find composing and writing similar…there’s a similar moment — that heady, muse-y moment when you feel the potential of something, a sense of the finished story or piece of music that inspires you even as it drifts away again like smoke. And then begins the work of crafting it, trying to grasp that elusive thing and capture it in notes or words.
I write, I play, and I compose. None of it very well. But as a friend of mine once said: “I do it for my own amazement.” Yes, they are very similar.
I was into rubber stamping and scrapbooking before I began writing. These days I haven’t time for my hobbies, but I aim to make time because those crafts fuel my creativity.
I learned music for many years, just as I learned writing. For various reasons I do a lot more writing these days. But to me they are the same thing, conceptually.
I really do believe there is a spillover of creativity as it manifests itself in the various arts, and I appreciate all your comments on this topic. Thanks for adding your voices. 🙂