Construction

It has come to this at last.

I suppose it was inevitable but, of course, the primary challenge was to find the appropriate analogy.

Maybe this is it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh8SsaCWY-s

If you cannot quite recognise it the picture that is on the video will nudge your memory. Marge Helgenberger is always good at nudging my memory.

What I should really like you to do is to listen to it. The start, mostly, but it is quite good all the way through.

I don’t want you to just ‘hear’ it, I want you to ‘listen’ to it.

We are, all of us, great at hearing things. Well, except me because my ears (large though they are) are almost completely useless after a lifetime with them pressed up against large aeroplane engines.

Ah! A dangling modifier. Let’s try, “large engines on aeroplanes.”

We do not, as it turns out, listen. Not actively anyway. We think we do. When somebody says to you, “I want you to listen very carefully,” you really just hear it or him/her.

Listening is a skill that we acquire through practice over, sometimes, years. You can tell if someone is only ‘hearing’ and not ‘listening’ by the look in the eyes. They are half hearing you and focussed, in their heads, on what they are going to say next. Your carefully composed and beautifully phrased argument is wasted.

So what is it that has finally and inevitably come to pass?

Some weeks ago I was listening to a record and thought that it sounded dull, boring, ineffective, repetitive and bland. So I played it again. Of course the result was exactly the same. Everyone who does the same experiment over and over again and expects to get a different result is bound to be plunging into disappointment if they don’t change, at least one of, the parameters.

I played it again. Yes, yes, I must be lacking a considerable quantity of brain cells but there was something nagging at those few remaining little grey bits.

Then I understood. It came to me in a flash of inspiration. It was a three-chord sequence in E. Very much a la ‘Shadows’ et al in the sixties. Unlike the ‘Shadows’ et al the drumbeat changed not one jot.

Much as one blinks in the sudden brightness of the sun after being held captive in darkness for some time, I emerged from my contemplative reverie with notes flashing before my mind’s eye.

This was recorded on a machine. Recorded on a computer, perhaps. Only the voice was ‘human’. The person who had created this record had failed to introduce anything that might interest the listener; the backing was the same—incessant, routine, regular and boring.

The trick now was to find something that was the complete opposite.

There are lots of records out there that have magnificent voices and are full of interpretive melodies and harmonies but I was looking for something specific.

Then, one night, I happened to watch this ‘CSI’ programme.

I like Gary Sinise (superb) in ‘CSI: NY’ and Mr. GQ (David Caruso – brilliant!) in ‘CSI: Miami’ (not forgetting Emily Potter and Eva La Rue, of course) but this particular episode was just ‘CSI’. But it wasn’t the programme that caught my ear. It was the theme tune.

I had, to be honest, heard it several times. ‘Heard’ it. This time I ‘listened’ to it.

Never mind Roger Daltrey, go for the backing. Listen to Keith Moon and Pete Entwhistle. Listen to the interplay at the start, the timing, the phrasing, the construction.

This was never an accident. They never, not for one moment, sat around and this just happened.

It was constructed.

Somebody heard this in their heads and then transposed this idea to the others. Then it was adjusted. Played again and again until it was right.

The whole thing builds up to a final crescendo—it keeps you interested from the first fascinating note the final fading out of the instruments. It leaves you wanting more.

It all came out of somebody’s head.

Imagination is a wonderful thing. Some people ‘see’ pictures and paint them on paper or canvas. Some people ‘hear’ music in their heads and are able to give the notes to another person so that they may combine in a cooperative harmony.

Authors live in different worlds. We narrate what is happening in that world into our keyboards but we cannot just write it down as it happens or we will end up with a list as boring as the monotonous thrum-thrum of the computer generated score. We want something that is more like ‘The Who’.

It has to be constructed, organised, integrated within the rest of the story. We can learn a lot by listening. Really listening.

Then it, the story, has to be edited.

We don’t like editors but they serve a great purpose in the same way as producers serve a great purpose in the music industry; they are the check and balance on us so that we keep it tight, so that we don’t end up rambling on forever.

Rather like I am doing now.