Take You Back
Okay, here's a confession.
You know that Gerry Rafferty song, "Baker Street"? It is my favorite late 70s song. I wasn't even in high school yet, I don't think, when it came out, but it was one of those songs that was played perennially on the radio. Later, in a mess of a relationship when I was 21, the song took on meaning. And NOW, when I hear it (it's on my iPod), I can be RIGHT back there. I mean, like in the car on a summer day, fighting with my boyfriend, bittersweet right back there.
Same with certain scents. I can be right back at prom . . . or in a happy memory of being in my grandmother's garden. But THERE. Not so much recalling a memory but IN the memory, if that makes any sense.
And I think that's what the best writing accomplishes. It isn't so much an act of reading, but an actual becoming . . . you become PART of the story. Your heart pounds in fear, you feel queasy with worry, or you cry or you feel joy. You are IN it. When I described John's Bar in The Roofer, right down to the way you could scratch your fingernail in the nicotine patina on the wall, I think a reader can be IN that bar. It was a real place. I can still smell it and see it, and be there on the barstool at age 8, legs dangling.
So . . . am I the only one who feels this way about certain songs, certain scents, and certain books? Am I crazy? Or do certain things transport you and take you back?
Peace,
E
You know that Gerry Rafferty song, "Baker Street"? It is my favorite late 70s song. I wasn't even in high school yet, I don't think, when it came out, but it was one of those songs that was played perennially on the radio. Later, in a mess of a relationship when I was 21, the song took on meaning. And NOW, when I hear it (it's on my iPod), I can be RIGHT back there. I mean, like in the car on a summer day, fighting with my boyfriend, bittersweet right back there.
Same with certain scents. I can be right back at prom . . . or in a happy memory of being in my grandmother's garden. But THERE. Not so much recalling a memory but IN the memory, if that makes any sense.
And I think that's what the best writing accomplishes. It isn't so much an act of reading, but an actual becoming . . . you become PART of the story. Your heart pounds in fear, you feel queasy with worry, or you cry or you feel joy. You are IN it. When I described John's Bar in The Roofer, right down to the way you could scratch your fingernail in the nicotine patina on the wall, I think a reader can be IN that bar. It was a real place. I can still smell it and see it, and be there on the barstool at age 8, legs dangling.
So . . . am I the only one who feels this way about certain songs, certain scents, and certain books? Am I crazy? Or do certain things transport you and take you back?
Peace,
E
posted by Erica Orloff at 8:36 AM
8 Comments:
"Am I crazy?" Hmm I decline to answer on the grounds that if you are, I must be too! :)
Absolutely...different songs can transport me to 7...17...27...
A whiff of pipe tobacco (definitely a rarity now) and I swear I can hear Uncle Georgie's highland lilt and "Roamin' in the Glaomin'" reeling out of a player piano!
Think I worked at John's Bar, btw :) In the far hillbilly north...frequented by bikers and boaters in the summer, snowmobilers in the winter, so I always associate joint's like that with the aroma of motor oil, gasoline...And yeah, ya did transport me ;-)
Lainey:
I guess we're crazy together. :-)
I love when things can transport us--makes me think of Einstein and fluidity of time.
E
You're both crazy, but that's beside the point. ;)
John Gardner calls it the "fictional dream," and it's really our primary goal as storytellers--to transport the reader to a time, place, and event of our choosing. That's one reason it's important to show and not tell, and to sprinkle the story with multiple sensations.
I like to think of it as telepathic time travel.
Fernando by Abba takes me right back to my grandmother's kitchen where she and my grandfather are dancing. And any hint of vanilla is my grandmother. Anne of Green Gables will remind me of my fourth grade teacher who introduced me to it.
#
So no, I don't think you're crazy!
Jude:
Like that . . . telepathic time travel.
maria:
That's wonderful. ABBA takes me back to my high school best friend who was from Austria, and listened to them in both their native tongue AND English. :-)
E
you are neither crazy nor alone... and I agree with Jude.
BTW, loving The Roofer right now. If there was a version of John's Bar out here in SoCal I think I worked there.
ewoh:
So glad you are liking it. And LOL . . . no, John's (actual name of it) was my dad's and by proxy MY Sunday hangout in NYC. I always thought it was the most magical place on earth--until I went to the wake for it. Yes, we "waked" a bar when it closed. When I went back, I couldn't believe how utterly gross it was. I really did take my fingernail to the nicotine on the walls. The moose over the bar was long since ebony, instead of brown. I couldn't believe it. It was truly surreal, but God, when I was a girl, I loved it--right down to the toothless men nodding off in their bar stools.
:-)
E
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