The Other White Meat by Warren Bull
There are a series of commercials that extol the virtues of eating pork. Unlike commercials that encourage eating beef as ultra-American behavior, and that show cowboys, backyard barbeques and other red white and blue such as drinking beer, the producers apparently decided that hog farmers did not fit the American myth. So, they settled on an implied analogy instead.
Please note the introduction above has almost nothing to do with this blog. I just found the commercial interesting and because I can indulge myself when writing blogs, from time to time, I do.
I believe there are overlaps between various art forms, pork is not chicken but they could both be described as white meat. The best editor/writing teacher I know now expresses herself primarily by weaving. The best jazz singing teacher I know uses her history as a dancer to help singers identify the internal physical sensations associated with the stance, tongue, teeth and lip position that they experience when producing new and desired sounds. I find thinking of myself as a saxophone that creates sound by expelling air constantly and changes sound by altering the airflow in small ways to be helpful in singing.
Other writers I know have experience in other art forms that influences how they think about expressing emotion, giving instructions, and inserting subtle cues. Some creative chefs, amateur or professional, think of seasonings, varying time and temperature of baking and cooking when they write. Visual artists understand how shading and color combinations underlie the perception of the images they create.
And different types of writing experience affect what is produced. At the risk of stereotyping, in general, poets have skill with packing power into a few words; reporters know not to bury the lead; and science writers can translate jargon into English.
All experience enriches the palette that writers use. I believe experiences in other art forms are particularly helpful in broadening the range of perceptions and variations in thinking writers can employ.
Yes, I agree.
ReplyDeleteI've spent a month banging out a rough draft of my next book. Every night I curled up under a fuzzy blanket and listened to an HD stream of a Metropolitan Opera performance. My husband watched, but I listened, and wrote prose in my head and plot-stormed for the next day. I noted when the music matched the action (we just completed Donizetti's Tudor trilogy, when someone gets the axe in each opera), and listened to the singers convey different emotions (fear, anger, grief).
All forms of art reflect the human experience, and the intertwined themes are there for anyone who looks hard enough for them.
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