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Jul. 6th, 2012 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretHere, have a bit of meta on one of my fics.
"The Music Speaks for Itself", my Ravel/Debussy story from Yuletide, traces an imagined relationship between the two and between them both and Emma Bardac through a string of achronological scenes. In fact, as I mention in the summary, it's "a broken love song, in loose ternary form". The piece's structure is sensory. On one layer, there's an A-B-A movement of the piece based on opening with the end of their relationship, going back and looking at the relationship as it began to develop, and returning to the end of their friendship. But more importantly, and more consistently, as I move through the piece I step through three of the senses.
The opening passages are visual. Sensory details are visual, telling the story about how these characters look at each other. And this is supported by the multimedia being visual- pictures of characters, pictures of sheet music. The most sexual scene is Ravel sitting at the piano masturbating while reading the score of a Debussy piece.
In the middle passage I move into hearing, which is central to the story since it's the story of two musicians. The multimedia is snippets of audio recordings. The sensory details in the text are auditory. And the most sexual scene here is Ravel standing outside Debussy's room listening as he has sex.
The third section is tactile. I strove for the most physical moments, with the centerpiece being Ravel punching Debussy, but even scenes in this section that don't have any physical contact use metaphors surrounding physical contact, i.e. Ravel locked in metaphorical 'hand-to-hand combat' with Debussy as he orchestrates one of Debussy's compositions.
The goal of all of this, obviously, was to try to create a piece of writing that works in the same ways that Debussy and Ravel's musical writing does- impressionistic, built on simple thematic figures that carry emotions as subtly and elegantly as possible. Their music, at its finest, doesn't communicate ideas so much as it communicates feelings, and I wanted a story with the kind of ambiguities of time and space that allowed for the same sensation. Yet I didn't want it to be shapeless. I wanted there to be a form and a narrative and a structure that guided the reader through the story, and that's why I ended up with ternary form despite a story that doesn't actually conclude anything. Debussy and Ravel- especially Ravel- believed deeply in the importance of structure, even at times classical structure.
So that I found peoples' responses to the piece fascinating especially when they clashed with my own reading of the story.
Like when my recipient wrote "I just wish you had opened that door, Maurice!" in response to the ecouteurism scene. As I mentioned, the point of that whole section of the story is to focus on the way sensuality can be focused on hearing. In a lot of ways, this is the most important idea for me in the story, which is what I was attempting to point to by titling it "The Music Speaks for Itself". For a pair of musicians, vision and touch matter, but they're not the crux of the matter, and Maurice didn't open the door because he managed to find satisfaction purely in the listening. As I've mentioned before, though, the piece is ambiguous enough that I went through several titles before settling on that one. There are certainly other ways to read the story, and one previous title, "Piano Concerto for the Left Hand," is much more aligned with the reading that Maurice's choice not to open the door was a failure to achieve the potential romance. On the other hand, another title I considered and rejected was "Ecouteurism in D Minor", which more explicitly lays a claim that this lack of consummation itself constitutes a relationship.
I think it's very interesting that crunchy_salad had that response. Especially since that struggle is stated quite clearly by Debussy when he imagines telling people at a different point in that central passage, "I'm looking for nothing more in life than to find someone who understands why music is like love." Is physical love a desire or a need or is it just an expectation, something that's supposed to be part of conventional love but which is missing from the lives of these two men whose sensory needs are so attenuated, so particularized?
I love so much that my story provoked this kind of ambiguity, that it produced interpretations and understandings and emotions that differ from my own, but still produced enjoyment. I think above all else, that is what I'm proud of in that story.
"The Music Speaks for Itself", my Ravel/Debussy story from Yuletide, traces an imagined relationship between the two and between them both and Emma Bardac through a string of achronological scenes. In fact, as I mention in the summary, it's "a broken love song, in loose ternary form". The piece's structure is sensory. On one layer, there's an A-B-A movement of the piece based on opening with the end of their relationship, going back and looking at the relationship as it began to develop, and returning to the end of their friendship. But more importantly, and more consistently, as I move through the piece I step through three of the senses.
The opening passages are visual. Sensory details are visual, telling the story about how these characters look at each other. And this is supported by the multimedia being visual- pictures of characters, pictures of sheet music. The most sexual scene is Ravel sitting at the piano masturbating while reading the score of a Debussy piece.
In the middle passage I move into hearing, which is central to the story since it's the story of two musicians. The multimedia is snippets of audio recordings. The sensory details in the text are auditory. And the most sexual scene here is Ravel standing outside Debussy's room listening as he has sex.
The third section is tactile. I strove for the most physical moments, with the centerpiece being Ravel punching Debussy, but even scenes in this section that don't have any physical contact use metaphors surrounding physical contact, i.e. Ravel locked in metaphorical 'hand-to-hand combat' with Debussy as he orchestrates one of Debussy's compositions.
The goal of all of this, obviously, was to try to create a piece of writing that works in the same ways that Debussy and Ravel's musical writing does- impressionistic, built on simple thematic figures that carry emotions as subtly and elegantly as possible. Their music, at its finest, doesn't communicate ideas so much as it communicates feelings, and I wanted a story with the kind of ambiguities of time and space that allowed for the same sensation. Yet I didn't want it to be shapeless. I wanted there to be a form and a narrative and a structure that guided the reader through the story, and that's why I ended up with ternary form despite a story that doesn't actually conclude anything. Debussy and Ravel- especially Ravel- believed deeply in the importance of structure, even at times classical structure.
So that I found peoples' responses to the piece fascinating especially when they clashed with my own reading of the story.
Like when my recipient wrote "I just wish you had opened that door, Maurice!" in response to the ecouteurism scene. As I mentioned, the point of that whole section of the story is to focus on the way sensuality can be focused on hearing. In a lot of ways, this is the most important idea for me in the story, which is what I was attempting to point to by titling it "The Music Speaks for Itself". For a pair of musicians, vision and touch matter, but they're not the crux of the matter, and Maurice didn't open the door because he managed to find satisfaction purely in the listening. As I've mentioned before, though, the piece is ambiguous enough that I went through several titles before settling on that one. There are certainly other ways to read the story, and one previous title, "Piano Concerto for the Left Hand," is much more aligned with the reading that Maurice's choice not to open the door was a failure to achieve the potential romance. On the other hand, another title I considered and rejected was "Ecouteurism in D Minor", which more explicitly lays a claim that this lack of consummation itself constitutes a relationship.
I think it's very interesting that crunchy_salad had that response. Especially since that struggle is stated quite clearly by Debussy when he imagines telling people at a different point in that central passage, "I'm looking for nothing more in life than to find someone who understands why music is like love." Is physical love a desire or a need or is it just an expectation, something that's supposed to be part of conventional love but which is missing from the lives of these two men whose sensory needs are so attenuated, so particularized?
I love so much that my story provoked this kind of ambiguity, that it produced interpretations and understandings and emotions that differ from my own, but still produced enjoyment. I think above all else, that is what I'm proud of in that story.