Her name was Mary. She danced across the stage as the radio played and I fell in love with the song. It was written for me, that lonely girl sitting in the library at the University of Miami trying to dig through her imagination for a story due the next day in her Creative Writing class. She toyed with the idea of abandoning her dream of being a writer, but … not yet … she wasn’t ready to give up.
The muses came through. That’s the first time I realized music could open some portal in my brain to allow my creativity out.
Sitting surrounded by books at a table in that open room, Sony Walkman playing my Bruce Springsteen album, I wrote a short story about a girl at the burial of her love, a soldier killed in Vietnam.
In this story, I imagined things I had never witnessed. I just knew that caskets used to be lowered with ropes. I imagined her tugging at his class ring on her gold necklace as she stood under a tree on a hill. I imagined a life in the American Midwest even though I didn’t live there until much later. With the inspiration of music, I was able to imagine a small-town life that big-city me had never even dreamed of. And, with the inspiration of music, as in Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road, I finally accepted that I am a writer, even if no one pays me for my stories.
“The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways.”
That day, I became Mary and Springsteen’s words were mine. I never tried to sell that story because I thought I had plagiarized from the Boss — down even to the throwing of roses in the rain. Only later, only now, do I realize that the story was mine, only inspired by music.
Now, as I continue to write the stories in my heart, I tap into that place in the Universe where the words are channeled into my soul and flow through my fingertips. A sparkling river of energy like the magical music playing in my ears. I realize now that whatever allows me to open up to the Universal creativity is blessed and to be welcomed. It is not an act of plagiarism to write novels while music is playing. The music guides me when I have questions and soothes me when I have doubts.
As this dance continues, pairing me with music and stories, I tip my hat always to the musicians, my muses — Bruce Springsteen, Dramagods, Gemini Syndrome, Avenged Sevenfold, Evanescence, and the others I will continue to thank as this blog continues. Thank you for sparking that flame in my heart that helps me connect with my soul.
I hope I am worthy of their inspiration.
Love and light, my friends,
The Dragonfly’s Student
The Dragonfly's Student 