Writing and Music — How Do They Intersect?

by Julie Scolnik

I have been a musician for all of my life. Ballet was my first love, but I realized at the tender age of 13 that it was my emotional response to music that made me crave a physical outlet for the deep stirrings it evoked.

So off I went to spend three idyllic summers at a music camp in Maine, where Beethoven and Brahms symphonies were broadcast through loud speakers to awaken us in our woodland cabins, as if the trees had burst into song.

I connected deeply with these young peers of mine, each day listening to friends rehearse Schubert’s cello quintet in the woods before lunch. When I played the recording at home when camp was over, my eyes filled with tears. And then I knew: Music would become my life. 

My career as a professional flutist over the past forty years has brought me to far-ranging jobs, both highbrow and low, (from weddings and funerals as a student, to pit orchestras of broadway shows, and finally to high-caliber freelancing as principal flute with opera and ballet orchestras, and as a regular sub with the Boston Symphony. Finally, at the age of forty, I founded my own chamber music series, Mistral Music, my dream job, what would become “my magnificent obsession,” for which I continue to serve as the artistic director.

I discovered that connecting with my community through an intimate concert experience was not only tremendously gratifying, but also the perfect outlet for me to share what meant most to me in life— not just music, but childhood, memories, and the mysteries of the heart. And this is precisely where the intersection of my life as a writer and a musician now takes place.

Besides what people have called our imaginative programming and virtuosic artists, I think that the success of my music series is due in large part to the rapport I have developed with my audience members through the personal stories I tell and the messages I write in the program booklets.

I often program music that has in some way altered my own sensibilities with the hope it will do the same for my audience members. I regularly introduce a piece by recounting a story about where I first heard and fell in love with it, and explain how hearing it every time conjures the memories and emotions of that moment in time. Like Proust’s madeleine. And my desire to share an experience I have had with a piece of music is very much like a writer’s desire to tell a story.

But beyond the role of artistic director, there are other analogies to be drawn between being an instrumentalist and a writer.  

As musicians, we’re taught to be vehicles for the composers’ music. The message we try to convey with our own playing should essentially be devoid of ego, as we strive to deliver the message of the composer. (Even if musicians imbue each work with their own artistic interpretation.) It’s a different story for writers, who tell stories which are uniquely their own.

But because music is innately abstract, the inner worlds that the same piece of music may conjure is different for every person. Although in some ways writing is the opposite, as it is telling one very specific story, it, too, will resonate with each reader a little differently.  

Other obvious comparisons between writing and playing music that come to mind have to do with communicating. Whether it is with words or notes, both writers and musicians use their medium to share a vision and paint a picture.

As a musician, one is constantly paying attention to beginnings and endings and the fundamental importance of beautiful phrasing. In the same way, rhythm and cadence matter on the written page, as well as the spaces between the phrases, the musical flow of a good sentence. I noticed recently that deciding how to end a chapter on a cliff hanger is very similar to how I might choose to end a movement, one that necessarily leads to and implies what is to come next in a new section of music.

I think that the (slightly urgent) desire to tell a story in writing probably comes from the same place as the desire to share a piece of music in a live performance. I recently discovered a beautiful quote from Maya Angelou, and I feel it encapsulates this same urgency to share art, whether it is a writer’s story or a piece that a musician yearns to perform: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

As for my own odyssey that took me over forty years to bring this memoir, Paris Blue, into world, I am beyond moved that the time has finally come to share it.

Julie Scolnik is a concert flutist and the founding artistic director of Mistral Music (www.MistralMusic.org), a chamber music series that since1997 has been known for its virtuosic performances, imaginative programming, and the personal rapport Scolnik establishes with her audiences. She lives in Boston with her husband, physicist Michael Brower, and their two cats, Daphne and Chloë. They have two adult children, Sophie and Sasha Scolnik-Brower, also musicians. All info about "Paris Blue" (trailer, endorsements, story, music in the book) can be found at www.JulieScolnik.com.

Writing Historical Fiction & A Love Letter to Bookstores with Kerri Maher

THE PARIS BOOKSELLER opens in 1917, as World War I ends and Paris is alive as a thriving center for culture and modernity. With new ideas rapidly taking the post-war world by storm, Sylvia Beach moves to Paris and opens the doors to her new English-language bookshop with the help of fellow writer and bookseller Adrienne Monnier. What starts as a partnership and friendship with Adrienne soon blossoms into a romance, and the women work together to create a haven for English writers and readers.

Sylvia quickly falls in love with James Joyce’s prose, especially his unpublished manuscript, Ulysses. When the contentious novel is banned in the United States for its obscenity, Sylvia takes a massive financial and personal risk, deciding to publish it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company. She quickly realizes that the success and notoriety of publishing the most influential book of the century comes with steep costs. While many patrons applaud her efforts, some believe she has marred the integrity of Shakespeare and Company as she remains staunchly loyal to Joyce. Even worse, the future of her beloved store is threatened and her most enduring friendships are put to the test when Ulysses’ success leads to Joyce being wooed by other publishers. Now on the cusp of World War II and facing financial ruin, Sylvia must decide how far she will go to keep Shakespeare and Company alive.

Maher not only captures the life of a brave and inspiring bookseller, but also transports readers to the electric cultural atmosphere of Paris in the early 20th century. Sylvia’s romantic relationship with Adrienne Monnier is exquisitely rendered, and offers an insightful look into what it meant to be a lesbian in Paris in the early to mid-twentieth century. Maher’s descriptions of a society grappling with the effects of World War I while simultaneously entering an age of modernism will captivate readers, as will cameo appearances from much-beloved literary figures. 

There are an overwhelming number of books that are set during the WW2 era, while WW1 and the fallout of it, seem to get less attention, even though it's a vibrant space to work in as an author. Is it freeing to work with material that occurs in a lesser-known time period?

Absolutely! For me, though, it all depends on the main character. For instance, if you’d told me before I discovered the story of Kick Kennedy that I would write “a World War 2 book,” I’d have said you were crazy; I just wasn’t naturally drawn to that time period.  But because I was totally entranced by Kick’s story, and the meat of it occurred during that war, I became interested in it through the lens of her life.

I’ve always been interested in World War 1, on the other hand, likely because I’ve always been interested in the writing of the 1920’s, and the Lost Generation expats to Paris—movements that were a response to the devastation of the so-called Great War.  So when I decided to write about Sylvia Beach and her famous bookstore in that time period, I got to draw on a few decades of reading that I’d already done in that time period (like Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s novels, Sylvia’s memoir, and a terrific book I read years ago called Everyone Was So Young by Amanda Vaill), which made research a little easier.

Writing about real people is always a challenge but writing about real authors seems like it would be even more so. Readers can be fiercely protective of the memory of their favorites. What was it like to write about James Joyce in a fictional frame? 

You are so right.  And there were many times I thought to myself, “Who am I to put words in the mouth of James Joyce?”  Thankfully, I’d already had to answer the question, “Who am I to put words in JFK’s mouth? …  Grace Kelly’s?  Alfred Hitchcock’s?”  Writers of historical fiction whose work explores the lives of real, often famous, people, just have to shove aside this anxiety and get on with it.  It helps me to remember that the James Joyce in The Paris Bookseller is not the “real” James Joyce; rather, he is my interpretation of James Joyce.  I’ve based my interpretation on rigorous research, but it’s still many steps removed from the genuine article.  And that’s okay! 

Bookstores have been hard hit by the pandemic, and your novel reads like a love story to the independent bookstore. How has your own life and history with bookstores impacted the writing of the novel? 

Oh, my answer to this question could go on for pages, so I’ll try to be brief.  As soon as I graduated from college (more than 2 decades ago!), I moved to New York City from California to work in museums—or so I thought.  My parents told everyone I was moving to New York to become a writer.  Though I’d been an English major, I also loved Art History and thought I was destined to be a curator.  A hot minute into my summer internship and I knew that museums were not my world.  My parents, surprise-surprise, had been right.

By September, I was employed as a nanny and a clerk at the Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a schedule that gave me the freedom to write every morning.  Though the structure of my days was important for getting my first (unpublished) novel written (and revised), working at the bookstore proved more important.  For hours a day, we aspiring writers on the staff talked amongst ourselves and with the consummate readers and writers who were customers, about our own work as well as the novels we were reading and what we’d learned from them; we argued about whether Dave Eggers’s first book really was a heartbreaking work of staggering genius; we shared connections and ideas and suggestions and heartaches. 

We were, essentially, like the young, hungry writers who first came to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris in the early 1920’s.  A few years before as an undergraduate, I’d read Sylvia’s memoir and marveled at the richness and texture of her life.  To be honest, I’d also been a little jealous: how I wished I, too, could live in Paris among my literary heroes, during my favorite decade!

So, imagine my amazed glee when I got to do just that in writing The Paris Bookseller—live Sylvia’s life as much as anyone can, through the miraculous act of time travel that is writing historical fiction.  And I am able to bring readers along for the ride, just as Sylvia herself invited patrons into her shop.   

Censorship is a big part of the novel and can be a hot topic still today. Did you have any concerns about reactions to some of your content?

Gosh, I hope no one objects to the content of my book! The subject of censorship is very different today than it was 100 years ago when Joyce’s Ulysses was banned.  In the early 20th century, art was legally banned if it was deemed “obscene,” or found to corrupt its audience.  There was a patriarchal idea that men in power had to protect others, mainly women, from seeing anything they deemed to be lewd.  We are *way* past that thinking today, living as we do in the age of racy television shows and violent video games that we simply take for granted; a ton of content is simply available, and we can choose to consume it or not, and put parental controls on devices to protect young eyes that might legitimately need protecting.

Today, though, we have the concept of cancel culture, which could be considered by those who oppose it (or those who think cancel culture has gone too far) as an evolving form of censorship: where the opinions of everyday citizens—the court of public opinion—can be powerful enough to act as a modern form of censorship. What I wonder is this: What will writers 100 years from now say about the cultural moment we find ourselves in?  What parallels will those future writers draw between what’s happening in 2022 to what happened in 1922, and what might be happening in 2122?  Since we are living it, it’s hard to know; we can’t see it with any perspective.  

Kerri Maher holds an MFA from Columbia University. She lives with her daughter in Massachusetts. Learn more online at kerrimaher.com.

A Conversation With Radhika Sanghani, Author of 30 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MYSELF

When Nina Mistry's life hits rock bottom, she decides to change her stars by falling in love...with herself—a hilarious, heartfelt story from outrageously funny novelist Radhika Sanghani.

Nina didn't plan to spend her thirtieth birthday in jail, yet here she is in her pajamas, locked in a holding cell. There's no Wi-Fi, no wine, no carbs—and no one to celebrate with.

Unfortunately, it gives Nina plenty of time to reflect on how screwed up her life is. She's just broken up with her fiancé, and now has to move back into her childhood home to live with her depressed older brother and their uptight, traditional Indian mother. Her career as a freelance journalist isn’t going in the direction she wants, and all her friends are too busy being successful to hang out with her.

Just as Nina falls into despair, a book lands in her cell: How to Fix Your Shitty Life by Loving Yourself. It must be destiny. With literally nothing left to lose, Nina makes a life-changing decision to embark on a self-love journey. By her next birthday, she's going to find thirty things she loves about herself.

Your novel was inspired after spending a night in jail, yourself. How does a feel-good story have roots in what one would assume is a negative life experience?

My night in a jail cell was completely unexpected. I was working on a journalistic story that went very wrong, and while I was scared of the consequences, my biggest fear was having to spend a night in a cell alone. I’d just had a break-up and was desperate not to feel how lonely I was. But I was forced to confront my fears, and it ended up being the best thing to happen to me.

I finally faced up to how sad I was instead of pretending things were okay and it was hugely liberating. I accepted I was heartbroken, wanted to quit my job and had nothing in common with most of my friends. That sparked a huge self-love journey for me that led to me going freelance, making amazing new friends and writing 30 Things I Love About Myself!

Nina Mistry goes on a similar journey in my book, and though her story is definitely light-hearted with lots of fun moments, it has its fair share of difficult low moments too. To me, every feel-good story needs its sad parts too, because that’s what makes it realistic. Every good thing in my life has come out of something tough so I wanted to reflect that in my book!

With everything going on in the world, lighter fare seems to be what people are reading. What about 30 Things I Love About Myself makes it a great post (we hope) pandemic read?

I think this is the perfect post-pandemic read because it’s all about a woman learning to be strong alone, and to heal her loneliness. So many of us were forced to be physically alone during the pandemic, while many others struggled with loneliness even when surrounded by people. Nina deals with both of these issues at different times, and her story is inspiring and positive. Whenever I talk about this book, I use words like ‘kind’ and ‘warm’ and ‘happy’ (as well as smiling as I do so!) and I think that says it all. Who doesn’t need more kindness and warmth in their lives right now?!

Body positivity plays a role both in the novel and in your real life. How can we all stick to positive thoughts about ourselves (and others!) with so much negativity swirling around? 

It’s so hard! But it is possible! I make a big effort to only follow positive accounts that make me feel good on social media, and to surround myself with positive people in real life as much as I can. That makes a big difference. The other huge thing you can do – which Nina Mistry does in the novel – is to befriend yourself and be your own source of positivity. If you’re able to get to a place where you’re kind about your body, or ideally, celebrate it just the way it is, then it doesn’t matter what’s happening around you. Because you’ll have you, and that’s so much more valuable.

As a journalist who tackles issues like racism and social issues, how do you see a piece of fiction carrying its own influence? 

I love fiction and think it really has its own power. A journalist writing about issues is always didactic, but when issues are covered in fiction, they can reach people in different ways. Sometimes it’s a message resonating with a reader in a way it never has before, or just that certain messages make their way to new audiences. But I think fiction has a huge influence and it’s one that shouldn’t be undervalued!

Radhika Sanghani is an award-winning features journalist, an influential body positivity campaigner and a 2020 BBC Writers Room graduate. Her latest novel 30 Things I Love About Myself - a warm-hearted story about a woman trying to find 30 things she loves about herself after hitting rock bottom - is out in January 2022. She has previously written two YA novels: Virgin and Not That Easy.

You can find her on Instagram and Twitter on @radhikasanghani