Write a Novel Like Chopin Composed for the Piano

Before we get into the preternatural-how to color with music, and write like a piano sounds-I would like to update you on the progress of  my next novel about Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

At the recent Edmondson Pike Writer’s Group, Melissa came-up with this idea: “Maybe make the buildings talk; tell their stories.”  My mind  jumped back to the class of 1887, and and the fountain donated to SIU many years ago.  Paul and Virginia have been watching over the campus for more than a century.  And if they could talk…

Paul and Virginia at SIU.
The burning of Old Main 1969

In my next novel, I’ll write some of their thoughts, maybe something about the building they stood in front of, and how it perished in flaming misery behind them.

 

And now…

 

The composer Alexander Scriabin thought this up. Scriabin may have had synesthesia, which is a condition where a person experiences sensation in one sense in response to stimulus in another.

 

Contemplate these images: Writing a guitar solo about the taste of a hot fudge Sunday.   Listening to a radio newscast where the announcer reads a budget story using every number in the budget.  Thinking like a bird.  Painting a picture of a thought.  Assigning a color to  each key of the piano.

 

Chopin

I could do with a touch of synesthesia, because I would like to write my next novel the way Frederick Chopin wrote his music. Listen to the last minute of Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 as played by this 14-year-old pianist.

Notice the clarity, the flowing hands, the singing tone, and the joy Natalie Schwamova  brings to Chopin’s music.

I plan to check-out Natalie’s You Tube channel frequently as I write.

Frederic Chopin, the Poet of the Piano

 

 

I think that it might be possible for me to channel my inner synesthesia into summoning some of the Poet of the Piano into my writing. And I hope that the words will be as clear, and flowing as the playing of this young Czech pianist.