– I write fast. It takes me, for example, two and a half hours to knock out a thousand-word Wall Street Journal drama column (except when I’m sick). This isn’t exactly freakish, but it’s quick enough to stagger many of my friends and colleagues. I can’t explain my facility, so I joke about it, but the fact is that I, too, find it mystifying, though it’s not the speed that puzzles me–it’s that I don’t really know where all those words come from in the first place. On occasion I may spend a few minutes tinkering with a punch line until I hear it go click, and of course I edit and polish the surfaces of my pieces as painstakingly as time permits, but beyond that I have next to no insight into the thought processes that cause them to pour out of my fingers.
It occurs to me that this seeming incomprehension may have something to do with the fact that I am (or was) as much a musician as a writer. Music, after all, is a non-verbal art form, and the only descriptions of the creative experience that ring true to my ear are those of composers. “I am the vessel through which Le Sacre passed,” Igor Stravinsky said of the writing of The Rite of Spring. When I first ran across that remark I thought, That’s exactly how it feels when I write a piece–it passes through me.
I also felt a responding echo when I read Harold Shapero’s account of his studies with Paul Hindemith, who was notorious for his facility and was capable of writing finished pieces of music on the spot in class. One day Shapero told Hindemith how impressive he found this ability. “Well, you know,” Hindemith replied, “it’s taken me a long time to come to the point where there’s no time lost between my head, elbow, and arm.” I know how that feels, too.
Nothing in my writing life puzzles me more than what happens when I go to a performance that I’ll be reviewing the next morning. As the lights go down, I empty my mind of received ideas and become entirely receptive to the events on stage. Sooner or later, though, the review starts taking shape in my head involuntarily, and by the time the curtain comes down, I don’t have to think through what I want to say: it’s all there, waiting to be cloaked in words.
After nearly three decades as a professional writer, I still find this process uncanny. It’s as if my reviews happen to me, in the same way that a performance happens to me. I am the vessel through which my opinions pass.
– I watched a good friend of mine fall asleep the other day. We’d spent the morning together at a museum in Brooklyn, then made our slow way back to Manhattan by subway. She had a couple of hours to kill before her next appointment, so she asked if she could spend them at my place. When we arrived, I put on a piece of music she didn’t know, Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, and she curled up on the couch to listen. I could see that the sound of Debussy’s fragile traceries was relaxing her, almost against her will. Suspecting that she hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, I then put on Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal, after John Dowland, a set of variations for solo guitar that depict the sensations of sleep. “Let go,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you up on time.”
I sat quietly as the music unfolded. Without warning, my friend’s body jerked once, then relaxed. A few minutes later, the fingers of her cupped hand twitched, and I knew she was dreaming. She looked tranquil and beautiful.
When Nocturnal was over, I tiptoed to the CD player and put on Samuel Barber’s Summer Music. Midway through the piece, just before she had asked me to wake her, her eyes opened.
“I saw you fall asleep,” I said. “You were dreaming.”
“How could you tell?”
“Your body jerked, and then your fingers started twitching. Cats do that when they’re dreaming.”
“Oh, God, that’s embarrassing!” she said. “You really watched me all that time? You must have been totally bored.” She paused. “You know what I’ve always wanted to do? Set up a camera and shoot a video of myself sleeping. I’d love to know what it looks like.”
She blushed. Then we laughed, and I sent her on her way.