The Black Dress

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Roz Morris

By Roz Morris. Twitter: @ByRozMorris

Photo by Roz Morris / Photo editing by Terrabyte Graphics

Deleted Scene from “My Memories of a Future Life,” by Roz Morris

This is a scene I wanted to include in my novel My Memories of a Future Life. Briefly, the narrator is a musician who is injured, and is clinging to the hope that rest will cure her. In the early part of the novel she is making bargains with fate—if she rests, the universe will give her back her playing and her life.

I didn’t want to delete this from the book, but I had other scenes that made the same point. When I’m in final revisions I cut ruthlessly. I frequently ditch material that is perfectly good, and that includes scenes that I’m in love with. It takes discipline and soul-searching, but by that stage the story has a will of its own that overrides my ego. It doesn’t listen to me wail that I liked a scene. It is ruled by an overall rhythm of event, event, event; onwards, onwards, onwards. If a scene circles over already trodden ground, something must go.

So this is a scene I cut reluctantly. I liked its simplicity, the tiny slice it showed of a musician’s life and the totemic responsibility Carol put into one garment. In real life it was inspired by a family heirloom—another tug for the heartstrings, although that matters to no one but me. Even though it didn’t make it to the page, I like to think she still did it, off screen in the moments we didn’t see.

~~*~~

The house was quiet. On the coat rack next to the door was a dress in dry-cleaner’s wrappers. A Post-it note was stuck to the cellophane, scrawled with Jerry’s flamboyant script.

Picked this up for you. The dry cleaners were about to give it to Oxfam.

The dress was black velvet, three-quarter length. A performance dress. Classical musicians have a bizarre working wardrobe; you wear what you like for rehearsals, but performances demand formal wear. For the women it had to be black, with a modest neckline, a skirt at least nine inches below the knee. It was a constant battle to find clothes that obeyed those rules and weren’t funereal.

I’d found this dress in Camden Lock market three weeks ago. I wouldn’t have been there if I’d been playing, but I was out roaming London on another tour of nothing. The dress was on a rail between pseudo-Victorian nightgowns and mangy fur tippets. It was unloved—the seam split on one side; the other side fastened only by ancient press studs which left an alarming glimpse of flesh underneath. But the other seams were tough enough for a performance. The velvet was silk and the pile so fine it hung from my shoulders like liquid. I took it to the cleaners and discussed repairing it and putting in a zip. They warned me it would take a few weeks. That was fine, I said.

I left it there. It would count the days for me. I imagined picking it up on my way back from the hospital and carrying it over the threshold. I’d try it on; we’d nod at each other in the mirror. New start.

Now I didn’t even lift the cellophane to see if they’d done a good job. I threw it straight in the wardrobe and shut the door.

~~*~~

Keys to the Future (Compliments of Q2 Music)

Live from Abrons Arts Center on May 25th, 2011

Jenny Chai, piano: György Ligeti’s Two Etudes.

Lisa Moore, piano: Timothy Andres’ How Can I Live In Your World of Ideas?, Martin Bresnick’s Willie’s Way and Frederic Rzewski’s Piano Piece No. 4.

Marina Lomazov, piano: Rodion Shchedrin’s Basso Ostinato, Jacob Ter Veldhuis’ The Body of Your Dreams, Nikolai Kapustin’s Concert Etude No. 8, and William Bolcom’s The Serpent’s Kiss.

Biography

Roz Morris

Roz Morris is a bestselling ghostwriter and book doctor. She blogs at www.nailyournovel.com and has a double life on Twitter; for writing advice follow her as @dirtywhitecandy, for more normal chit-chat try her on @ByRozMorris. She has a second blog, where she runs The Undercover Soundtrack – a regular feature about writers who use music in their creative process.

Web Site | Twitter: @ByRozMorris

My Memories of a Future Life is available on Kindle (US and UK) and also in print. It was originally published as four novellas and those are also available.

My Memories of a Future Life Audio

Listen to the first four chapters:

Or download a free audio of the first 4 chapters here.

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Can You Be Too Passionate About Music?

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Jeanette Bicknell

“Why some performers’ attitudes may hurt them.”

Photo by Danil Kalinin (www.flickr.com/photos/citx/5550608348/)

Becoming a professional musician requires an incredible amount of work, and having a passion for music can help motivate the many required hours of practice. But can a passion for music also be destructive? In Somerset Maugham’s haunting short story “The Alien Corn,” a young man who is heir to a vast family fortune commits suicide when he realizes that he will never be more than a talented amateur pianist. Clearly, his passion for music proved to be dysfunctional.

Recently, some psychologists have made a distinction between “harmonious” and “obsessive” passion. Someone with a “harmonious” passion for an activity engages in that activity freely, without internal or external pressure. He or she leaves room for other activities in life. An “obsessive” passion, in contrast, results in an uncontainable desire to engage in a particular activity. Someone with an obsessive passion will continue to practice an instrument or play a sport even when doing so will exacerbate an injury. He or she will engage in the chosen activity to the point where health deteriorates, relationships are strained, and finances suffer.

“Someone with a “harmonious” passion for an activity engages in that activity freely, without internal or external pressure.”

A recent study by Canadian researchers examined these different types of passion in expert musicians. They found that musicians with these two different orientations set different kinds of goals, with different results. The harmoniously passionate musicians set “mastery” goals. This means that they set goals to learn and master difficult tasks, such as playing a tricky passage at its proper tempo, or being able to play a challenging piece from memory by a specific date. Having set these kinds of goals, the harmoniously passionate musicians tended to practice in specific and deliberate ways. The obsessively passionate musicians were more apt to set performance-approach or performance-avoidance goals, which refer rather to comparisons with other musicians than to mastery of specific tasks. For example, an obsessively passionate music student might set a goal to play better than others in her class, or to avoid getting the lowest standing in a competition. Because the harmoniously passionate musicians played their instruments freely, they did not feel the need to compare themselves with others. The tendency of the obsessively passionate to compare themselves to others seems related to the internal pressure they put upon themselves to do well.

“An “obsessive” passion, in contrast, results in an uncontainable desire to engage in a particular activity.”

The researchers found that performance levels could be predicted by the type of goals the musicians set, which in turn was related to the type of passion they displayed. Having a harmonious passion for music was linked to higher levels of performance achievement than was having an obsessive passion. In fact, as the authors write, “setting goals to outperform others seems to undermine musical performance.” Having a harmonious passion for music was also positively linked with life satisfaction, while there was no connection found between obsessive passion and life satisfaction. This is perhaps related to the tendency of obsessively passionate musicians to experience guilt and anger when they are prevented from playing.

A passion for music, and a passion for playing an instrument well, can be a source of great pleasure and well-being in life. But as Maugham’s story hints and as research seems to show, not all forms of passion will necessarily lead to excellence or to happiness.

References:

Bonneville-Roussy, A., Lavigne, G.L., and Vallerand, R. J., (2011) When passion leads to excellence: the case of musicians Psychology of Music 39 (1), 123-138.

Vallerand, R.J. and Houlfort, N. (2003) Passion at Work : Toward a New Conceptualization in D. Skarlicki, S. Gilliland and D. Steiner (eds) Research in Social Issues in Management, vol. 3, pp. 175-204. Greenwich: Information Age Publishing Inc.

Vallerand, R.J. (2008) On the Psychology of Passion: In Search of What Makes People’s Lives Most Worth Living Canadian Psychology, 49 (1): 1-13.

Originally published on June 3, 2011 on Why Music Moves Us.

Photo by Danil Kalinin. http://www.flickr.com/photos/citx/5550608348/